Books

There still appears to be a sizable minority in America who favors big news organizations at least in part for their broad ambitions, thoroughness, balance and sense of restraint. But ain't it a shame when those highfalutin', old-school intentions get in the way of the basic mission -- delivering the audience a "Hey Martha!" scoop now and then with their breakfast cereal? It seems the higher values and a healthy dose of old-fashioned incredulity (Could he really be that big a cad?

He is younger and sports close-cropped hair and a gold stud in his left earlobe, but the slim build, the loping gait and the high-set cheekbones give him a striking resemblance to his more famous half brother, President Obama. Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo, a 43-year-old businessman and musician, has lived in southern China for seven years, the last one assiduously attempting to avoid publicity. But he broke his silence Wednesday, making a public appearance to publicize an autobiographical novel.

After "The Catcher in the Rye" exploded onto the literary scene in 1951, author J.D. Salinger had what every writer yearns for -- money, fame and critical acclaim. "Catcher" became a touchstone for the teenage culture just emerging in post-World War II America, and has remained one for every generation of youths since. But instead of basking in celebrity, Salinger walked away and slammed the door.After one brilliant novel, a novella and a couple of dozen short stories, he turned his back on the cult hunger for his writing and after 1965 refused to publish further.

36 Arguments for the Existence of God A Work of Fiction Rebecca Newberger Goldstein Pantheon: 402 pp., $27.95 The night I began reading Rebecca Newberger Goldstein's "36 Arguments for the Existence of God," I didn't get far before I fell asleep. But I did have good dreams all night long: well-lit, active and good-natured, just like Goldstein's writing style. For the next few days, I viewed this phenomenon as a potential side-effect but not a guarantee. Then I finished the novel and had good dreams again -- optimistic, celebratory, full of disagreement followed by reconciliation, though not exactly funny, which was too bad because "36 Arguments for the Existence of God" is quite funny.

Howard Zinn, a professor, author and social activist who inspired a generation on the American left and whose book "A People's History of the United States" sold more than 1 million copies and redefined the historical role of working-class people as agents of political change, died Wednesday. He was 87. Zinn apparently had a heart attack in Santa Monica, where he was visiting friends and scheduled to speak, said his daughter, Myla Kabat-Zinn. He lived in Auburndale, Mass. Zinn's political views were shaped, in part, by his experiences as a bombardier for the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II. "My father cared about so many important issues," Kabat-Zinn said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

Sun Yaoting was 8 when his father castrated him with a single swoop of a razor. The year was 1911, and China was in turmoil. Just a few months later rebels deposed the emperor, overturned centuries of tradition and established a republic. "Our boy has suffered for nothing," his father said, weeping and beating his breast, when he learned that the emperor had been overthrown. "They don't need eunuchs anymore!" Little did he know that the child nevertheless would earn a place in Chinese history.

Garry Wills is a formidable Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, one of America's leading public intellectuals and, over the last 50 years, our most important lay Catholic thinker and writer. In his 28th book, "Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State," he amplifies an idea he first raised a decade ago in "A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government" -- that the dawn of the Atomic Age fundamentally changed our institutions of republican government.

Julia Cameron's journey to guru-dom began, perhaps predictably, in Los Angeles in the 1970s after a failed celebrity marriage and a scotch-and-cocaine binge had brought her to rock bottom. Back then, she was best known as the lush whom Martin Scorsese left for Liza Minnelli, the hotshot writer who swore like a sailor and matched Hunter S. Thompson drink-for-drink.

According to James Gavin's new biography, "Stormy Weather: The Life of Lena Horne," the legendary singer-actress was never comfortable being an icon. "As I say in the introduction of my book, icons are not allowed to be human beings," explains Gavin, a lifelong fan who interviewed Horne in 1994. "Once you step up on that pedestal . . . and everyone is scrutinizing your every move -- how do you function as a human being? You have to cover up mistakes you made."

Michael Lewis' 2006 book "The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game" is a riveting, often heart-wrenching story of Michael Oher, a 6-foot-5, 350-pound African American teenager who is transformed from a homeless vagabond to a star football player, largely thanks to Leigh Anne Tuohy, a dynamic evangelical Christian who helps provide him with a surrogate family and a shot at success in life. When Allen Barra reviewed the book for the Washington Post, he was full of admiration for Lewis' writerly skills.

