Children of Jihad: A Young American’s Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East, Jared Cohen, ’04; Gotham Books, $25.
“We are not crazy people, we are not terrorists; we are not represented by the mullahs,” says a young Iranian woman who promises to wise up Rhodes scholar Cohen as he visits Iran. Cohen met under-30s who love American culture, despise the repressive Islamic Republic, and aren’t hostile to Jews. Cohen now works at the State Department.
The First Day of the Blitz, PETER STANSKY; Yale University Press, $24.
On September 7, 1940, a London family who had just sat down for tea looked up at the massed German airplanes above and wondered about "all those little bright things" underneath them: the first bombs of a modern urban-terror campaign. History professor emeritus Stansky vividly documents the Blitz and its galvanizing effect on the British war effort.
The Victory Gardens of Brooklyn, MERRILL JOAN GERBER, Gr '63; Syracuse U. Press (Library of Modern Jewish Literature), $24.95.
Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Polish immigrant Rachel and her three daughters sort out the conflicts that arise when Old World values clash with New World complications. Rich in historical detail and sometimes graphically intimate (Rachel works as a midwife; disease stalks everyone in this pre-antibiotic era), the book is a prequel companion to Stegner fellow Gerber's 1992 novel, The Kingdom of Brooklyn.
The Tyranny of the Market: Why You Can't Always Get What You Want, JOEL WALDFOGEL, MA '85, PhD '90; Harvard U. Press, $35.
Markets are supposed to satisfy minority tastes in ways that governmental "majority rules" decisions cannot. Yet Wharton School professor Waldfogel, drawing on examples such as Hispanic broadcasting and orphan drugs, points out how large markets of minority-taste consumers still can be shortchanged if the consumers are not concentrated within a population.
Brand NFL: Making and Selling America's Favorite Sport, MICHAEL ORIARD, PhD '76; U. of North Carolina Press, $29.95.
An English professor at Oregon State and a former lineman with the Kansas City Chiefs, Oriard describes how football has been transformed since the 1980s. The Super Bowl, ESPN and intense marketing have recast the sport as a commercial juggernaut.
Tap Dancing on the Roof: Sijo (Poems), LINDA SUE PARK, '81, illustrated by Istvan Banyai; Clarion Books, $16.
Rather like haiku, the Korean verse form called sijo has a fixed number of syllables. Park rounds up everyday pleasures and uncommon metaphors for these poems, as when she casts Lightning as a photographer and Thunder as one who "hates having his picture taken, so he always gets there late." Park also wrote the opening chapter of Click (Scholastic, $16.99), for which 10 well-known children's authors each write a chapter. The book—wherein two children decipher the legacy of their photojournalist grandfather—benefits Amnesty International.
