Beth Raymer. Lay the Favorite: A Gambling Memoir. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 201. 240 pages.

Sports betting might be the clubbiest form of gambling. Every game has its own lingo, but sports betting, maybe because it’s rooted in real physical competition, just seems a little more insular. There are plenty of books out there that suggest the best ways to pick winners, but few in-depth, from-the-inside, looks at what it’s like to be a big-money sports bettor. With LAY THE FAVORITE, Beth Raymer gives a peek inside that world, through the eyes of someone who doesn’t bet herself, but “just gets the doughnuts.”

Like many others, Raymer finds herself in Las Vegas as a victim of circumstance. She comes out there with her boyfriend, breaks up with him, and finds herself needing a new job when by chance she ends up in the office of Dink, Inc. Dink is a professional sports bettor who employs about a half-dozen people who check lines, place bets, and move money for him. Raymer has a keen eye for what’s beneath the surface (at least in hindsight) and paints a suitably Runyon-esque portrait of Dink and his coterie.

Through another series of events, she finds herself in New York and winds up working for another sports bettor, Bernard, and even follows him down to Curacao, where he runs his own online betting site; from there its back to the States again. At the end of the book, she’s on the move again, possibly having learned a bit about how to live from the series of mentor’s she’s had.

It’s an interesting book, and gives the reader a good sense of the unbalanced lives that those who Raymer encounters live. For the most part, these are not healthy people in any sense of the word; they overeat, they break the law, they allow others to take advantage of them, and they take advantage of others. It’s not a pretty picture, and it might be difficult for readers to find a sympathetic character in the narrative. As a result, it’s not necessarily a happy read; there is a lot of desperation and poor choices in here. But that’s the story of most of the people Raymer encounters (at least as she sees it).

A good counterpoint to this book is Alan Jay Zaremba’s THE MADNESS OF MARCH, which takes a more analytical and academic slant on the “gambling memoir” idea. It chronicles an extended weekend of “betting and bonding with the boys” in Las Vegas on the first round of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament over the course of an extended weekend, and while he’s just as sharp an observer as Raymer, the men he encounters betting on the games come nowhere near the “degenerate” level of Dink, Bernard, and the others. It’s a reminder that, for most of those who bet, this is just something to make the game a little more interesting, not a way to make a living (or not).

Leo Tolstoy and Ben H. Winters. Android Karenina. Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2010. 541 pages.

I don’t review too much fiction, but I thought I’d give this one a shot. Quirk Books has put out a few “mash-up” books–combinations of classic (and public domain) works of literature with genre fiction. The titles alone–like Price and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters–are a good indication of what you get. I’m more partial to 19th century Russian literature than British literature, so when I saw Android Karenina, I decided to give it a try.

This is a difficult book to review, because the plot basically follows that of Anna Karenina, with some extreme liberties taken. Essentially, it’s layering the star-crossed romance of Anna and Vronsky over a steampunk Russia filled with robots, ranging from simple Class Is to “beloved-companion” Class IIIs, of which each adult Russian has one, whose appearance and style says something about its owner. Anna’s Class III is named Android Karenina, and she silently supports Anna throughout her travails.

There’s also a bigger story about a terrorist group named UnConSciya, and even an alien invasion. Suffice it to say that this is not Tolstoy’s Russia, though most of the plot points are adapted to this new world with a few tweaks.

So is ANDROID KARENINA a worthwhile read? Well, it’s not exactly Literature with the upper-case “L,” but after a while it really draws you in. Fifty pages in, I thought that this would have made a witty short story, and was dreading the thought of almost another 500 pages. But around 100 pages, something clicked, and I really got into the Russo-steampunk universe Winters created. At the end, I wished there was more–which is pretty high praise for such a lengthy book, and probably one of the best signs of quality that I can think of.

If you are really into steampunk, or have a sense of humor about the classics, you’ll probably find ANDROID KARENINA a truly fun read. I know I did.

Lynn F. Jacobs and Jeremy S. Hyman. The Secrets of College Success: Over 600 Tips & Tricks Revealed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010. 224 pages.

