Burnout Book Review

The morning after Halloween, sixteen-year-old Nan wakes up barefoot on the L train, wearing a torn pink plastic dress, with hacked-off hair, skeleton make-up that proves virtually impossible to remove, and the words "Help Me" scrawled in Sharpie across her chest. "This time her nightmare is real," reads the tag line on the cover.

But while Burnout delivers the drama its exterior promises, the real surprise is just how artfully it portrays a certain kind of New York City teenage life: Saturdays at the Union Square farmer's market, midnight screenings of The Goonies at the Sunshine cinema, a secret hide-out in a 19th century carriage house, Nan's family's space as the sole remaining artists in a converted SoHo loft that has long since gone condo. That and, say, puking in the holy water at Saint Patrick's cathedral in front of a busload of Japanese tourists. It's that kind of bad behavior that leads to Nan spending six months in rehab, though, as her best friend and prime instigator, Seemy, points out, Nan was more follower than leader in the rebellious teen role.

Nan's family is especially finely drawn. "Our house is full of thinking," Nan says. Her artist mother encourages her to find strength in her large frame ("mom says bodies like ours are made for football and slaying dragons"), describes her own art as "either a big fat mess or a mixed-media installation about mall culture and female genital mutilation," and snipes at the rich people who look at "all of the interesting artist people" as some sort of paid entertainment. While the plot speeds along, the background texture makes the reader actually care how it all shakes out.

City Of Orphans

In Avi's City of Orphans, thirteen-year-old Maks -- " 'with a k.' Danish. Didn't get changed" -- works as a "newsie" on New York City's Lower East Side, hawking The World newspaper, among the rest of the hustlers selling "jim-jam" in so many different languages that "it's like the cheapest boarding house in Babel." For this, he earns eight cents a day, which he takes home to help with the fifteen-dollar-a-month rent on the three-room tenement flat he shares with Mama, Papa, two sisters, three brothers, and a French boarder. That is, if the Plug Uglies don't get to him first.

The Plug Uglies -- named after a real gang -- are run by the fearsome Bruno and shake down all The World's newsies for their earnings, hoping to put the paper out of business, though Maks suspects someone higher up is "greasing" Bruno for his deeds. This is during the Great Panic of 1893, "before Commissioner Teddy Roosevelt started bending things straight," and "mugs" like Maks can't even trust the "coppers," who are always "ready to be bribed if you have the clink."

So when Maks's older sister, Emma, who works at the newly opened Waldorf Hotel -- Papa says she got the job because she is so pretty; Mama says it's because she is so clean -- is accused of stealing a watch and locked up in the Tombs, Maks is sure she's been framed. With the help of a street girl, Willa -- born "Waddah" -- who "smells like sauerkraut gone south" and carries a big stick, and a tubercular ex-Pinkerton detective, Maks goes further than he ever has before -- 42nd Street -- to solve the case. There, he discovers indoor showers, "a parade of rich people," and the root of two corrupt plans.

Midnight Rising Review

Midnight Rising

On December 2, 1859, abolitionist John Brown stood over a trapdoor, his face shrouded by a white hood, a noose draped around his neck. His execution was delayed ten minutes as his prison escort took up position on the field, joining the other troops serving as a buttress against the 2,000 people gathered to watch Brown hang. Six weeks earlier, on October 16, 1859, Brown and a guerrilla force numbering eighteen had besieged the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, intent on launching an uprising that would topple slavery. Thirty-two hours after the assault began, ten of Brown's men and five townspeople lay dead. Depending upon which side of the slavery question you were on, the man about to hang was either a liberator or a terrorist.

With his new book, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War, Tony Horowitz unpacks the philosophy, politics, and circumstances that led Brown to Harpers Ferry. Horowitz, known for his first-person accounts of encountering Confederates in the Attic and tracing American history before the Mayflower, opts for the third person this time around. The choice suits the task he's set for himself. Midnight Rising is a fast-paced narrative that immerses the reader in Brown's world, a place where bloodshed and sacrifice were encouraged in pursuit of righting a moral wrong.



The mechanics of Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry have been examined in detail by historians, and Horowitz admirably covers that familiar ground. What sets his book apart is the attention he pays to the company Brown kept: his beleaguered wife, who bore him thirteen children, was stepmother to seven more, and endured deprivation while he pursued his personal war; the men who trusted him so completely that they followed him to their deaths; and the financial backers, known as the Secret Six, who supported Brown's zeal, only to recoil when confronted with its consequences.

Horowitz also shows how Brown's hasty trial and stoic approach to death helped to incite more open conflict over slavery. Abolitionists who initially rejected Brown's methods were won over by his conduct -- wounded in the raid, Brown rested on a pallet throughout his trial, rising to answer questions when called upon -- and his rhetoric. Though he was a flat public speaker, Brown's words took on a majestic aura when printed in Northern newspapers. In six short weeks, an act of violence that had invited only horror and derision became a springboard for activism, turning Brown into a martyr. Slavery marched to the forefront of American politics; in sixteen months, the war would begin.

