Non-Fiction Reviews

Today's MTV generation may know very little about college radio rock kings R.E.M. But for those of us who still take a nostalgic shining to Fables of the Reconstruction, Automatic for the People and Out of Time, Seattle photographer David Belisle offers an intimate look into life on the road with these alternative music boys from Athens, Ga.

Belisle's pictures aren't glamorous. They aren't even exceptionally creative. But they do provide a classic collage of rock 'n' roll life, most notably with portraits of frontman Michael Stipe, engaged in both frenetic onstage rapture and quieter, more sublime solitude. There are also plenty of backstage shots that hark back to the days of Rolling Stone's most illuminating era of rock photography with handwritten notations and an intro by Stipe himself.

But given the immediacy of the Internet, you can't help but wonder if a book like R.E.M.: Hello is destined to be a dinosaur. Yes, Belisle's rare photos reproduce beautifully on the monograph's glossy pages. And yes, R.E.M. did drop a much-anticipated new album this year. But I'm not so sure a book about a band that did its best work before today's tweens were even born is destined to land on too many must-have lists. It's too little, too late.

—Natalie Hope McDonald

On Guerrilla Gardening

Gardeners, as a rule, are strange creatures — particularly city gardeners. You see, they begin thinking about planting seeds in December; they actually begin planting them in February; they anxiously look for signs of evil tomato worms while bitterly monitoring the progress of each and every aphid. Much to their spouses' dismay, they fret about their charges before, during and well after vacation. And finally, they seriously consider arming themselves with air pistols to permanently rectify squirrel infestations. And yes, they talk to plants.

Surprisingly, after reading Richard Reynolds' On Guerrilla Gardening: A Handbook for Gardening Without Boundaries, they may come off relatively sane. Sure, Reynolds' goal — beautifying vacant public and private lands through "illicit cultivation" — is admirable. Really, who can argue with gardeners who, under the cloak of darkness, cart off bags of litter and leave a trail of blooms in their wake? Still, there's something that smells very much like fertilizer wafting from the glossy, beautifully photographed pages of Reynolds' treatise.

Blame it on his overearnest tone loosely camouflaged in Brit wit. But it doesn't matter, because after finishing the book, those urban growers will run out to the nearest nursery, buy a 2-pound bag of wildflower seeds, tuck them into raincoat pockets, and scatter them in vacant lots and tree enclosures as they wander to work on rainy days.

—Char Vandermeer

Me of Little Faith

The title of this book would suggest that comedian Lewis Black, who has turned anger into an art form, would have little to say on religion. On the contrary, The Daily Show correspondent is full of opinions on the absurdities of organized religion, and he certainly pulls no punches. Black takes aim at born-again Christians, Jews for Jesus and Mormons (though he tends to steer clear of Muslims in the aptly titled chapter "Islam. All I'm Saying is, I Got Nothing to Say"). All of Black's rage and vigor translate smoothly into print, and just like David Sedaris and George Carlin (R.I.P.) before him, you can actually hear his voice as you read along. Black's skewering of religions has some seriously funny one-liners ("Christmas is great and Hanukkah sucks. Next to Christmas, Hanukkah looks like a retarded crafts fair"), as well as deeply personal submissions on the death of his brother and a close friend, and the role religion played. The highlight comes when Black lets loose on televangelists: Black hath showeth Jerry Falwell no mercy, and it was good.

—Aly Semigran

War Nerd

There are actually people called war nerds. You've probably never seen them, because they spend pretty much every free moment in front of their computers, arguing with other war nerds about military hardware. In subcultural-evolutionary terms, they rank slightly above Magic: The Gathering enthusiasts and slightly below LARPers. (LARPers at least go outdoors sometimes.) Gary Brecher, columnist for the Moscow biweekly The eXile, is meant to be the authentic voice of the war nerd. Since 2002, his columns, simultaneously intellectual, funny and offensive to a wide range of political views, have covered conflicts from Colombia to Kashmir.

War Nerd has passionate messages for both of his audiences: To hardcore fellow nerds, Brecher begs that they cease their fixation with weaponry and with the big army-versus-army battles of yesteryear. It's the 21st century, Brecher implores them — there will be no more Gettysburgs or Stalingrads. All warfare is guerrilla warfare, fought between armies and insurgents. And what's more, he argues, the insurgents almost always win.

To his mainstream audience, Brecher's message is simpler: War is normal. Violence is normal. That's what humans do. It's the other stuff — peace, shopping, suburbs, boredom — that is weird and disturbing.

Despite the simplicity of this message, the War Nerd column still confuses people. To Bush supporters, Brecher is a left-wing radical because of his relentless criticism of the Iraq war. To the left, however, the War Nerd columnist is a racist, sexist misanthrope.

