Reviewed by Chelsea A. Kerrington

In Murder of a Medici Princess, Caroline Murphy describes the spirited but all-too-brief life of Renaissance princess, Isabella de’ Medici.

The second daughter of Duke Cosimo I, ruler of sixteenth-century Florence and Tuscany, and Eleonora da Toledo, Isabella lived a vivacious life more reminiscent of a modern-day celebrity than of one restricted by archaic Florentine gender-based roles and royal rigidities.

In her study, Murphy celebrates Isabella’s charisma by sharing intimate details of the princess’ family-life, providing readers with a true sense of character that goes beyond strict ‘historical basis.’

As Murphy demonstrates, Isabella’s adventurous nature and blatant flouting of the era’s gender expectations (coupled with her unique beauty and a feminine sweetness) made her the focus of both the Medici court and her father’s affections.

Isabella was Cosimo’s second daughter (his first girl had died at the age of six) and she was quick to receive her father’s undivided attention, affection, and protection, as Cosimo became intent on keeping his favorite daughter happy and safe.

Through historical records and epistolary correspondence between court secretaries, the childrens' caregivers and Isabella and her siblings, Murphy tells the collective story of the Medici family with great detail, smoothly weaving her own speculations and interpretations with the fabric of historical fact – this book that reads as much a dramatic novel as it does a historical biography.

The ornate family residences in Florence and Tuscany provide rich backdrops for Murphy’s narrative, and the author describes Isabella’s familial relationships in great depth while artfully acknowledging the rumors that would surface regarding the unusual closeness between the princess and her father (as well as between her and her younger brother, Giovanni). However, to Murphy’s great credit, she does not dwell on this part of the story, instead leaving readers alone to draw their own conclusions.

The princess’ life was one of turmoil, adventure and bold self-expression, and Murphy is able to capture this in an engrossing style. In one particularly memorable passage (following Cosimo’s death in 1574), Murphy writes of Isabella’s deteriorating security and independence as her moody older brother, Francesco, took the reins.

Suddenly, Isabella found herself in a very different world than the one presided over by her father, who had been a lover of aesthetic beauty and ruler committed to the plight of the people.

To the contrary, her brother harbored a deep disregard for Florence and Tuscany and this caused anti-Medici sentiments to swell. And Francesco would not be swayed. Power-mad, he authorized the murder of Isabella’s sister-in-law and close confidant, Leonora, citing treason and extramarital affairs. Soon after, Isabella would be murdered for the very same reasons.

In Murder of a Medici Princess, Murphy takes her readers on a compelling ride through the dark allure of Renaissance Italy, taking us deep into the drama of the Medici hierarchy in a story that brims with both beauty and corruption. In the end, it’s a story that illuminates a hidden world that likely defines many a royal family past and present.

Reviewed by Miranda Orso

Behind the eyes, minds and pens of the twenty-seven contributors of this captivating book dwells a heightened sense of being memorialized in the flawless beauty of the written word. 

As readers will immediately note, even though most of the authors collected here are without sight, they are not without and an interesting story or poem meant to help the public better understand blindness.

For example, “Bud and Me Around the World,” written by Sanford Rosenthal, paints a picture of what everyday life is like with a guide dog – offering readers a real chance to explore the challenges that this disability presents.

And just what kinds of “problems” might blind people encounter because their eyes are attached to the eyes of a dog? Apparently, despite clearly written laws, it is generally an uneducated public that causes the most trouble for the visually impaired; as Rosenthal writes:

“There were many places where we were refused accommodations.  Apartments suddenly became occupied when we arrived.  Sometimes they blatantly stated the obvious; one of us was a dog.  It didn’t matter to them that the law was on my side. ” (At page 36).

Stepping further into the collection, Albert Cooper’s “Oh, Thank God I’m Blind” serves as an interesting cry for society to begin to recognize people with disabilities and their vital role in the American workplace. 

Specifically, Cooper asks that lawmakers, corporations and the general public acknowledge people with disabilities as important, productive members of the community, saying [that] “It takes a great deal of strength to overcome biased attitudes against individuals who may appear to be different, but every now and then we need to take a reality check and stand up for what is right.” (At page 109). 

In sum, this book is filled with intimate stories and poems that awaken the mind and spirit of the reader. Simply, what is most striking about Behind Our Eyes is the amount of courage and conviction required to tell these stories – each of the contributors inspiring us to look beyond preconceived notions of ‘disability.’

Basically, Behind Our Eyes forces each of us to confront the harsh reality that says that life is cruel. Bluntly, a disability can strike anyone at any time – blindness taking no discretion as to who it affects and when.

However, the writers of this book teach us that behind every disability is still a strong- willed human spirit with the ability to persevere. As Rosenthal and his co-writers demonstrate, with the help of aides, canes and guide dogs, a dark world can be permanently illuminated and a quality life savored. 

Reviewed by Frank Aiello

In Good Governance, the authors begin their text with a caustic statement by Peter Drucker – that “[a]ll nonprofit boards have one thing in common. They do not work.” 

However, as many commentators in this area have previously noted, the higher standards imposed by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (now seen as a model for nonprofit and for-profit entities alike) are reasons enough for nonprofit board members to implement effective corporate controls and oversight policies over all financial transactions.

Readers will note that the spectacular oversight failures Sarbanes-Oxley was created to protect against are at the very core of the collapse and subsequent bankruptcy of the nonprofit Allegheny Health Education and Research Foundation health system.

The Allegheny Health debacle is especially instructive of a board’s exposure for failure to provide effective financial oversight, since it resulted in, among other issues, allegations by the Securities and Exchange Commission that two senior officers had not only overstated a subsidiary’s net income on its annual financial statement but had also failed to provide “continuing disclosure” in financial secondary markets.

Given the possibility of such grave consequences, Laughlin’s and Andringa’s text offers a primary ‘nuts & bolts’ roadmap detailing the written policies to be followed by a working board in order to satisfy the principles of effective practice for charitable organizations as mandated by the Advisory Committee on Self-Regulation of the Charitable Sector. In addition, the authors provide a sample template of a Board Policy Manual, which they consider to be the first prerequisite of an effective governance management system.

Good Governance provides a one-of-a-kind manual outlining in cogent and practical detail how non-profit governing boards should go about their business. Since the information in this book provides a snapshot of the typical non-profit’s structure, it should be required reading for non-profit administrators and for the members of the volunteer boards charged with ‘steering the ship.’ 