Book Review: The Apple Lover's Cookbook

Tired of apple pies in which the fruit loses its shape and turns into mushy sauce? Amy Traverso's The Apple Lover's Cookbook offers solutions. But what earns it a place on your shelf are not her 100 recipes for old standbys such as Apple Crisp and German Pancake, few of which are likely to replace your favorites; rather, it is the alphabetized, alluringly photographed, in-depth guide to 59 apple varieties that precedes them.

Much as some recent cookie books have taken to classifying recipes by texture (chewy, cakey, crumbly, etc.), Traverso classifies each apple variety as belonging to one of four categories: Firm-Tart, Firm-Sweet, Tender-Tart, and Tender-Sweet, with suggestions for best use. Her recipes, in turn, call for apples in a specific texture category, helpfully listed on a "cheat sheet" that also flags slow-to-oxidize varieties for salads. (I do wish this chart were printed on the end-pages for easier reference.)

So, for that perfect apple pie, use a mix of firm-tart and firm-sweet varieties. But don't stop at pies and tarts. I used firm-sweet Pink Ladies and Honeycrisps, and, lacking tender-sweets, some tender-tart Macouns and Cortlands to test two apple cakes -- the easy, moist Apple Brownies and the slightly more complicated Apple-Studded Brown Butter Streusel Coffee Cake, both of which were deemed Eve-worthy on the temptation scale.

Traverso has a notable fondness for salt, which she adds to many recipes via salted butter as well as by the teaspoonful. Savory options include a Parsnip-Apple Puree and an Apple and Chestnut-Stuffed Pork Loin with Cider Sauce. My favorite recipes, however, are the do-ahead breakfast dishes, including a healthy Baked Apple Oatmeal Pudding -- a sort of bread pudding made with rolled oats, eggs, milk, dried fruit, and diced firm-sweet apples. Although a bit dry on reheating, this tasted virtuous but also delicious -- though not Red Delicious, which Traverso disdains as a "Mush-Sweet" variety without "a single good use for it."

This Book Is A New Approach to a Classic Art

In her award-winning cookbook All About Braising, Molly Stevens produced an indispensable, surprisingly informative guide to the possibilities of a single -- and supposedly simple -- cooking process. Her new book, All About Roasting, looks to repeat the trick, taking the mystery and chance out of what may well be the most laissez-faire, cook-friendly of all culinary procedures. Did you know, for example, why those bags of so-called baby carrots never roast as well as rounds you cut yourself? Because they're processed with water -- and the first rule of roasting is that foods should be dry. This is because "foods cooked with moist heat can never reach temperatures above 212 degrees" -- and temperatures above 220 degrees are required for browning. Roasting, as it turns out, involves maximizing heat conductivity, which is why it's important to coat meats and vegetables with olive oil or some other fat -- which conducts heat better than air -- and cook them in low-sided dishes that don't deflect heat.

Beyond the dry-versus-wet issue, the main variable cooks face when roasting is speed, and Stevens explains which foods do best with a blast of high heat (whole beef tenderloin, whole chickens, quail, Cornish hens, most fish, and most vegetables); which ones benefit from a slow, gentle oven (tougher cuts of meat, salmon fillets, high-moisture-content veggies like tomatoes and onions); and which ones do best with an initial searing followed by moderate heat or a combination of temperatures (pork tenderloin, chicken parts, duck). Her book will soothe the most flummoxed cooks, who otherwise might find themselves driven to the wilds of the Internet -- or a panicked phone call to Mom -- when faced with a holiday lamb.

While All About Roasting isn't geared toward vegetarians, it features plenty of non-meat options, along with appealing sauces and relishes. Stevens's best tip on roasting veggies, including the delicious Maple-Roasted Butternut Squash and Apples I made for Thanksgiving: Don't overcrowd the pan, or you'll end up with steamy mush instead of lovely browned surfaces. For those of us who feel there are few meals that roast potatoes can't improve, Stevens offers multiple variations. Don't miss her irresistible, crunchy British-style wedges, achieved by parboiling russets and dusting them in semolina prior to roasting them in preheated fat.

Love Goes To Buildings On Fire Review

For Will Hermes, the 1970s took a few years to kick into gear -- in particular when it came to popular music. Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever examines the sliver of time (January 1973 to December 1977) when, in Hermes's assessment, the budding decade took on a life of its own. All of a sudden, or so it seemed, punk, salsa, contemporary classical/new music, loft jazz, hip-hop (in its nascent form), and disco (in its all-devouring form) were among us. While the Big Apple, itself quickly rotting from budget cuts, was going down the tubes, its music scene had rarely been so vibrant.