Most college graduates feel that, if they’d have known everything going in that they knew when they graduated, they would have had a much better time. THE SECRETS OF COLLEGE SUCCESS looks to fill that information gap, and it succeeds, with a few caveats. Generally, there’s no real “secrets” in here; a student would be able to learn everything in here on his or her own, but reading this book will save them a lot of time and frustration, which makes it worth it.

Essentially, the book runs through what college is (and isn’t), how the prepare for school, how to time-manage and study correctly, picking and taking classes, taking tests, and dealing with the inevitable unforeseen circumstances. It’s eminently readable–though the 224 pages are filled with useful information, they fly by pretty quickly–and the numerous numbered lists are great for future reference.

All of the tips are useful–I thought the chapter on picking courses and professors was particularly good, and I’m going to make sure to refer back to the “thirteen surefire signs of a bad professor” section to make sure I’m not slipping.

Like I said above, many of the “secrets” aren’t secret at all. For example, the “10 ways to whip the Freshman comp requirement” list includes: 1. go to class and 2. do all the work assigned. This seems pretty obvious, but it’s good that the authors remind students not to take shortcuts. Many of the tips are similarly rooted in common sense, and hopefully through repetition they sink in.

One caveat about the “partner with your professor” chapter. Yes, professors find it gratifying when students take an interest in their work, but there’s definitely a line there. Students, don’t assume that your professors live, breath, and sleep your course material. Even if they are passionate about teaching, they’ve probably got lots of stuff to do outside of class. Sometimes, showing too much interest in the class can be a little creepy. Just tackle the subject matter with confidence and curiosity, and you’ll be fine.

As someone who teaches, I found this book to be a great guide for students; even if they already know what to do, this book will confirm that they’re doing it right. If not, it’ll show them how to improve their grades and enjoyment of college. I would definitely get this book for a new college student, and will recommend it in the future.

Matt Ridley. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. New York: HarperCollins, 2010. 448 pages.

It seems like there’s always a market for doom and gloom, even though, for the most part, things have gotten much, much better for humanity over the past few centuries and even the past few decades. In THE RATIONAL OPTIMIST, Matt Ridley seeks to correct the record and point out that, hey, things are getting better, mostly because we’re good at working together.

Ridley, who’s written extensively about evolution, argues that innovation happens–and people become better off–when ideas have sex, that is, when people are allowed to trade technical, social, and philosophical concepts with each other. Like organism that use sexual reproduction, the ideas that result have a bit of each of their “parents” and are able to adapt to changing conditions. It’s a thought-provoking metaphor, to say the least.

Based on the title and what little I’d read of the blurb, I expected something pretty narrowly focused on the last 50 years or so. Instead, the book takes the reader far, far back to the dawn of human history, drawing on archaeological and anthropological evidence in support of Ridley’s thesis, that cooperation and specialization are what creates prosperity. Ridley’s clearly in the Hayek mold, stressing the importance of spontaneous order rather than top-down dictates in innovation and the creation of wealth. Sometimes, he over-reaches–I can’t join in his admiration for the Phoenicians after learning that they practiced infanticide–and he too often pauses the narrative to take gratuitous potshots at government and religion–the latter is particularly unfortunate, because I’d guess that a creed that teaches “don’t do unto your neighbor what is hateful to you” would be a pre-requisite for or at least a boon to the cooperation that builds specialization and therefore prosperity.

On the whole, though, there’s a great deal in THE RATIONAL OPTIMIST to like. The idea that trade, rather than war, has spurred innovation and human development, sounds too good to be true, but Ridley marshals strong evidence to prove his thesis. He makes some valid points about the desirability of urban life–even urban poverty–over rural poverty, and insists that a return to “self-sufficiency” would be disastrous for humanity, particularly the poorer segments of it. Advocates of the hundred-mile diet might think twice about limiting their options to locally-grown produce when they read that trade in agricultural products is essential to raising the standard of living in developing countries.

In short, THE RATIONAL OPTIMIST argues that we are all better off when we cooperate, and that things are likely to keep getting better if we keep working together–a feel-good idea, maybe, but one that we can’t afford to ignore.

Joseph Mazur. What’s Luck Got to Do With It? The History, Mathematics, and Psychology of the Gambler’s Illusion. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010. 277 pages.