By John Aiello

Health care is topic one on everybody’s plate. How do you afford to see the doctor? How do you cope with the astronomical rise in the cost of medical insurance? How do you choose a prescription plan if you’re senior? And probably most important of all – how do you find a doctor who is going to provide the kind of care that is right for you and your family?

Indeed, these are all good questions which do not enjoy the benefit of formulaic answers. So…just where does that leave the consumer?

How to Get the Health Care You Want, written by patient advocate Laura Casey, is a good place to start, a stepping-stone across a torrent of information that gives us a well-designed road map from which to begin our journey.

How to Get the Health Care You Want is about navigating through the overly-confusing labyrinth of the American health care system, a book centered on how the patient/consumer should go about developing successful relationships with their doctors (and related care-givers).

Basically, those select patients who do not dread going to the doctor are good communicators who see that the impact of medical treatment is lessened by knowing what to expect. Accordingly, each of us needs to become comfortable with asking doctors questions as we seek to understand the things which are occurring to our bodies.

And that’s where Casey’s book excels, outlining how patients can obtain the information they need in order to make informed and sensible decisions about their health care.

And the author writes:

“Never hesitate to advocate and communicate about everything. Communicate with your caregivers so they know and understand what hurts, what is important to you, why you are seeking care, how you feel, that you are scared, confident, happy, and that blueberries don’t taste good anymore. Whatever you believe is important information for you to communicate with your healthcare providers. What the provider does with that information will tell you whether or not this provider is a good match for you….” (At Chapter 2).

It all comes down to realizing that the doctor-patient relationship is about you. Yes, you indeed have a say in the process. Too many times, people enter a physician’s office afraid to ask questions, afraid to look stupid or seem pushy. And this is absolutely the wrong approach for patients (and one of the main reasons so many people dread the idea of doctor visits).

The simple truth remains that doctors are not deities. To the contrary, they can be approached in the same fashion you approach any other professional you are hiring to provide a service (in this case, the difference is that service is directed at healing a breakdown within your body).

In sum, the best aspect of Casey’s How to Get the Health Care You Want is found in the way she teaches her readers that, in order to get the kind of medical care you want, you must take the point and become a less passive patient. For just as in every other business and personal relationship, the best doctor-patient relations are forged through dialogue, awareness and mutual understanding.

Recommended to all consumers as a general reference text. Simply, this book deserves to be in our homes because it strives to teach us to not be afraid to tailor our medical care to our own specific needs. In addition, anyone with kids will find this an indispensable guide, stressing the fact that parents need to ask the right kinds of questions to insure their children receive the right kind of medical attention.

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Reviewed by Cathy Houts

I am an educated woman, and, typically, I am not supposed to be addicted to a television show. Yet, every single Sunday, I find myself carefully planning my time so that I will be sitting in front of the television at 9 p.m. anticipating the next installment of Desperate Housewives.

Truthfully, I have spent hours analyzing my need to see this show every week.At first I thought it was the genre that was attracting me, but what exactly is the genre? Soap opera, murder mystery, comedy, or drama?

So imagine my delight when I discovered that this is in fact a prominent topic in the essays that make up the new I.B. Tauris release, Reading Desperate Housewives: Beyond the White Picket Fence.

For example, in the essay titled Murder and Mayhem on Wisteria Lane:A study of genre and cultural context in Desperate Housewives, the editors include a well-developed discussion of dramedy:

“Dramedies blend the comic and the serious in different ways; some separate comic and dramatic storylines, while others combine drama and comedy together.”

(Page 131)

The term dramedy first appeared in the 1980’s to describe a wave of genre-blurring television series such as Moonlighting and The Wonder Years. It used not only elements of drama and comedy, but also employed idiosyncrasy, exaggeration, absurdity and incongruity to drive a point home.

In the last decade, the genre has grown to include not only hour-long series, but also half-hour sitcoms with more serious plots which have not been shot in front of an audience.Examples of half-hour versions o dramedies include M*A*S*H, and Hooperman.As far as commercial appeal, the hour-long series have generally fared better, spawning a list of current hits that include Desperate Housewives, Boston Legal and Sex and the City.

“As Cherry [creator Marc Cherry] acknowledges, the series uses dramatic and comedic elements to reveal the tragedy beneath ‘the antics these women face’.Bree Van de Kamp provides the best example of this serio/comic blend.Her obsessive/compulsive housekeeping, though comic, has a serious origin.She tells Zach that when her mother was killed by a car, she washed away the blood.It made her feel better. So, while Bree’s domestic achievements may be funny by virtue of their excessiveness, their effects are rooted in tragedy.”

(Page 132)

So then…perhaps it is the genre that draws me to the television week after week. Still, genre alone can’t be the only thing that keeps me watching, waiting, wondering, and wanting more.Thus, it must also be the shapely assemblage of characters, too.

As long-time viewers of Housewives know, the women of Wisteria Lane are each an icon of post-feminist America.Specifically, Gabrielle, the Nuevo-riche trophy wife, is bored by her marriage and seeks satisfaction outside the bonds of marriage; Susan, the attractive divorce’, longs for someone to take care of her; Bree, the seemingly perfect wife and mother, serves as a throw back to June Cleaver; Lynette Scalvo is a high-powered business woman who gave it all up to be a stay-at-home mom; and lastly, Edie Britt – the single independent one seems to have it all…or does she?

“The secrets of the four main protagonists are not as immediately shocking as Mary Alice’s. Materialistic Gabrielle is a ‘drowning woman’ and John, her teenage lover, is ‘her life-raft.’ Her secret is that, although she has everything she wants, she must ‘have been wanting all the wrong things’.For Lynette is the façade of being the perfect stay-at-home mom.When she meets old colleague Natalie Kline, in the supermarket, who asks ‘Don’t you just love being a mom?’ she responds ‘as she always does,’ narrates Mary Alice, with the lie, ‘it’s the best job I’ve ever had.’ Under the immaculate surface of Bree’s home, there is a disastrous marriage to a man secretly needing to express sexual dominance, and highly problematic relationships with her children.Behind Susan’s door is emotional chaos, a messy divorce and an inappropriate dependency on her teenage daughter.”

(Page 37)

This blend of characters (their relationships and motivations), coupled with style and plot (and everything that happens behind closed doors) is what keeps America (and certainly this reviewer) watching.

And actually, that’s also the beauty of Reading Desperate Housewives – the book serving as a vehicle that allows for fans of the series to examine themselves in the context of the characters that populate the show, examining how and why this dysfunctional group of screen faces has come to captivate the American consciousness.