What Hermes, a senior writer for Rolling Stone and an NPR contributor, captures so well is the burbling creative energy that gripped the city. If the sixties had hung on past its expiration date, it now suddenly seemed nothing less than urgent to shake things loose. Thankfully there were talents abounding, itching to rework the music in their own image. Hermes has a full deck of mythic figures to draw from, including Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, Philip Glass, Hector Lavoe, Tom Verlaine, DJ Kool Herc, Laurie Anderson, David Murray, Arthur Russell, and that perennial icon Bob Dylan.

The grass-roots origins of the different genres, as punk developed in cruddy clubs, disco in sweaty gay nightspots, and hip-hop literally on the streets, remains fascinating and not a little inspiring. New York City in the mid-seventies may have been an open pothole of political ineptitude and public indifference, yet this morass is what got resourceful musicians juiced. To his credit, Hermes devotes a good part of his interweaving narrative to what may be -- at least to the broad mainstream of listeners -- the least familiar genre: salsa. The infighting, dirty record company dealings, and missed opportunities that litter the tale can break your heart, but Hermes's lively writing and general enthusiasm make you want to search out gems like The Sun of Latin Music by Eddie Palmieri.

Hermes makes no inflated claims for his chosen era as a musical golden age that we will never know the likes of again. But his big-hearted and inclusive embrace reminds us that the stripped-down aesthetics of such disparate benchmark recordings as The Ramones Leave Home, Glass's Einstein on the Beach, Chic's Le Freak, and Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town are proof that magic can be pulled off the meanest of streets.

Portrait of a Woman

In these days of Occupy Wall Street, when it seems the long-suffering serfs of the Western world are finally rising against the corporate monarchy, it is either dislocating or highly serendipitous to be given the consummate biography of a woman who ruled over earth's largest empire in the eighteenth century. Catherine the Great commanded unimaginable wealth and power. Her world is both far from ours, an impossible fiction, and right next to it.

She was the daughter of a German prince and an ambitious mother with slender strands of connection to the Russian throne that were reeled in with steely determination. When, in 1744, Sophia Augusta Fredericka was fourteen, her mother's efforts finally engineered a summons to bring the girl to Russia as a potential bride for Grand Duke Peter Ulrich, the heir of Empress Elizabeth -- that is to say, as an incubator for the next heir. This bizarre fact, from an ever-higher tower of incredible details, is what gives Robert K. Massie's expansive life of Catherine its particular power: it is a "portrait of a woman" rather than "of an empress" because the eminent, Pulitzer-winning historian of Russian royalty (Peter the Great and Nicholas and Alexandra) understands that what is most fascinating is not the story even of passing strange institutions but that of the very human individuals who became captive to them. And so we are offered the full menu of feminine concerns, including but not limited to sexual liaisons (Catherine had twelve lovers, her husband the least of them) and matters of dress (at her wedding she wore a "horribly heavy" crown that gave her a headache but which she was forbidden to remove, and a silver brocade gown encrusted with silver roses; the person inside this tinseled affair was further festooned with sparkling earrings, bracelets, brooches, and rings). She would not have lasted longer than any other female ruler of the empire -- from 1762 until her death in 1796 -- if she had not used both intellect and wiles to make of herself something more than a simple end user, however.

It begins as a byzantine story of lineage. As the author says of the situation after the death of Peter the Great in 1725, he could equally say of the whole complex of European nobility: every death and every marriage "plunged the already complicated Russian succession into greater confusion." For the modern reader already in need of a flowchart, the habit of changing names when exchanging crowns additionally complicates the complicated. One day in 1705, Martha of Latvia became Catherine I; Sophia would follow the trend to become Catherine II.

For an incipient empress, Massie demonstrates, life is not all diamonds and caviar, though there are exorbitant amounts of those. There are life-squelching demands for conformity: the teenage girl was forced to renounce her Lutheran faith in favor of Orthodoxy upon her arrival in Moscow, where she was to be groomed as a mate for an odd and unappealing young man (Peter was brutalized by his tutor, so he in turn tormented whoever he could, including small animals). She also paid for her wealth and promise of power with years of intense loneliness. Her friends were chosen for her and banished at the empress's will; her husband came to hate her and preferred playing with toy soldiers to giving her the pregnancy she was blamed for not achieving. Later still, the cost of ascending the throne was having to learn who she needed to eliminate before they had a chance to eliminate her. There was no reclining, figuratively at least, on silken divans. Perhaps most cruelly, she lived through what amounted to the kidnapping of her three children; she had been brought to court as a royal brood mare, an unsavory fact made plain when each baby in turn was taken from her immediately after birth. Still, she moved with grace through this most difficult obstacle course to become a largely beloved sovereign (though always in danger from those who favored a native son) as well as a thoughtful student of Voltaire, Diderot, and Montesquieu.

