May 23, 2004

Books in Brief: Nonfiction

EMORIES OF WORLD WAR II
Photographs From the Archives of The Associated Press.
Abrams, $40.
The harsh black-and-white images in ''Memories of World War II'' hauntingly depict the horrific global struggle that cost millions of lives and transformed the geopolitics of the 20th century. The famous images are all here: Douglas MacArthur triumphantly striding through the surf in the Philippines; an intense Dwight D. Eisenhower giving last-minute words of encouragement to camouflage-painted American paratroopers before D-Day; and, of course, Joe Rosenthal's iconic shot of marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima. But it is the less heroic photographs that are the most moving, like those of an anguished Polish girl in a field mourning her bloodied sister, killed by German machine-gun fire; a Frenchman's face, etched in a tearful grimace, as he watches France's historic regimental flags being carried through the streets of Marseille on their way to Algeria for safekeeping; two dead marines lying in the soft volcanic ash of Iwo Jima. Each photograph is accompanied by a succinct, informative description, and the volume contains an incisive foreword by former Senator Bob Dole, a veteran of the war, and an introduction by Walter Cronkite, a war correspondent in Europe.
CHRIS PATSILELIS

THE RADIOACTIVE BOY SCOUT
The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear Reactor.
By Ken Silverstein.
Random House, $22.95.
As a technology-obsessed, socially awkward teenager in the 1990's, David Hahn was a throwback. Rather than hacking computers, Hahn dabbled in chemistry, brewing up hair dyes, chlorine gas and nitroglycerin. His parents, divorced and self-absorbed, exerted little control over his risky hobby; his father's idea of discipline was to persuade him to join the Boy Scouts. As Ken Silverstein, a reporter for The Los Angeles Times, writes, David found that he loved camping, and he became even more absorbed by earning his merit badge in atomic energy. After satisfying the badge's simple requirements, David eventually decided to build a nuclear reactor in his backyard potting shed. Guided by a list of commercial sources for radioactive materials -- helpfully provided by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- he set out on a mad scavenger hunt for the world's most dangerous elements, finding them in gas-lantern mantles, smoke detectors and night-vision scopes. ''The Radioactive Boy Scout'' portrays a boy in the grip of scientific obsession. David -- ''Glow Boy'' to the kids at school -- forged a neutron gun from a block of lead, scanned the aisles of antique stores with his Geiger counter in search of radium-painted clocks and appeared at a local hospital, beatifically dressed in scouting shorts and kerchief, to borrow chemicals under false pretenses. The quest exposed David to grave dangers, of course, given that his idea of safety involved donning a borrowed lead apron and scrawling ''CAUSHON'' (he was better at science than spelling) on the wall of the potting shed. But his enthusiasm is so charming, and the rest of his life so grim, that it is hard not to hope, against one's better judgment, that he pulls his project off.
MARK ESSIG

HUMANISM AND DEMOCRATIC CRITICISM
By Edward W. Said.
Columbia University, $19.95.
In ''Humanism and Democratic Criticism,'' Edward Said writes an impassioned apologia for a cosmopolitan, playful and rigorously inquisitive brand of humanist practice. Along the way, he wrestles with the shadows of T. S. Eliot and Allan Bloom, among others, whose elitist humanism is a slap in the face to the secular democratic criticism Said champions. If Said, who died last year, also fights off the philosophical incursions of Claude LŽvi-Strauss and Michel Foucault -- thinkers who provided the vital building blocks for his groundbreaking book, ''Orientalism'' (1978) -- it is because he rejects their apparent scorn for the humanist faith in the power of men and women to effect change. ''Humanistic ideals of liberty and learning still supply most disadvantaged people with the energy to resist unjust war and military occupation,'' Said writes, ''and to try to overturn despotism and tyranny.'' As the widely acknowledged father of postcolonial studies, Said has inspired a wave of interest in the study of cultural difference. His appeal to a common repertory of humanistic ideals in ''Humanism and Democratic Criticism'' consequently might be mistaken for a deathbed confession of sorts, like that of the atheist who finds God at the 11th hour. But Said's longstanding determination to trace the shifting outlines of a shared human history rather than to document the antinomian clash of civilizations was always, for him, the first and last duty of the humanist and critic.
LAURA CIOLKOWSKI