And when writers are writing about a television series, the best they can hope to accomplish is to open up our eyes and force us to ponder exactly why we watch. In this regard, Reading Desperate Housewives is an absolute success.

Recommended to all viewers who follow the series. Further recommended to libraries in both the public and private sectors as a long-term reference. Like the Deadwood Reader also published by Tauris and reviewed below, this volume helps to define the art and ideals of the culture. ~The Editor

 Cathy Houts resides in Northern California, and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre from Santa Clara University and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Design from Boston University. From 1988 through 2001, Houts worked on staff at College of the Siskiyous in Weed, California, teaching theater and directing for the stage (in addition to serving as Resident Designer at C.O.S. for nearly a decade). Houts has also worked at many regional theatres throughout the United States during the past 25 years. Reach her through The Electric Review.

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Reviewed By Frank Aiello

“More than providing services to ‘em, taking people’s money is what makes organizations real, be they formal, informal, or temporary.”

E.B. Farnum, Mayor of Deadwood.

Like David Chase, who created The Sopranos, David Milch uses Deadwood as both a vehicle to exorcize his personal demons and a device to expose the random hypocrisy which allows America to conduct business as usual – a process novelist James Ellroy has termed "mass-market nostalgia.”

Near the end of Deadwood’s third season, while beingqueried about his war service by robber-baron George Hearst’s unnamed, grizzled henchmen, Al Swearengen, a proud member of the "69th New York" and proprietor of the Gem Saloon (Deadwood’s first bagnio and commercial establishment), caustically replies that he spent his time during the war cutting throats as a member of the "Cocksucker’s Brigade" and "commander of the all-whore detachment.”Just like Milch in real life, Swearengen ardently rejects the myth of American expansion in order to expose imperialism for the historical fraud it truly is.

In one scene, Swearengen stands on the Gem’s balcony and overlooks the camp, suddenly recognizing that, with the arrival of Cy Tolliver and Francis Wolcott (Hearst’s front man and a murderer of defenseless whores), his world will soon be castrated -- eviscerated by unseen and malevolent forces symbolized by the construction of the first telegraph poles. As he watches the first poles being erected, Swearengen disdainfully utters: "Messages from invisible sources, some people think of as progress."

In this text, David Lavery, Chair in Film and TV at London’s Brunel University, has complied a diverse series of essays which investigate the characters and themes which populate the landscape of Deadwood’s first two seasons.

One of the most insightful of these essays is titled "Divining the Celestials," written by Paul Wright and Hailin Zhou and exploring the use of the Chinese subculture in the series. Wright and Zhou begin the piece with a quote from Ellroy’s novel, American Tabloid, acknowledging that "[o]ur continuing narrative is blurred past truth and fiction. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight."

It is interesting to note that, like Ellroy, Milch intuitively understand that history is not only created by world leaders, but also by the legions of bottom feeders our leaders generally ignore; and the authors of “Divining the Celestials write:

"Deadwood, both as a historical stage and in the unflinchingly Hobbesian imagination of show-runner Milch, offers us a fascinating, disquieting glimpse into the cauldron of civic ambition, predatory avarice, Machiavellian statesmanship and unrepentant vulgarity all of which fueled the American project to transform an untamed frontier into a domesticated heartland...Milch’s series unapologetically explores the darkest aspects of American expansionism and economic adventurism." [pp. 157-158.]

If any episode symbolizes Milch’s descent into America’s heart of darkness, it is the final episode of Season One, entitled "Sold Under Sin.” This episode comes to chronicle the evolution of Wu – charting the Celestial and symbolic severance of his ties to his birthland and his coming of age as a citizen of Deadwood (culminating as Swearengen’s counterpart in "Chink Alley).”

Like Swearengen, Cy Tolliver and George Hearst, Wu "sees the fuckin’ possibilities of things" ("Plague" 1.6); still, Swearengen constantly warns Wu to avoid being a sucker, to avoid believing that any form of justice or fairness exists: "Where did you start thinking that every wrong had a remedy, Wu? Did you come to camp for justice or to make your fuckin’ way?"

In the scene which closes Season Two, Wu answers Swearengen after having massacred Hearst’s Celestial, Lee, while Lee was in the throes of an opium dream. In turn, Wright and Zhou’s analysis of the aftermath is noteworthy:

"When Wu emerges victoriously from the carnage, he cuts off his queue in a public demonstration of defiance, autonomy, and, ‘according to Al,’ his bloody purchase of an authentically American identity. Holding up what remains of his braid, Wu shares his triumph with his mentor, who presides not only over the marriage of Deadwood to the Dakotas, but of Wu and the Chinese to the USA:

Mr. Wu: (his braid in hand): Wu! America!

Al: That’ll hold you tight to her tit!

Mr. Wu (holding crossed fingers up to Al): Heng dai! [loosely translated: "Brotherhood!"]

In a moment that is imagined as both birth and death, as nursing at the bosom of America and sacrificing at the alter of her cult of success, Wu has murdered both his rival and, symbolically, his Chinese identity…a primal bargain with assimilation..."

This series makes it clear that both Hearst’s empire and the industrial capitalism require the game to be rigged in order to “secur[e] the color." Further, through George Hearst, Milch has artfully synthesized Deadwood’s marriage of fantasy and reality into one character. Cornishmen, celestials, the whores of Chink Alley who service his workers – they are all necessary sacrifices unto Hearst’s vision - and his version – of American destiny.

In fleshing out a Nineteenth century version of extreme corporate success, Milch seems to follow Ellroy’s Hobbesian dictum to "embrace bad men and the price they paid to secretly define their time". Or, in the dark and caustic words of Al Swearengen: "Every fuckin’ beatin’ I’m grateful for. Every fuckin’ one of them. Get all the trust beat outta you. And you know what the fuckin’ world is."

In these mad times amid a world over-torn in strife, these are words to live by.

By John Aiello

This time of year, diet books abound! As summer takes hold, every other author seems to have the answer to weight loss and better health contained in their latest release. Yet, in reality, most of these books only serve as rehashes of old ideas that offer little substantive help.

But not so with Inflammation Free by Monica Reinagel (one-time Managing Editor for Medical Digest): This book simply crackles with a wealth of new information that should enlighten even the most skeptical of readers.

Science has established that the damage inflammation causes within arteries and cell systems can contribute significantly to myriad disorders, including heart disease, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, osteoporosis and some cancers -- conditions that affect tens of millions of people throughout the world causing untold hours of suffering.