The lonely years served her well, for she used them to read. One wonders if Machiavelli was among the authors she surveyed: she came to power after her inept husband wore the crown for only six months; he died within days of a bloodless coup d'état that left Catherine suspiciously blameless but in possession of that which her whole life, it appears in retrospect, had been directed toward. A trajectory this impressive makes well over 500 pages appear a condensed account.

In the end, this fascinating and self-created woman, who expanded the borders of her empire by some 200,000 square miles and reigned over what is considered the Golden Age of Russia, made substantive changes to the system of monarchy. She spent two years rewriting the Russian legal code. Her Nakaz of 1767, drawn from Enlightenment philosophy, was published to extraordinary acclaim. In the telling, Massie redresses what initially seemed a strange omission: a chapter devoted to the institution of serfdom. The presence of millions men and women in bondage is only a ghostly supposition in the first half of the book, with its recitation of ruble-heavy retainers, gifts of jewels and titles, banquets and the aforementioned finery, gown after gown. Just who had supplied all that capital in the first place?

The author has written a popular history in the sense that it is thoroughly engaging to read: this is People magazine for the educated set -- those with a taste for summer palaces instead of Malibu, the pressures of governance over the distress of canceled series. It is a feat of magic to bring a person back from the distance of nearly 300 years in such vibrant specificity that we see her ("On the morning of Sunday, July 30, she drove through the streets to the Kremlin, sitting alone in a gilded carriage") and know her. Reading such history is a peculiar pleasure all its own: the sensation of being drawn through time as if on a carnival ride; the complexities of factions and factors building layer upon layer; attaining the privileged view where one sees just how everything is connected, and where politics and personalities collide. History is, after all, made by people. Some of them are like some of us. Our time just waits for its own literate historian to show us who was great, and why.

How the Dead Live Review

Derek Raymond is the pen name of Robert "Robin" Cook (1931-93), who was born into the British upper class but chose to live among addicts, gangsters, killers, and coppers. Cook ran rackets for London's infamous Kray Gang and, as Raymond, earning the title Godfather of British Noir with his four Factory novels -- recently republished in the United States by Melville House -- crime fiction so dark that it remains viscerally shocking.

The 1970s/1980s London that Raymond conjures is dank and claustrophobic. His protagonist, a nameless Detective Sergeant, works in the Unexplained Deaths Department of the Metropolitan Police in a building known as the Factory, handling cases passed over by more ambitious detectives. "…I can get on with it, as a rule, almost entirely on my own," the Sergeant explains in The Devil's Home on Leave, "without a load of keen idiots tripping all over my feet." There is something of Bertie Wooster in that genteel sentence. But if Raymond recalls Wodehouse -- in his laconic wit, his comic timing, and his nostalgia for a vanished Britain -- it is Wodehouse in Hades. "…I stepped back with a last glance at his face," the Sergeant says of the mutilated corpse at the heart of He Died with His Eyes Open. "They had left some of it, I will say, whoever they were. It wasn't a strong face, but one that had seen everything and then not understood it until it was too late."

The opening scene of that novel contains elements that become familiar, but never stale, in subsequent novels: a filthy street, a destroyed corpse, a showdown between the beat cop who moves "with a controlled restlessness, cherishing his fists," and the sardonic, fearless Sergeant. Here, an audio diary kept by the victim leads the Sergeant into the man's past, where an erotic entanglement reveals the foul truth behind the killing. Lean and relentless,He Died with His Eyes Open is a moody sketch of a society in which the spirit of Dunkirk has been replaced by the doctrine of Margaret Thatcher.

The Devil's Home on Leave, arguably Raymond's most chilling novel, is an intimate study of McGruder, an ex-soldier turned psychopath. In one of several conversations during which McGruder describes his own exceptional nature, the Sergeant suddenly realizes "what hell it meant not only to be a killer, but a bore. You think nothing of taking life; but your own existence fascinates you…" The novel's tight plot hinges on espionage and is enriched, as always, by Raymond's incidental descriptions -- of an April evening, for example, ("The weather had turned sick") or a pompous suspect ("...everything looked honest in that room except him").

How the Dead Live takes the Sergeant into "what passed for rural Britain now," where the wife of an impoverished aristocrat has disappeared. As the novel develops from a curdled version of a country weekend mystery into a gothic nightmare, it takes us deeper into the Sergeant's desolate heart. "My conception of knowledge is grief and despair," he confesses, and we believe him. He loves his sweet sister, his incarcerated wife, and his dead child, and mourns his country. "The best went into the two wars and stayed there," an old soldier tells him. Only the dregs remain.

This theme, the fate of innocence in such a world, is monstrously portrayed in I Was Dora Suarez, the most complete distillation of Raymond's vision -- more hallucination than fiction -- which even the toughest readers may find unbearable.