New & Recommended New & Recommended (November 02, 2005)

This month's picks by Frank Sanchez, head book buyer at Kepler's Books, include a memoir of growing up in the Midwest, a controversial new biography of Mao Tse-tung, a look back at the art scene in New York City, and more.

"Jesus Land: A Memoir" by Julia Scheeres is a sometimes harrowing story of growing up in a conservative Christian household in 1970s Indiana, including being sent to a religious boot camp for disobedient children. The author is a San Francisco journalist.

"Mao: The Untold Story" by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday is an exhaustive biography of the Chinese leader that is already sparking debates. Much attention has been drawn to the fact that, in the book's opening sentence, the authors claim that Mao "was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime."

"New Art City" by Jed Perl is a look back at Manhattan as an art center in the mid-20th century, featuring artists such as Jackson Pollack, William de Kooning and Andy Warhol. The author, who is the art critic for the New Republic, grew up in Palo Alto.

"Black Hole" by Charles Burns is a new graphic novel with stunningly sharp drawings. The story is about strange things happening to teenagers in suburban Seattle in the mid-1970s. The author was part of the comics scene in the 1980s, and this book is called "disturbing" by one reviewer.

"The Ongoing Moment" by Geoff Dyer is a survey of the history of photography from a cultural critic who examines and comments on the work of Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans, among others.

"A Time to Run" by Barbara Boxer is a novel by the three-term California senator. The story -- about politics, of course -- is about a senator obtaining potentially explosive inside information about a Supreme Court nominee. The heroine central figure is a Democrat.

"Summer Crossing" by Truman Capote is a long-lost first novel by the late author of "In Cold Blood" who died in 1984. It is the story of a young woman in post-World War II New York City, which Capote started to write in the 1940s. The manuscript was discovered among Capote's papers in 2004.

"Ghost Town: Tales of Manhattan Then and Now" by Patrick McGrath is a collection of three stories about New York City, one of them set during the American Revolution. The book is part of "The Writer and the City" series.

-- Don Kazak

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