Like with so many other forms of disease, we have identified inflammation as a deep-rooted problem -- but what’s the answer to controlling or mitigating its affects? According to Reinagel’s in depth treatise, the answer to reducing the incidence of inflammation comes in regulating the things you put in your body. Read: Diet. Diet. Diet.

Inflammation Free explains in detail the role inflammation plays in disease and how it adversely acts upon the body. After providing this necessary background, Reinagel sets forth a tangible dietary plan that the general consumer can use with ease -- plotting out what foods are needed for proper metabolic balance and then including several potent recipes to show the direction one should be going in.

According to Reinagel, things like fish oil and certain aromatic spices (ginger, cayenne, turmeric) can significantly reduce the amount of inflammation in the body and lessen the pain common with conditions like arthritis. However, rather than take these items in supplemental form, it is better for the over-all health of the body to ingest these properties naturally through the foods you consume.

The best option for success is to customize your inflammation free diet to your specific needs and tastes, carefully limiting fats and carbohydrates in sensible and sustainable ways. As with any diet, however, healthy dishes must be appealing or the dieter won’t last long on his regimen. To this end, Reinagel includes a variety of recipes that make it easy to be health-conscious while not sacrificing taste (things like avocado salsa, tomato crostini and ginger marinated tuna) bristle with flavor and serve to make eating an event rather than dietary drudgery.

The never-ending battle against weight and its impact on the body has plagued man for centuries (at times shortening his life-span and the quality of his day-to-day existence). However, advances in science have recently given us the opportunity to know what is happening within ourselves, giving us the opportunity to do things that will result in less damage to these delicate systems of blood and bone.

In short, it all begins with education. And Monica Reinagel’s Inflammation Free is a $25 resource that brings the classroom right into your home.

Recommended to the general reader, and especially to anyone fighting against diabetes, hypertension or heart disease. Original without the fake flash, Inflammation Free is a skillful blend of scientific theory and common-sense application - a smart resource with the health of the reader in mind. Should you step out and give any new diet strategy a try this year, Reinagel’s should be the one.

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 ECOLOGY OF BEING. Peter White. All In All Books.

Reviewed By Frank Aiello

By his own admission, Peter White gained entry into America’s power elite in ultra-quick fashion – initially as a junior member of a legal team working on the Watergate case, then as the government’s chief counsel in a major antitrust suit against the petroleum industry; and finally, as a partner in Fulbright & Jaworski (once again paired with Leon Jaworski).

However, somewhere along that path, White also came face to face with his own mortality as his perfect existence fell apart at the seams, falling into an abyss of alcoholism and multiple divorces. At one point in the text, White refers to an "irresponsible personality" caught in the "cyclical interplay of fear and greed" -- terms which seem to describe his own secret life of binges and self-loathing.

Although White chronicles his intensely personal passage in chapters with pithy titles such as "Human Systems," "Conversation," "Community,” and "The Practice of Intended Uses," he could have just as easily used epigrams or some other poetic form of expression (since his unspoken spiritual mentors might fall in line with Heraclitus, or the Cold Mountain poet, Han Shan).

In his treatise, White not only speaks eloquently of the pressures of an inhuman and inhumane business culture which destroys those at the top as well as the bottom, but also writes of a degradation of moral values now endemic in these mega-systems of Capitalism.

Moreover, White deftly acknowledges the doctrine central to Buddhist thought: This idea that suffering exists to be conquered – the only pathway to true enlightenment. Or as White states in his final chapter: "Humanity may die in cataclysm or it may live in spiritual ascension, fully accepting the end of days. Which will it be?"

Recommended to libraries in both the public sector and at the college level: This is a unique book from a unique man who has been at the top of both the business and political worlds, only to come to find that the money and fame are hollow. The lesson: Our salvation comes through many solitary and internal journeys. ~ The Editor.

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Reviewed By Frank Aiello

Shlomo Ben-Ami has been Israel’s Ambassador to Spain, a member of the Knesset, a participant in the 2000 Camp David Summit and Minister of Public Security (before ultimately becoming its Minister of Foreign Affairs).

Given these lofty credentials, Ben-Ami’s bitter criticism of Israel’s Zionist leaders and their conduct against the Arab populace is both noteworthy and thought provoking, and the story he paints in Scars Of War will no doubt captivate the most stoic of readers. Speaking here to the founding fathers of Zionism, Ben-Ami states:

"‘Zion’ however, was not an empty land waiting only for the Jews to claim and possess it. When David Ben-Gurion, the future founder of the State of Israel and its first prime minister arrived in Palestine in 1906, the country consisted of 700,000 inhabitants, 55,000 of which were Jews, and only 550 could be classified as Zionist pioneers . The bulk of the Jewish population was made up of religious communities that did not see themselves as political Zionists. " {p. 2.]

Although Zionism originally espoused principles of self-help based on "Jewish labour" without having to resort to the exploitation of the local population, Ben-Ami’s unique perspective traces the movement to its genesis, dissecting its layers with a multi-dimensional precision:

"Zionism was also a movement of conquest, colonisation and settlement in the service of a just and righteous but also self-indulgent national cause. An enterprise of national liberation and human emancipation that was forced to use the tools of colonial penetration, it was a schizophrenic movement, which suffered from an irreconcilable incongruity between its liberating message and the offensive practices it used to advance it." [p. 3.]

Israel’s nationalist policies and colonial aspirations became readily apparent after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War (June 1967), when, as Menachim Begin noted, ‘it was decided not to decide’ issues relating to future Palestinian autonomy that could ultimately give birth to a Palestinian state. However, this decision by Israel’s leaders ‘not to decide’ would bring disastrous consequences; Ben-Ami writes:

"Israel’s sin in the aftermath of the war lay in her total misunderstanding of the conditions that were created by her victory. She developed, therefore, no reasonable strategy as to best turn her military supremacy into a political tool and use her exploits in the battlefield in order to change the nature of her relations with the Arab. world. Instead, she fell back conveniently on the politics of immobilism and faits accomplis. There was no Israeli peace initiative, and there was no credible and thoughtful response to the initiatives coming from others. In fact, the first to understand the meaning of the new conditions created by the war were, surprisingly, the local Palestinian leaders throughout the West Bank and, conspicuously, also junior Israeli officials... [S]hocked by the rout of the Arab armies, the Palestinian local leaders were nevertheless quick to get back on their feet, assume responsibility for the destiny of their people and plead for a peace deal with Israel. [pp. 125-126.] . . . Israel was wrong to assume that she could acquire new lands and have peace at the same time. But the Arabs had an illusion of their own: to get back their territories without offering peace in return. Nasser’s persistent search for a national and Pan-Arab purpose, and the belief of the Ba’ath in Syria that only through direct confrontation with Israel could the lost territories be recovered and the problem of Palestine be settled, fed the cycle of Arab rejectionism and Israeli inertia. The Israelis’ hubris and the Arabs’ sense of humiliation proved to be a fatal combination. " [p. 130.]