Fiction weeks on list 1. The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Putnam: $24.95) The lives of a maid, a cook and a college graduate become intertwined as they change a Mississippi town. 35 2. First Rule by Robert Crais (Putnam: $26.95) Joe Pike's past catches up with him when an old friend's family is killed. 3 3. The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson (Knopf: $25.95) A hacker implicated in two murders must revisit her past to prove her innocence.

Ralph McInerny, a longtime professor of philosophy and medieval studies at the University of Notre Dame who also was a popular mystery writer best known for his Father Dowling series of novels, has died. He was 80. McInerny died Jan. 29 at Our Lady of Peace Hospital in Mishawaka, Ind., after a long illness, according to the university. A member of the Notre Dame faculty from 1955 until his retirement in 2009, McInerny gained international renown as a scholar, author and lecturer who specialized in the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, the 13th century theologian and philosopher.

Water The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization Steven Solomon Harper: 596 pp., $27.99 It's not news to residents of Southern California that the management of water resources has far-reaching economic and political ramifications, but even they may be surprised by the pivotal role journalist Steven Solomon assigns to water throughout human history. It is "Earth's most potent agent of change," Solomon asserts in his sweeping book, which begins with the birth of civilization, is midwifed by large-scale, irrigated agriculture, and closes in our current "age of water scarcity, [when]

Fiction Weeks on list 1. The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Putnam: $24.95) The lives of a maid, a cook and a college graduate become intertwined as they change a Mississippi town. 35 2. First Rule by Robert Crais (Putnam: $26.95) Joe Pike's past catches up with him when an old friend's entire family is killed. 3 3. The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson (Knopf: $25.95) A hacker implicated in two murders must revisit her past to prove her innocence.

Michael Ordoña's recent talk, on The Times' blog Hero Complex, with actor Paul Bettany about his role as Michael the archangel in the movie "Legion" touches on all the militaristic imagery of angels. There's also plenty of that in a gorgeous coffee table book, "The Glory of Angels" by Edward Lucie-Smith, that came and went around the Christmas season. I retrieved mine from the shelf after seeing Bettany's armed, winged, six-pack image at our local AMC. Then, I asked myself the following questions: -- What was that battle between heaven's forces and the rebel angels really like?

The Future History of the Arctic Charles Emmerson PublicAffairs: 392 pp., $28.95 "In the mind of a ten-year-old almost any line on a map is worth crossing for the sake of it." Charles Emmerson turned his childhood fascination with "our half-imagined Arctic" into a life's work. In "The Future History of the Arctic," Emmerson explains the forces that have shaped the history of the Arctic and will shape its future. He never loses his childhood sense of wonder at the land above 66 degrees 33' 39" north; the Arctic remains for him an idea that cannot be mapped.

My two private eye novels tweak some of the conventions of the genre and pose questions about the messy nature of identity and reality, but at their core, they are about crime. So I'm a crime writer, right? Then let's set the scene: A man drives into a dead-end suburban lane. Basketball hoops in the driveways, skateboards and bikes are left on manicured lawns, wheels pointing up. Kids' stuff spreads out everywhere, lining the street, as if no one would ever steal from them. He parks in front of the same white colonial he's been parking in front of for almost four years.

Ordinary Thunderstorms A Novel William Boyd HarperCollins: 404 pp., $26.99 William Boyd begins his new novel, "Ordinary Thunderstorms," with a set piece out of Alfred Hitchcock. Adam Kindred, a young climatologist visiting London for a job interview, chats with a stranger in a restaurant. On leaving, the stranger drops an important-looking file. Adam brings the file by the stranger's apartment, only to find the man in bed, stabbed and dying. (I'm really not giving anything away here, because all this happens within the first 10 pages.

In the late 1980s, when I was a graduate student working on short stories and flirting with the idea of a novel, I came across an essay that was being passed around my circle of friends. It was titled "Writing in the Cold: The First Ten Years," and the author was the legendary editor and founder of New American Review, Ted Solotaroff. Ten years! In the cold! Solotaroff wondered where all the talented young writers he had known or published when he was first editing New American Review had gone.

Occupied City A Novel David Peace Alfred A. Knopf: 288 pp., $25.95 David Peace raids fact for fiction, churning history and elements of his own life into hypnotic postmodern noir of almost unrivaled fury. His first four novels, which make up the "Red Riding Quartet" (adapted for television in Britain last year and reissued in paperback by Vintage), were a passionate rethinking of a central horror/myth from Peace's north of England upbringing: the decade-long search for serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper.