Articles written for the California Literary Review:

• The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
  Posted on 16 Nov 2007 in Environment, Nature, Non-Fiction Reviews
  

  The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, informally known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is a span of ocean between California and Hawaii the size of Texas, where floats a Sargasso Sea of trash consisting of 90 percent plastic.

• I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon by Crystal Zevon
  Posted on 04 Oct 2007 in Biography, Music, Non-Fiction Reviews
  

  I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead is sort of an extended wake for its subject. There’s very little biographical narrative per se; instead, the book compiles a massive array of anecdotes, memories, and opinions from dozens upon dozens of the people who knew him, from engineers, girlfriends, and backing musicians to a fairly astounding variety of celebrities who spent time with Zevon.

• Out of Thin Air: Dinosaurs, Birds, and Earth’s Ancient Atmosphere by Peter Douglas Ward
  Posted on 23 Jul 2007 in Non-Fiction Reviews, Science
  

  In an age when ad agencies regularly apply “revolutionary” to new car models and digital toys, it is wise for the rest of us to avoid the word, but Peter Ward’s Out of Thin Air comes as close to meriting the label as anything I’ve seen of late. Paleontology does involve a lot of detail work, from tiny picks and toothbrushes to radioactive dating; however, some details may not only inform but overturn and reinvent the much bigger picture.

• An Interview With Novelist Nicole Mones
  Posted on 20 Jun 2007 in China, Food, Interviews
  

  “I know food is hot right now – we have the Food Network – but believe me, in Western civilization we have never elevated cuisine historically to the level of art, to which it’s been elevated in China. But through learning about Chinese food, and through her encounters with this man and his family, and his effort to compete in an Olympics of cuisine, in the 2008 games, she learns about life.”

• Empire of the Stars by Arthur I. Miller
  Posted on 10 Jun 2007 in History, Non-Fiction Reviews, Science
  

  So why did Eddington savage his young colleague nine years later? Jealousy? Racism? A threat to his own work? The answer seems to have been a little of all these and more, but not one clearly more than the rest.

• Gen·e·sis: The Scientific Quest for Life’s Origin - by Robert M. Hazen
  Posted on 27 May 2007 in Non-Fiction Reviews, Science
  

  In all the recent noise over the higher steps of evolution and the proper way to teach them in American schools, it’s easy to forget that science hasn’t established the first big step: how the basic building blocks of life—the nucleotides that make up Watson and Crick’s celebrated reverse spiral staircase—organized into life proper.

• The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West by Niall Ferguson
  Posted on 24 Apr 2007 in History, Military, Non-Fiction Reviews, Politics
  

  Niall Ferguson is hot—about as hot as a historian can get.

• I, Wabenzi: A Souvenir - by Rafi Zabor
  Posted on 24 Apr 2007 in Biography, Non-Fiction Reviews
  

  Although this is a sly, sidelong-glance kind of book that repeatedly takes you to a different place from where you thought you were headed, Rafi Zabor doesn’t keep the reader in suspense about its odd title.

• Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage
  Posted on 22 Apr 2007 in Non-Fiction Reviews, Sociology
  

  Like the disappearance of the well-mannered and respectful adolescent, the imminent (or, for some commentators, already accomplished) collapse of the institution of marriage has been a popular lament, at least since the mid 1960s.

• In Character: Actors Acting by Howard Schatz
  Posted on 22 Apr 2007 in Movies, Non-Fiction Reviews, Theatre
  

  Imagine 32 famous actors looking you straight in the eye and flirting with you. (Marlee Matlin! Natasha Richardson! Swoon!)