In Scars Of War Ben-Ami does not pretend to be tactful in describing either Israeli or Arab leaders; instead, he opts to offer unflattering portraits of both.

Of Golda Meir, Ben-Ami writes:

"She was a self-righteous, intransigent and stubborn iron lady who turned political inaction and righteousness into a system of government. Her unwillingness to question the position of the complacent military, and the support she received from her close relations with President Nixon, who was more concerned with the task of curbing the Soviet penetration into the Middle East than with the need to advance an Arab-Israeli peace, made her premiership one of an almost inevitable decline toward war." [pp. 130-131.]

Of Gamal Abdel Nassar, Ben-Ami asserts:

"He would not accept a separate peace with Israel or the demilitarisation of the Sinai peninsula. Nassar simply would not consider peace on the basis of military defeat. His major concern at that point was not how to negotiate a reasonable compromise with Israel, but how to acquire sophisticated weapons from the Soviet Union in order to erase the impact of the 1967 defeat." [p. 132.]

And in describing Arafat during the period of the Oslo peace process, Ben-Ami notes:

"The expression ‘peace of the brave’ used ad nauseam by Arafat never convinced anyone, not even Rabin, that the commitments Arafat undertook were indeed irrevocable. Notwithstanding his pledge to renounce violence, he never really relinquished the terror card. It was precisely this that destroyed Rabin politically before he was destroyed physically by a Jewish zealot. It was that same terror card that would also bring about the defeat of Shimon Peres and the ascendancy of Benjamin Netanyahu in the aftermath of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Arafat excelled in destroying his peace partners and in directly enhancing the prospects of the hard Right in Israel." [p. 213.]

In sum, Ben-Ami’s text is a remarkable study of this torn region of the world presented from an insider’s perspective. Here, Ben-Ami eloquently and forcefully tells of the failures of a government and its personalities, revealing the faces of the failures which ultimately gave rise to the ‘killing fields’ and the abattoir mentality that now typifies ‘business as usual’ in the Middle East.

As Ben-Ami himself stated in an interview with Yedioth Aharonoth:

"We have created a state, we have been admitted to the UN, we strive to have orderly relations with the international community, yet we still continue to behave as if we are a Yishuv. The entire peace enterprise of this government is aimed at leading the nation to opt, once and for all, between being a state or a Yishuv." [ p. 274.]

Recommended as either a primary teaching text in history or poli-science courses that seek to examine the evolution of the Middle East nations through their on-going conflicts. Scars Of War is noted for its impeccable writing and its enormous depth -- an authoritative and wide-reaching treatise that touches on many new perspectives. Further recommended to all libraries in both the public sector and at the college level as a general reference text.

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Reviewed By Frank Aiello

The late Abraham Pais, himself a leading theoretical physicist, science writer and most importantly, friend and colleague to J. Robert Oppenheimer, opens his biography with lines by the poet, John Dryden:

And thin partitions do their bounds divide.

Pais’ text begins with the shocking revelation that, while engaged post graduate work at Goettingen (in the company of pioneers like Max Born who were exploring the newly discovered territory of quantum mechanics), Oppenheimer sought psychoanalysis for what he believed was schizophrenia. On another occasion during the same period, Oppenheimer reportedly crept under a cafe table in Goettingen and began barking like a dog. [p. 12.] Pais’ text also includes searing observations with regard to Oppenheimer’s private life (and especially about Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty, who Pais says was an alcoholic):

"Quite independently from her drinking, I have found Kitty the most despicable female I have ever known because of her cruelty . . . To an outsider like me, Oppenheimer’s family life looked like hell on earth. The worst of it all was that inevitably the two children had to suffer. I have seen how Kitty and Peter did not get along well and was surprised when Peter left home for good in his late teens and broke all contact with his mother. Toni, the daughter poor dear Toni ended by taking her own life." [p. 143.]

None of this anecdotal evidence, however insightful, can take away from Oppenheimer’s work in theoretical physics or his entry on the world stage heading the Los Alamos project in development of the atomic bomb. Although Oppenheimer had no apparent administrative skills, he was chosen by Colonel Leslie Groves as the scientific head of the then top secret Project Y in October, 1942. Pais spends only a few pages chronicling the Los Alamos project, but prophetically notes that when the first atomic bomb explosion occurred in 1945 near Alamogordo Air Force Base in a desolate area aptly known as Jornado del Muerto, Oppenheimer recalled a line from the Bhagavad-Gita: "I am become death, the shatterer of worlds."

Yet, the most informative portion of Pais’ text concerns the hearing before the Atomic Energy Commission that was convened to revoke Oppenheimer’s security clearance. This hearing began in December, 1953 and revolved in part around Oppenheimer’s reluctance (according to Edward Teller and others) to delay the development of the hydrogen bomb. Pais’ analysis, together with the summary of material provided by Robert P. Crease, provides a microscopic view into the post World War II world of fear-mongering and intellectual slander.

For instance, Crease notes that Teller was the government’s key witness against Oppenheimer and the only actual witness who approaching Oppenheimer’s scientific expertise. And Crease bluntly points out:

"Having been fortunate enough to have escaped Nazi Germany, Teller wrote in his Memoirs, ‘I had the obligation to do whatever I could to protect freedom.’ But he often interpreted ‘protect’ to mean stigmatizing colleagues who insufficiently shared his political enthusiasms. Philip Morrison, Robert Serber and Steven Weinberg were among the eminent U.S. physicists whose careers Teller denounced or otherwise tried to harm careers in retaliation for their political views." [p. 244.]

In the end, Pais believes that Oppenheimer’s real tragedy was not that he was at the epicenter of the Communist witch hunts of the 1950's, but instead, that he failed to achieve the lofty heights in physics that his early worked appeared to guarantee. As Pais’ wrote of his former colleague: "His tragedy was that he was almost a genius."

This text is recommended to all libraries in the public sector as a general reference title.

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Reviewed by Frank Aiello

Corruption as we know it began early in the American Labor Movement, epitomized by the bombing of the Los Angeles Times building in the early morning hours of October 1, 1910. The bombmasters were actually brothers (John and James McNamara) who would come to be hailed as innocent martyrs to labor’s cause by its highest-ranking czars, (including Samuel Gompers and Eugene Debs).