I’m on a real book-reviewing tear. I’ve got five more in the hopper, including two for academic journals that I’ll only post synopses of here. Today I’m sharing my thoughts on a book that’s not about gambling per se, but luck.

Joseph Mazur is a mathematics professor who’s written books about math for the popular audience, and his writing style is wonderfully suited to discussing a complex subject in a friendly way. Maybe the greatest compliment I can pay Mazur is that he doesn’t come across like a professor in his writing–he’s more like a very interesting guy sitting next to you on a plane ride out to Las Vegas, who’s got several hours worth of anecdotes and an occasional mathematical proof to back them up.

What’s Luck Got to Do With It? tackles what might be the million-dollar question when it comes to gambling: why do people consistently bet against the odds? Demonstrating that he’s not approaching his subject from too great a distance, Mazur treats the reader to a debate between his uncles–two of whom are racetrack devotees, one of whom insists that gambling is a sure path to ruin and warns against feeling to sure that luck is on your side. The book essentially seeks to identify just what luck is, and reconcile it with the dry mechanics of probability and the law of large numbers. Involving history, psychology, and several examples from popular culture,the book uses its mathematical backbone to ask and answer some key questions about gambling and luck.

The book is divided into three parts. The first is an outstanding brief history of gambling from the dawn of time to about 2008. No matter what you’ve read about the topic, you’ll probably still learn something new here. Then Mazur looks into the math of gambling and luck, and relates the underlying theoretical truths that make gambling work the way it does. Along the way Mazur works in several personal anecdotes that keep the reading lively. After laying down the mathematical foundation, Mazur explains “the analysis,” or why people continue to gamble against the odds. He incorporates research about problem gambling, but also addresses non-problem gamblers, who make up the great bulk of the gambling public.

Because Mazur’s not judgmental about luck and gambling, but is analytical, the book is a winner. It’s not just a mathematician telling us that we’ll never hit a million-dollar jackpot–it’s a mathematician looking at why we continue to hope to hit that jackpot. This book should be required reading for anyone in the casino business, and anyone who spends more than a fraction of their disposable income on gambling should find it informative, if nothing else. It’s a reasoned, but also passionate, search for the meaning of luck that may change the way you look at a pair of dice–or your mortgage.

Jack Harpster. King of the Slots: William “Si” Redd. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010. 273 pages.

Si Redd might have had a bigger impact on American casino gambling than anyone else in the years 1960 to 1990. He’s got some big competition–Jay Sarno, Steve Wynn, and Kirk Kerkorian are a few names that spring to mind. But those three, for the most part, changed the way casino in Las Vegas look. Redd helped change the blueprint of casinos around the country, and possibly the world.

Redd was a distributor for Bally’s in the years when the slot-maker pioneered in the electro-mechanical market, creating machines with more entertainment value and higher jackpots. Without these machines, slots would likely have not eclipsed table games in revenue, as they did in the 1980s. Later, he founded International Game Technology (IGT), and did more to bring video poker and wide-area progressives to wide popularity on the casino floor than anyone else. Redd wasn’t an engineer–he was a salesman. This doesn’t diminish his important to the development of new slot technologies; casino managers needed to be convinced to give the new machines a chance, and Redd had few rivals as a salesman. He also had the vision to encourage innovation and invest in developing new ideas that others might have turned down.

In King of the Slots, Jack Harpster traces Redd’s career, from his childhood as a sharecropper’s son in rural Mississippi, to his start in the coin-operated amusement business with pinball machines and later jukeboxes, to a successful career as a machine route operator and distributor, to a second career in Nevada as a slot salesman and, eventually, manufacturer. Harpster packs an incredible amount of detail–based on exhaustive research–into this biography, giving the reader a surprisingly vivid portrait of Redd. He is to be commended for drawing on a range of sources and melding them into a readable story.

Despite his renowned philanthropy, Redd wasn’t all sweetness and light–as a hard-headed negotiator, he didn’t always make those he did business with happy. Towards the end of his life, he had a series of regulatory reverses that may have tarnished his legacy. Similarly, Redd didn’t always have the Midas touch when it came to business. It’s to Harpster’s credit that he doesn’t minimize these negatives, and they make his biography of Redd feel more balanced and more accurate for their inclusion.