But the War Nerd is, in fact, neither of those things. He is not even Gary Brecher! Brecher is the creation of John Dolan, a poet, novelist, lecturer in English at the University of Victoria, and The eXile co-editor. That's very exciting news for the War Nerd's regular readers: The columns you've been dissecting and debating for the last six years were written by an English professor who writes poetry!

—Joel Tannenbaum

The Encyclopedia Shatnerica: Millennium Edition

If you want to know every dirty little detail about William Shatner's brazen life, Shatnerica is all you need. The witty and well-researched trivia book, originally published in 1998, is a revised and expanded cornucopia of everything the 77-year-old actor extraordinaire has to offer — from TV appearances, series work, film roles and Web-accessible video clips to book and album releases (a toupee rating system is used to prioritize your Shat Man consumption). Schnakenberg even includes all those people, places, things and words that the Great One has touched, stepped foot in, experienced or uttered in his more-than-50-year career. There's Eva Marie Friedrick, Shatner's former personal assistant who filed a $2 million palimony suit against him back in '89, and Jeff Truskolaski, America's premier Shatner impersonator. Bolded keywords serve as a cross-reference to other entries in the book and random sidebars find their way through the pages — like "Star Trek Sings: Collect All Seven," about less-than-worthy releases by other Star Trek crew members. (Leonard Nimoy, please destroy your microphone.)

—Annamarya Scaccia

Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter S. Thompson was a lewd, loud, drug-addicted political journalist who despised objectivity and the Beltway culture. "In Washington," he once said, "truth is never told in daylight hours or across the desk." Thompson was in many ways Tim Russert's polar opposite. Yet underneath his gonzo demeanor and apocalyptic writings (this religion-hater adored the language of the Book of Revelations) was an idealist who spent the best moments of his professional career earnestly searching for the remnants of the American Dream.

The depths and high-water marks of Thompson's 67 years are irresistible to authors; William McKeen's Outlaw Journalist is the fifth biography published since 1992. A casual acquaintance of Thompson, McKeen attempts to reconcile the outrageous Hunter of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with his more contemplative side. "I don't feel that it's all necessary to tell you how I feel about the principle of individuality," a 19-year-old Thompson wrote to a friend while unhappily in the Air Force. "I know I'm going to have to spend the rest of my life expressing it one way or another, and I think that I'll accomplish it more on the keys of a typewriter." After reading Outlaw Journalist we're still no closer to understanding why Thompson, rather than his Louisville gentry neighbors, would embrace mescaline and margaritas, or how Thompson could survive the 1960s and Nixon, but not post-9/11 America. If unfulfilling, McKeen's bio at least makes you want to pick up one of Thompson's books and dive headfirst into his madness.

—Andrew Milner

Stuff White People Like: A Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions

Some folks do their best work under pressure. In the spirit of charity, then, you could probably let it slide that Lander's tone has changed so much from his original self-effacing blog, stuffwhitepeoplelike.com, to a mean-spirited, easily misconstrued, often redundant ("They can't get enough of it!") forced collection of snarks.

It was hard to recall what was appealing about the concept in the first place without returning to the blog that spawned it. There it becomes quickly apparent that the reader comments, just like the audience on Jerry Springer, are what make the original stirrers of shit look saintly by comparison. If you were to remove the hothead remarks, someone who unwittingly dips into the book might really take Lander seriously and be offended. Plus, Lander's fake-instructive text would be a lot funnier if he recognized that the habits he identifies are really class- rather than race-related. To wit: My white-guy mechanic does not shop at Whole Foods, one of Lander's frequent targets. But people of all backgrounds do, if the prices don't give them nosebleeds. It's the assumption that all white people are privileged that feels suspiciously like bigotry hiding under a "Can't you take a joke?" cloak.

—Mary Armstrong

When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Let's face it. David Sedaris has milked his family dry. Ditto his strange new life in France, and his hilarious stabs at learning the language. In his latest collection of essays — almost all of which are reprinted from The New Yorker and Esquire — he scrapes the bottom of the barrel for new material, but the trouble is, he's rich now. His daily goings-on consist of lounging around, taking walks and occupying himself with various weird hobbies. Bored in his country house in Normandy? He takes up killing flies (like, a lot of flies) and feeding them to spiders who then grow obese. Chirping birds pecking at his windows? He spends the day setting up album covers in the sills to scare 'em away. Rather than regularly suffer embarrassing failures and awkward moments — the sort of stuff he'd mine for a considerable amount of humor in the past — he has to go looking for these things, and so the anecdotes feel forced, even when they're funny. His best one, "The Smoking Section," is an 83-page diary-style account of his genuine attempt to quit smoking in Tokyo. And, of course, there's his already-classic story about the Stadium Pal, an external catheter that's marketed to sports fans (he uses it on an overbooked airplane and in a tiny bookstore). Yes, it's all well-written, but hardcore Sedaris fans will be sorely disappointed by the lack of laugh-out-louders. Surely he's got an unused Rooster story somewhere up his sleeve?

—Tami Fertig