The bombing of The Times would come to be a watershed event, for even after the McNameras acknowledged their guilt, progressives such as Debs and Louis D. Brandeis continued to argue that the brothers were the victims of the great trusts and corporations that were quickly over-taking the American landscape. However, Fitch points out:

"The progressives’ defense would have been more effective if either of the McNamaras had actually been wage earners. [fn] John didn’t work on an office building, he worked in one: the Ironworkers’ Indianapolis headquarters, in the American Central Life Building. He provided his brother with a $1,000-a-month expense account —nearly $19,000 in today’s dollars. Most of it was spent on the union’s dynamite projects, but a lot went to his several mistresses. [fn]" [p.111]

Furthermore, as Fitch documents, terrorism was an accepted means of doing business in this new America: "[f]ar from being frantic gestures of desperation, the bombings were premised on cost-benefit analyses. Bombers justified their high fees on business grounds too: ‘Well, you know,’ explained one bomber, ‘it costs something to get the wind to blow the right way.’ " [p. 112]

As inferred by the title of this text, solidarity was definitely for sale in Chicago in 1905 when Con Shea led a "sympathy" strike for the alleged benefit of 17 garment workers against corporate giant Montgomery Wards (this after Shea himself had lobbied the local Teamsters Union to make such strikes illegal):

"Why first make sympathy strikes illegal and then carry one out ? One plausible reason was to make sure that genuine, freely given solidarity was legally impossible. That way, he could sell his ersatz brand. Employers want to know who can turn strikes on and off. To the extent that workers make their own decisions, Shea would have been superfluous." [p. 126]

Perhaps such collusion is the reason that the AFL-CIO have been opposed to progressive health care plans obtained in Germany, Great Britain and Canada decades ago (and the reason why employee health care benefits continue to erode on a daily basis). As an example, witness the Bush Administration’s push for "consumer-directed health care" — this bureaucratic gobblyspeak that really means that in the future all "laboring stiffs" will have to pay their own way.

Some of the richest material of Solidarity For Sale is found in Fitch’s chapter "Pension Fund Looting for Dummies," which details the looting of union pension funds by the Genovese crime family (a con that couldn’t be more timely to our current state of affairs):

"The point, of course, was to make it seem as if the properties weren’t overvalued. For this, it was necessary to reach out to ‘connected’ real estate appraisers. Alfio DiFranco, an Ozone Park Realtor and a Genovese associate, explained how the abandoned, decrepit buildings in central Brooklyn near the Holy Cross Cemetery would soon be worth even more millions than he was estimating: ‘Real estate in this general area is now coming into its own’ he explained in his report to the pension fund trustees, ‘with values excalaterating [sic] due to the unique structure of the subject.’ Satisfied by this analysis, the trustees asked no questions and bought the Brooklyn properties for over $3 million. The plan was to rehabilitate the buildings. But only four months after the purchase, one of the Brooklyn tenements, which was being used as a crack house, collapsed before its anticipated ‘excalateration’ in value. " [pp. 130-131]

To a jaundiced eye, the Genovese scheme bears little difference to the Bush Administration’s flooding the market with cheap money disguised as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans ear-marked for residential construction. In actuality, these loans only serve to artificially inflate the values of millions of suburban houses (as well as promoting a temporary swelling of the GDP). In turn, one must wonder how many of these bloated values have been transformed into "bundled securities" and purchased by the administrators of union pension plans throughout the country for the supposed security of the rank and file?...

As Fitch notes in his final chapter, "[r]epublics are best defended not by advanced missile systems, but by citizens who form common bonds. Without those felt ties —without solidarity— the pursuit of common interests is impossible." Accordingly, if the era of organized labor movements is indeed in its twilight, perhaps an apathetic rank and file has only itself to blame.

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© Frank Aiello. 2006. All rights reserved. Frank Aiello and The Electric Review.

Reviewed by Jacob Aiello

In Crawl Space, Edie Meidav follows up her critically acclaimed and masterfully constructed The Far Field, introducing the most unlikely of protagonists in a quest to excuse the wrongs of which he’s been accused.

In the story, Emile Poulquet is a war criminal, a former Vichy prefect responsible for deporting thousands of French Jews during the war; some fifty years later, he is finally standing trial for his crimes.

After fleeing incarceration in Paris, Emile returns to the land of his childhood to deliver his last will and confront the woman he blames for manipulating his sordid and haphazard life. Emile arrives incognito at the site of his prefecture only to find it over-run by Jewish refugees and international journalists attending a wartime reunion. Maneuvering among the survivors of those he had condemned during the war, he finds himself in the same situation as those refugees he’d displaced: hunted by the government and by his own haunting guilt.

The book’s title, intimating visions of Anne Frank tucked uncomfortably in her small attic, becomes ironic in its reference to Emile’s life in hiding. As a fugitive discovering old age, Emile must rely on the kindness and compassion of strangers to shelter and care for him. As time spirals, he straddles the divide between his need for anonymity and his desire to reveal himself (and the power he once held to the world around him). Despite his countless facades, Emile commands our complete attention -- maintaining a startling lack of pretense, completely at ease among the gypsies and runaways who adopt him as their own.

The way this character springs to life is a testament to the skill of its creator. Accordingly, Meidav writes with absolute authority, revealing the deep grays of the human condition, the overlapping of morality, demonstrating how the monsters of our history were not so much evil as weak.

Here, adrift in Emile’s world, the desire for mutual love and companionship equally inspires man’s greatest deeds and most horrific crimes. Finally, instead of arousing in us a dark vengeance or rage against him, we merely feel pity for Emile’s wretchedness (the distanced reflections of ourselves witnessed in his desperate motivations). In between these lines reads the message of a universal guilt: We are all culpable, and only distinguished by our degrees of regret.

As Meidav reaches the end of the path, there are no grand de Gaulle pronouncements, no terrifying Hitler proclamations. Instead, we find ourselves in the midst of many lost people trying to purge their physical and emotional childhood scars, all clinging to deluded versions of history in order to survive.

Historical. Riveting. Multidimensional in plot and scope - Crawl Space is a major event in fiction this year. Moreover, in addition to the splendid characters and vital depiction, this remains a story about each of us: An epilogue to the wars among the petty, this portrait of a place where people hide out among their overflowing skeletons as their crawl space quickly runs out of air.

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Jacob Aiello is an advanced student of literature at Portland State University. See the Fiction Corner for one of his original short stories.