CANDYFREAK
A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America.
By Steve Almond.
Algonquin, $21.95.
Given that he is in his mid-30's, Steve Almond was not around to try the Vegetable Sandwich, a slab of chocolate-covered dehydrated vegetables that was introduced -- and discontinued -- in the 1920's. But in ''Candyfreak,'' he looks at modern-day American-manufactured candy. He tours a cluster of small candy companies (the ''Big Three'' -- Hershey's, Mars, and NestlŽ -- are so secretive that no one has been allowed to visit their factories in years). He describes the minutiae of flavors and textures of the candy bars company owners ply him with, but the most interesting parts of the book concern the economics of candy. The factories Almond, a fiction writer, visits are regional operations that count on devotion and name recognition within their home states to stay afloat. Most smaller candy businesses can't afford the high slotting fee it takes to get their products placed on supermarket shelves, which explains why Snickers and M&M's dominate checkout lines. Some turn a profit by making nutrition bars that diet-food companies secretly subcontract. Almond's account of his travels is interspersed with sharp rants about how his obsessive consumption of gummi bears, peanut butter cups and the like (every day of his life, or so he claims, he has eaten a piece of candy) eased him through a series of coming-of-age crises involving girls, self-hatred and sibling rivalry. More seriously, he attempts to draw ''a link between my personal nostalgia and the cultural yearning for a simpler age.'' But for the most part, Almond goes at the subject as if he were a giddy 5-year-old, creating an entertaining book full of repeatable tidbits about the candy industry.
KATE JACOBS

HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED
The Tangled Roots of American Jazz, Blues, Rock, and Country Music.
By Gene Santoro.
Oxford University, $32.
Writers on pop music often feel a need to quote writers like Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin to prove their chops as intellectuals. Fortunately, Gene Santoro, the jazz and popular music critic for The Nation, gets it out of his system in one essay in his otherwise highly readable collection, ''Highway 61 Revisited.'' At its best, the writing here is lively and insightful, describing the aerobatics of a Louis Armstrong solo or the death's-head rasp of Miles Davis's voice. There are plenty of shopworn anecdotes, like Bob Dylan going electric at the Newport Folk Music Festival in 1965, but Santoro's pleasure in the music always shines through.
ERIC P. NASH

PAUL VOLCKER
The Making of a Financial Legend.
By Joseph B. Treaster.
Wiley, $27.95.
It may be hard to remember that the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board can be reviled as well as revered. But witness the tenure of Paul Volcker, Alan Greenspan's predecessor, whose tough economic policies halted the runaway inflation that staggered the American economy in the late 1970's and early 80's. Even so, Volcker's engineering of ever higher interest rates cost millions of Americans their jobs. (Embittered Democrats would include President Jimmy Carter among the victims.) In ''Paul Volcker: The Making of a Financial Legend,'' Joseph B. Treaster, a financial reporter for The New York Times, has written something of a mash note to the retired Fed chairman, a slim biography that lauds Volcker's steadfastness in applying the economic shock therapy that laid the groundwork for the boom years in the 1990's. Treaster offers little in the way of new policy history; William Greider's ''Secrets of the Temple'' (1988) provides a much more comprehensive and skeptical account of Volcker's tenure at the Fed. Where Treaster does break ground is in his personal portrait. Volcker could appear insensitive in public, but Treaster enters into his family life as well; particularly touching is Volcker's relationship with his son, who has cerebral palsy.Treaster's depiction of Volcker's honesty and resilience highlights some attributes that American policy makers should keep in mind as the Greenspan era draws to a close.
ALEXANDRA STARR