Jeremy Tarcher

EVEN before Sept. 11, this unusual memoir would have made a good story: A young man born Jewish, raised by loving, tolerant, hippie parents, gravitates toward Islam in college, converts, gets drawn into a radical Islamic group, reverses gears, leaves said group, goes to law school, converts to Christianity and then, post-9/11, becomes a counter-terrorism expert.

This is the most seductive kind of self-help book, because it talks about a shared secret, daydreaming, that as yet hasn't been exploited to death on the afternoon TV talk shows. We all daydream--and, given the amount of time Angelenos spend trapped on one roadway or another, we probably have more time to do it than most people.

WHO does John Strausbaugh think he is? This is a serious question. Strausbaugh is a white writer whose provocatively titled "Black Like You" challenges the assumption that white racism and little else was responsible for the enduring popularity of minstrelsy and blackface. Fair enough. But in any discussion of a phenomenon so thoroughly connected to the evolution (or devolution) of blackness in America, the identity of the writer matters.

Other visionaries, such as Sir Thomas More, have outlined plans for achieving perfection one soul at a time. Michael Murphy has a bigger idea. In "The Future of the Body" he proposes that mankind is on the brink of "a new kind of life on this planet," a global Utopia in which we all may develop startling mental, physical and "paranormal" abilities.

"Self-actualization," "humanistic psychology," "peak experience." Sympathetic readers associate these terms with the aspirations of the human-potential movement. Critics see them as hallmarks of the self-absorption of the "me generation." But, inevitably, these phrases evoke the name of Abraham Maslow, the research psychologist and Brandeis professor who coined them. Maslow died in 1970 at age 62, but his influence grows with each year.

"Nothing's happening!" a Washington Post-style columnist, Henry Allen, lamented in print a few weeks ago. An unsettling calm, he wrote, lies upon America. Suddenly, near the end of our tumultuous century, there are no upheavals, revolutions, spooky or kooky fads, "Hegelian heroes," romantic Angst, or towering passions. We even temper our distress over drugs, Allen wrote, with comforting reminders that drug use is no longer spreading.

ERICA JONG has more chutzpah in her erogenous zones than most writers have in their entire being. She's one of the few who'd say, "I have longed to be able to do the diva on appropriate occasions, but I'm too short," then admit in the next sentence, "As for the care and feeding of studs, I did that in my thirties and forties and had my fill." In 1972, when Jong was barely 30 years old, her first novel, "Fear of Flying," swept her to fame.

If fame were the offspring of talent in today's music scene, Wayne Shorter would be a household name. To jazz fans, the saxophonist and composer is royalty.

Anyone who has traveled in undeveloped countries knows the type. He plops down beside you in a bar or on a crowded long-distance bus and right off the bat starts describing the methods he has used to pluck jungle leeches from various parts of his anatomy. If that doesn't make you squirm, he tells you about the time he had to eat leeches to survive. How long you listen to this person depends both on his skill as a storyteller and how much you care about what he has to say.

ERICA JONG has more chutzpah in her erogenous zones than most writers have in their entire being. She's one of the few who'd say, "I have longed to be able to do the diva on appropriate occasions, but I'm too short," then admit in the next sentence, "As for the care and feeding of studs, I did that in my thirties and forties and had my fill." In 1972, when Jong was barely 30 years old, her first novel, "Fear of Flying," swept her to fame.

THE French are "a rhetorical people," writes Bruce Benderson in "The Romanian," a study in pastoral (and sometimes urban) loneliness. It is no surprise then that he has become the first American writer to receive France's Prix de Flore, because his story rises off the page with the help of every imaginable rhetorical device and stylistic flourish. This absorbing memoir begins with Benderson researching Eastern Europe's growing sex industry.

In the late 1950s, Phyllis Diller was not only a successful female comedian, she was pretty much the only one. Drag queen impersonators notwithstanding, there's still no one like her. Excerpts from Diller's routines run throughout her autobiography, "Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse," written with Richard Buskin, and do not disappoint: "I called my husband Fang and said, 'I've had a little accident at the corner of Post and Geary.' He said, 'Post and Geary don't cross.' I said, 'They do now.'

Fat. It's a "three-letter word larded with meaning," write the editors of the book "Fat." At a time when the subject of body image provokes widespread anxiety, insecurity and self-consciousness, especially about weight, 13 anthropologists and a self-described "fat activist" consider the word as a concept, a stigma, an aesthetic, an epidemic and even a status symbol in a collection of provocative and entertaining essays subtitled "The Anthropology of an Obsession."

If fame were the offspring of talent in today's music scene, Wayne Shorter would be a household name. To jazz fans, the saxophonist and composer is royalty.

On Oct. 29, the leaders of the European Union's 25 member countries gathered to sign their first constitution. It still must be ratified by each nation's government, but the signing was, nevertheless, a highly significant moment. The people of Europe are now more united than at any time since Rome's golden age in the 2nd century.

THE French are "a rhetorical people," writes Bruce Benderson in "The Romanian," a study in pastoral (and sometimes urban) loneliness. It is no surprise then that he has become the first American writer to receive France's Prix de Flore, because his story rises off the page with the help of every imaginable rhetorical device and stylistic flourish. This absorbing memoir begins with Benderson researching Eastern Europe's growing sex industry.

EVEN before Sept. 11, this unusual memoir would have made a good story: A young man born Jewish, raised by loving, tolerant, hippie parents, gravitates toward Islam in college, converts, gets drawn into a radical Islamic group, reverses gears, leaves said group, goes to law school, converts to Christianity and then, post-9/11, becomes a counter-terrorism expert.

The corporate mega-giants that have mushroomed in today's hothouse climate of deregulation, mergers, takeovers, bailouts and globalism may not yet have attained the absolute power famed for corrupting absolutely, but they seem well on the way to doing so. By 1999, according to a survey cited in Jamie Court's eye-opening "Corporateering," "fifty-one of the largest 100 economies in the world were corporations."

At times when I've found the institutional arrogance of my own or another person's faith especially hard to swallow, I've turned to the writings of Matthew Fox for welcome relief. Fox exudes patience, the height of reason, even when he proposes the most radical changes to religion and contemporary worship.