Reviewed by Jacob Aiello

Summer is upon us, and like the home state of our esteemed President, ‘tis the season where everything becomes bigger. Blockbuster movies with big characters and big explosions (with some of them based on big books). And Painkiller, Will Staeger’s debut novel, is destined to become just one of those big books.

In it, a rogue Chinese general has concocted a conspiracy to impose nuclear war upon America, while only a retired CIA officer and his junior (though undoubtedly attractive) CIA analyst possess the knowledge and wherewithal to do anything about it.

Painkiller’s protagonist, W. Cooper, is equal parts Jimmy Buffet, Jack Ryan and Gary Cooper (his namesake). The type of gruff, chauvinistic hero reminiscent of Ian Fleming spy novels and Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns, Cooper is aging, antisocial and perfectly content to live out the remainder of his life amid rum drinks (from which we get the title) and conch fritters. But such a idyllic retreat is not in the cards for him.

Possessing a seemingly endless pool of wealth, Cooper begins his expedition to abate the ghosts that haunt him. Along the way he encounters Haitian slave zombies, criminal expatriates, crooked politicians (of course!), fundamentalist muscle-bound Chinese terrorists and, à la Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, even a homicidal albino (why are poor albinos always getting a bad rap??).

Make no mistake, Painkiller is a quick-paced page-turner. Structured with not-so-typical cliffhanger chapter-endings, this endless stream of action constantly ratchets up the reader’s acceptance of conceivability, until you find yourself on a trail you never thought you’d be on.

While it’s true that the story does, at times, prey on our post-9/11 insecurities - rogue terrorist factions, nuclear war, fascist extremists - the plot never strays far from the realm of fictional reality. Accordingly, we can enjoy the tale despite its frightening parallels to real life because its recounting is so sensationalistic. In effect, it offers a reprieve from our daily tension by giving us an exaggerated image of precisely that which is threatening us.

In the end, Painkiller doesn’t leave the reader with any epiphanies or realizations -- nor does it claim to. Instead, it serves as an enjoyable potboiler of a political thriller and on that count alone, it delivers nicely.

***Incidentally, the modest hometown of this reviewer and The Electric Review (Mount Shasta, California) makes a memorable appearance after falling in contact with a nuclear bomb (talk about dumb luck!). ~Jacob Aiello

Reviewed by Jacob Aiello

In Transgressions, a collection of ten novellas written by some of today’s most acclaimed suspense novelists (and edited by noted mystery writer Ed McBain, who also contributes one selection), the genre of noir and suspense is flipped on its head and modernized, blended with the immediacy of compelling social commentary.

From the onset, readers will find a great deal of deep and penetrating material here: From the existential anarchist detective Archibald Lawless of Walter Mosley’s Archibald Lawless, Anarchist at Large: Walking the Line, to the malicious teenage girls of Joyce Carol Oates’ The Corn Maiden - it’s the world of the outsider examined in the aftermath of 9/11.

The point here is to allow each of us to decide for ourselves whether or not what they said is true: Is irony really dead? Is America really in the hollow and desperate state that the media tells us it is in?

However, Transgressions is by no means a collection of stories about the events of 9/11; yet still, the wake of that tragedy is imbued in each of these stories in tones both subtle and overt.

In The Things They Left Behind by Stephen King - unquestionably the most evident 9/11 novella - a man begins inexplicably finding the possessions of former acquaintances who died in the attacks on the Twin Towers. An accessible blend of magical realism and psychological closure, The Things They Left Behind reads with King’s trademark character development, the natural progression of the story line exploring the loss of our enigmatic safety and that cocky self assurance Americans once held so confidently.

Noted mystery author Donald E. Westlake’s novella, Walking Around Money, prefers to suggest the more subtle, psychological effects of 9/11. A vague uneasiness is felt by one of the characters whenever he is in New York City, in large, open crowds, or in telephone booths. And while its cause is never explicitly stated, this piece subtlety speaks volumes as to 9/11’s vast psychological reach.

In The Corn Maiden, it is the disregard for human life that is examined in Joyce Carol Oates’ inimitable stunningly horrifying fashion. Here, a neglected, disillusioned and vengeful adolescent girl abducts another young girl for a sacrificial rite, and it triggers a disastrous spiral of scapegoating and sorrow. It is as though The Corn Maiden’s story unfolds within a parallel world, a world complete with all the horrors and injustices of our own, a place where 9/11 is merely a lie told to the abducted girl to frighten her into submission.

These references only provide a brief glimpse into the perspectives which Transgressions explores. The stories presented here are well-written and especially varied in their conventions and stylistic touches, offering the reader everything from comic mystery to horrifying suspense to somber contemplation - each of these stories entertaining, thought- provoking and individually engaging.

As a whole, however, the pieces comprising Transgressions come together to speak to the vastly more important role literature plays in tragic and desperate times: for its books like these that help us heal, helping us to understand the things that are occurring in our world.

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Reviewed By Jacob Aiello

Jess Walter, in his new novel Citizen Vince, introduces Vince Camden, a supposedly reformed credit card thief transplanted into a small Spokane, Washington town on the cusp of the 1980 presidential election. After turning state’s evidence and testifying against the Mafia, Camden has been ‘relocated’ - selling stolen credit cards by dusk and managing a donut shop ("Donut Make You Hungry") by dawn.

And then one day the inevitable happens and the past finally catches up with him. Through his harrowing journey to rectify the debt he owes the Mafia (with the police right-around-the-corner on his tail), Vince simultaneously ponders perhaps the most existential question of all: Who to vote for?

As you gather from the story line, it’s difficult to classify this novel: Part noir Mafia thriller, part political commentary, part classic morality tale with existential twist. However, throughout each of these possible classifications, the true binding thread remains Walter’s protagonist - Vince Camden.

Strangely familiar and yet utterly unique, Camden is a rogue Bogie for the pre-Reagan administration. Here, we find a man contemplating death and politics while shilling out weed and stolen credit cards to prostitutes. And it is this inimitable dichotomy of depravity (together with this almost childlike longing for political honesty) that draws the reader so close to him.

However, the true joy of Citizen Vince is in Walter’s command of dialogue -- this blind infusion of energy merges the nostalgic biting tongue of Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Rick Blaine with the oddly endearing naïveté of Vince Camden to create a language of its own. But this is not to imply that narration is lacking. To the contrary, the pop and crackle of the dialogue is made possible by the somber near melancholy hue of the prose that surrounds it.