Even Las Vegas and casino history buffs will learn quite a bit from King of the Slots. It’s a well-researched look into the life of an important, but undeservedly lesser-known, gaming pioneer. It deserves a place in everyone’s Nevada/gambling library.

Jonathan Weiner. Long for this World: The Strange Science of Immortality. New York: HarperCollins, 2010. 320 pages.

Immortality’s a tricky subject to write about. There are few people who wouldn’t be at least a little interested in the prospect of living forever, but since no one’s been documented doing it, there’s really not much to say about the subject. Extending human life, however, is another story,. Weiner summarizes how the average human lifespan’s been steadily increasing, and asks the question: why can’t this go on indefinitely?

In search of answers, he discusses the work and personalities of several scientists and enthusiasts working in gerontology. The most colorful of them, Aubrey de Grey, quite possibly has a messiah complex about the whole thing, and his personal affectations–wild beard, constant beer-swilling–make you wonder if it’s about the science or just a plea for attention by someone who whose day job isn’t setting the world on fire.

Yet there’s a real story here, one that Weiner tells with language so carefully balanced that it’s no stretch to call it beautiful. He does a wonderful job of conveying extremely technical details about aging at the cellular level in a way that’s completely accessible to the non-specialist, but not at all patronizing. The book is at its best when Weiner is talking to gerontologists or summarizing their research and theories. It’s at its weakest when Weiner combs through history, sharing excerpts of what physicians, philosophers, and scientists have written about immortality. This is the sort of material that would work well in an academic monograph because it demonstrates the incredible breadth of research the author has undertaken, but it doesn’t really have much relevance to what today’s scientists are doing.

In the penultimate chapter, “The Trouble with Immortality,” Weiner also offers–and appears to condone–a laughably weak argument against conducting research into gerontology: if advances in medical sciences allowed everyone to live to be 1,000, we’d have to worry about Hitler, Stalin, and Mao living for a thousand years, making it sound like living longer will inevitably lead to dictatorships. First, I would think this idea’s been historically disproved, since freedom has increased and despotism decreased greatly as life expectancies have gone up. Second, it’s setting a rule for everyone based on the worst case scenario. By this logic, we should abandon all medical science, since some of the people doctors save might become despots. I’d also expect that Matt Ridley (I’m currently reading his RATIONAL OPTIMIST) would have something to say to him about his claim that “we already overcrowd much of the planet,” but I’ll leave that to him.

In short, it’s an interesting subject, wonderfully written, with a few stand-out personalities. LONG FOR THIS WORLD is a good read about a subject that’s close, no doubt, to everyone’s heart.

Akasha Lonsdale. Do I Kneel or Do I Bow? What You Need to Know When Attending Religious Occasions. London: Kuperard, 2010. 336 pages.

This book sets out to help people understand different religions, with an emphasis on the practical–how to behave at “religious occasions.” Written from a primarily British perspective, it covers eight religions: Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, Orthodox Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Skihism, and Buddhism. Each religion’s section is divided into explanations of what its followers believe, what to expect in places of worship, the religious calendar (festivals and holiday), and rituals and ceremonies, with an additional glossary of important terms.

Overall, the book is adequate, giving readers a basic idea of what to expect when attending religious ceremonies. But it’s hampered by the author’s “one faith-many paths” approach, which is a bit misleading and possibly condescending. She claims, for example, that Hinduism “contrary to appearances, is a monotheistic faith,” (212) which seems a gross over-simplification, if not an outright distortion. It doesn’t square with what I’ve read about Hinduism in other comparative religion books, to say the least. Then again, it’s difficult to capture the nuances and complexities of any faith in a few paragraphs, ]so I’d take the book’s theological discourses with a grain of salt, and focus on the practical guide to how to behave.

Essentially, it all comes down to: do what others around you are doing (standing or sitting), and if in doubt, ask. This is sensible advice under any circumstances, but doubly so in a religious context.

