Review_NONFICTION
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ JANUARY 26, 2015 158
Chen Guangcheng recounts his struggle against
Chinese state power in The Barefoot Lawyer
(reviewed on p. 159).
If the Oceans Were Ink:
An Unlikely Friendship and a
Journey to the Heart of the Qur’an
Carla Power. Holt, $18 trade paper (352p)
ISBN 978-0-8050-9819-8
In this engaging memoir, Power, who
was a foreign correspondent for Newsweek,
recounts the year she devoted to studying
the Qur’an with Sheikh Akram, a friend
and former colleague from Oxford.
Recently, the Sheikh’s scholarship, which
“challenges bigots of all types,” has found
a much wider audience. His work of 10
years, compiled in a 40-volume treatise,
details the historical contributions of
thousands of women scholars to Islamic
literature, back to the time of the Prophet.
Power attended both public lessons and
one-on-one discussions with the Sheikh.
She spent time with his family in Britain
and traveled to the village in India where
he grew up, in an effort to understand how
his family implemented the Qur’an’s
teachings into their daily lives. Power and
the Sheikh touch on historical and contemporary topics, especially in respect to
women’s rights. Together they explore
homosexuality, Muhammad’s wife who
operated a caravan business in Mecca, the
significance of veiling and unveiling, the
struggle against unjust rulers and jihad,
and contemporary wars. Power’s narrative
offers an accessible and enlightening route
into a topic fraught with misunderstanding. (Apr.)
★ Young Eliot: A Biography
Robert Crawford. Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
$35 (480p) ISBN 978-0-374-27944-8
Drawing extensively on new inter-
views, original research, and previously
undisclosed memoirs, biographer
Crawford (Scotland’s Books) offers the first
book devoted to T.S. Eliot’s youth,
painting a vividly colorful portrait of the
artist as a young man. In exhaustive, and
often exhausting, detail, Crawford chroni-
cles, year-by-year, the young Eliot: his
childhood, divided between St. Louis and
Massachusetts; his painful shyness and
love of dancing; his years at Harvard, his
post-Harvard experiences in Europe and
first, though unrequited, love ; his mar-
riage to Vivienne Haigh-Wood; and his
early publications of poetry, leading up to
The Waste Land’s release in 1922. Eliot’s
affinity for the sacred is traced to his
upbringing in an “idealistic, bookish
household,” to his keen ear for St. Louis’s
rich confluence of music—both opera and
jazz—and to his love of birdsong. Readers
also learn about Eliot’s difficult marriage
to Haigh-Wood, which brought neither
of them happiness, though Eliot wrote to
Ezra Pound that “it brought the state of
mind out of which came The Waste Land.”
Crawford’s masterly biography, with its
great depth, attention to detail, and close
reading of the youthful Eliot’s writings, is
likely to become the definitive account of
the great poet’s early years. Agent: David
Godwin, David Godwin Associates. (Apr.)
The Age of Sustainable
Development
Jeffrey D. Sachs. Columbia Univ., $35 trade
paper (544p) ISBN 978-0-231-17315-5
Sachs (The End of Poverty), an economist
and director of Columbia University’s
Earth Institute, argues that it’s time for
humankind to reconcile its needs with
those of the planet, in this sprawling manifesto. He surveys the great dilemma
facing civilization: how to ensure broadly
inclusive economic growth, especially in
the poorest countries, without destroying
the natural environment and deranging
the climate on which survival depends.
Deploying clear, straightforward prose
and a wealth of statistics—the book’s
countless tables and graphs are an eye-
opening education in themselves—he fol-
lows the threads of this knotty problem
from their scientific and economic roots to
their potential solutions in new technolo-
gies and a mix of market dynamics and
vigorous government action. Sachs bal-
ances alarming forecasts with signs of
progress, giving brief, even-handed run-
downs of policy prescriptions such as
carbon taxes, foreign aid to help Africa
escape its “poverty trap,” and reforms of
America’s hideously expensive private
health-care system. The overstuffed book
suffers from a scope that precludes
detailed analysis of the many contentious
debates over sustainability policies and
technologies, particularly in its inade-
quate assessments of the pros and cons of
wind, solar, and nuclear power. Still,
Sachs’s overview demonstrates the serious-
ness of the sustainability crisis while illu-
minating workable paths to resolving it.
Maps and photos. (Mar.)
The Anxiety Toolkit:
Strategies for Fine-Tuning
Your Mind and Moving Past
Your Stuck Points
Alice Boyes. Perigee, $16 (240p) ISBN 978-0-
399-16925-0
Boyes, a clinician, mental-health
speaker, and Psychology Today blogger,
delivers an easy-to-follow, though spare,
workbook on understanding and managing anxiety. According to Boyes, while
anxiety frequently manifests itself as a
form of hyper-aware fear, this emotion is a
close cousin to simple conscientiousness,
and it is neither advisable, nor possible, to
entirely remove it from your life.
Regardless, anxiety can still paralyze deci-sion-making or action, and Boyes helps
readers identify five common traps—
hesitation, ruminating over old thoughts,
“paralyzing” perfectionism,” “fear of feedback,” and avoidance—and how to break
through them. The book’s chapters are
structured around these traps, providing
diagnostic tests to evaluate your needs, as
well as exercises to address the disordered
actions and thoughts produced by anxiety.
Boyes’s tone is friendly but never saccharine, and endlessly practical. Her tips and
exercises, drawn from cognitive behavioral therapies that she herself has administered, should make a valuable reference
for anxiety sufferers, and an ideal companion to readers undergoing psycho-
Nonfiction