In one passage, Vince is contemplating the dead he has known, the futile hope of criminals and prostitutes and ghosts:

"You’re going to miss my open house." Then, before he can say anything: "It’s okay."

She clears the dishes, smiles, and says, in a voice rich with delusions, the voice of real estate hookers and criminal bakers: "Well, you’ll just have to come to the next one" (86).

As we move through the novel, we find that certain plot revelations are subtle - sometimes a bit too subtle; to the unmindful reader, some wonderful material can be wholly overlooked. Yet still, the wonder of Citizen Vince is in Walter’s seamless synthesis of politics and underworld culture. Funny, endearing and darkly optimistic, not since Jim

Jarmusch’s film "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai" have we seen these subjects so artfully blended.

But above all else, Citizen Vince is a tale of authenticity and honesty, a book about how the political candidates we choose mirror our own posturing and morality (or lack thereof). In Walter’s world, the cop is as corrupt as the criminal, but none can hold a candle to the strut of the candidate.

In the end, Citizen Vince is a novel to read and enjoy, this grand demonstration of witty dialogue and Mafioso pantomime. Still, when the final sentence is read, the charm of the novel will only be complimented by its gravitas. It seems odd now, but in the world of Citizen Vince, on the eve of the 1980 presidential election, salvation was actually possible.

By Jacob Aiello

In A View From the Eye of the Storm: Terror and Reason In the Middle East, Hiram Harari examines the recent and continuing conflict between Islamic fanaticism and anti-Semitism throughout the world. Although a theoretical physicist by profession, Harari tackles the subject under the guise of "proverbial taxi driver" - implying his arguments are not that of a scientist but of someone who has lived in the Middle East, witnessed its events and formed very definitive opinions about its status. Thus, this book is a well-formed expression of those opinions.

Harari’s study began as a not-for-publication lecture he gave for an international advisory board discussing the problem of terrorism and the Middle Eastern crisis - including its causes and effects and his own theoretical solution. The text was eventually disseminated and circulated without permission all over the world, provoking Harari to revisit his arguments and expound on them in a fully developed manuscript.

Whatever your personal position on the political spectrum, A View From the Eye of the Storm is nonetheless a sobering look at the state of the world, or Globania, as Harari pseudo-affectionately calls it. At once wryly comedic and disturbingly daring, Harari writes in an informally casual style that dramatically counters the gravity of his subject (as prefaced in his introduction):

"I apologize to the victims of terror for occasionally using humor in this book. The subject is not funny at all, but part of what has kept the Jews alive for centuries is the ability to laugh and smile in difficult times. I see no reason to allow the terrorists to spoil this tradition."

In this book, Harari shifts back and forth between cautious optimism and despairing woe, his prose a mixed with deftly-placed analogies and dark parables of suffering, obstacles overcome and lessons to be learned. The Middle East is undoubtedly the "eye of the storm" now, just as Germany and Poland were sixty-five years ago, and Harari adroitly compares the growing anti-Semitism today with the rise of the Nazi party and the remaining world’s refusal to take that threat seriously.

To be sure, A View From the Eye of the Storm is a controversial book, and those seeking comfort, escapism and reassurance would do well to keep their distance. Yet they would also do well to remember that an informed populace is the best defense against tyranny. In View, Harari reminds us that now, more than ever, that only the open-mindedness of the populace will open the door to world peace.

As Harari himself suggests through his "proverbial taxi driver" role, the impulse to agree or disagree with these sometimes blunt perspectives is entirely arbitrary. But what is truly important -- and the thing which makes this book a top-priority read -- is the uncensored, unpropagandized and unspun opinions of one man who has lived through all the tragedies and events we in America know only through the subjective filter of our own mass media.

By John Aiello

Jose Canseco is taking a hell-of-a lot of flak for writing this book, as baseball insiders and myriad writers take pot-shots at him for his admissions about steroid use that often reveal the hidden stories of the behind the scenes world of big-money athletics.

Canseco, who played major league baseball into the new millennium, was one of the purest hitters to ever come upon the modern era of the game. He had that rare combination of power and speed and was blessed with tremendous athletic instinct, all of which helped to lead the Oakland A’s to a World’s Championship in 1989.

However, Juiced isn’t merely about the ball yard. To the contrary, it’s a tell-all "biography" in which Canseco is ballsy enough to admit that he used steroids (or juice) to enhance his prowess on the diamond (indifferent to the very real long-term effects that juice could have on his health). According to this book, Canseco was known as "The Chemist" - a true connoisseur of these drugs, he became adroit at mixing steroid cocktails, searching for just the right combo that might add yet another layer of ripples to his already impressive frame:

"Remember back when Mark McGwire and I were called the ‘Bash Brothers’ during our time together on those memorable Oakland A’s teams from the late 1980s to early 1990s? I didn’t always like that tag, but people were right that McGwire and I spent a lot of time together. Of course we didn’t talk much. What we did, more times than I can count, was go into a bathroom stall together to shoot up steroids. That’s right, after batting practice, or right before the game, Mark and I would duck into a stall in the men’s room, load our syringes, and inject ourselves. I always injected myself, because I had practiced enough to know just what I was doing, but often would inject Mark as well."

(Pages 7&8 )

Pretty startling stuff, indeed -- these the confessions of a baseball star reading so much like our horrific perceptions of junkies huddled in urban stairwells, shooting up, hungry for that next fix.

But these aren’t junkies. No; instead, they’re among the wealthiest entertainers in the world, these men who are idolized by so many youngsters throughout the world:

"People want to be entertained at the ballpark. They want baseball to be fun and exciting. Home runs are fun and exciting. They are easy for even the most casual fan to appreciate. Steroid-enhanced athletes hit more home runs. So yes, I have personally reshaped the game of baseball through my example and teaching."

(Page 9)

Baseball insiders are saying that Canseco’s book is bullshit and that his motives for lying are numerous: (1) He’s bitter that he didn’t get a chance to crack the 500 career homer list and this is his way of getting back at the game; (2) He’s a washed up fallen star looking for any tie to the game -- and the steroid scandal is it; (3) He’s resentful that others who he played with (and among) have received the accolades he thinks he deserves and his steroid book is a way to take them all down a notch.

Still, I don’t buy that Canseco made all this up. Nope. It reeks of honesty to me. Plus, it’s hard to refute the fact that players in this modern-day era of baseball have gotten too big and too strong - seemingly capable of superhuman feats. Looking at the modern game objectively, it just seems plausible that at least some of this raw physical ability is coming from chemicals and artificial means - and not just extra hours in the weight room.