I’m not enough of any expert in comparative religions to judge the book’s accuracy, but I noticed more than one error in the section on Judaism. For example, Lonsdale claims that all of the Jewish holidays “with the exception of Rosh Hashana” fall on fixed dates. “Confusingly,” she writes, “Rosh Hashana is celebrated in Tishrei, the seventh month of the ecclesiastical year.” I don’t understand how this is confusing: in the Western tradition the fiscal year starts on July 1, the school year in September, baseball season in April. And Rosh Hashana definitely has a fixed date: the first of Tishrei. So it might be bad proofreading, but it’s definitely not true that the holiday has no fixed date.

Basically, this might be a good start for understanding what’s going on in other faiths, but is hardly the last word.

Robert L. O’Connell. The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic. New York: Random House, 2010. 336 pages.

This book, by military historian Robert O’Connell, looks at the hows and also the whys of the battle of Cannae, one of the most conclusive–but ultimately least decisive–battles in Western history. In 216 B.C,, Hannibal, the brilliant Carthaginian general, inflicted a nearly-mortal wound on the Roman republic. The Roman army lost more men on that day than any other army in any other battle in history. Yet Hannibal ultimately was unable to defeat Rome, and 14 years later suffered his own defeat at Zama, in northern Africa, a battle which effectively ended the Second Punic War. THE GHOSTS OF CANNAE takes the reader from the origins of the Roman/Punic conflicts to the aftermath of the wars.

The book, generally a synthesis of ancient and modern scholarship on Rome, Carthage, and their conflicts, gives the reader a great deal of information. We learn how soldiers on both sides trained, how much equipment they carried, and what it took to get them in the field. O’Connell also sheds light on the political maneuvering that, more than military needs, often determined the pace of the war.

Given that all of this happened about 2,200 years ago, there’s not the same sense of immediacy you’d get from an account of a more recent war–surviving records are sometimes fragmentary, and there is simply a great deal about many of the central characters that we don’t know. At this stage, though, vivid personalities are pretty much the realm of historical fiction, as there’s just not enough in the historical record to flesh out characters. This at times makes the reading a bit one-dimensional, but O’Connell’s good sense of space and geography gives the battles enough context to seem real.

All in all, it’s a good military history of an epic battle, and a good read for those interested in military history.

Daniel Okrent. Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. New York: Scriber, 2010. 480 pages.

Prohibition is one of the great riddles of American history. Looking at it from the distance of three generations, it seems inexplicable that Americans voted to outlaw intoxicating beverages, and it seems clear that the drys were on the wrong side of history. From our perspective, the debate seems so one-sided that the passage of Prohibition seems a mystery. But at the time it made sense to many Americans, and seemed like a good idea. Daniel Okrent’s LAST CALL reintroduces us to many of the key players behind the 18th amendment, the Volstead Act that followed, and those who enforced and broke the law in the next decade.

Okrent brings to life the men and women who shaped–and eventually brought down–Prohibition, and rescues many of them from obscurity. Wayne Wheeler of the Anti-Saloon League, the political strategist considered in his lifetime to be the most influential man in America, is perhaps the keystone to understanding the hold that drys maintained on the American political process before and after the passage of the 18th amendment. Mabel Willebrandt, US Assistant Attorney General in charge of prosecuting Volstead Act violations, is also brought into focus, as are a host of other key players, from Canadian distiller Sam Bronfman to Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith, the most famous pair of Prohibition agents of the 1920s. Reading this book really brings the characters back to life.

Okrent has pulled together a readable synthesis of the scholarly and popular historical material on Prohibition, and LAST CALL is a great popular history of the movement that lead to the law and the period that followed its enactment. If anything, some readers might consider the book a bit too detailed in some sections, but this doesn’t detract from Okrent’s accomplishments in presenting a single-volume history of a complex topic and period in American history.

David Gordon. The Serialist. New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2010. 335 pages.

Fiction is much harder to review than non-fiction. With the latter, you just need a good topic and a passable writing style, and you can get a feel for the book within a few pages. Fiction, which requires a much bigger investment from the reader, it a different animal. A novel can go from great to awful in less than a page. Maybe this is why I review so much more non-fiction than fiction: it’s easier, and it’s much more straightforward. But I decided to take a chance on The Serialist.

The Serialist starts strong–in the first 20 pages, I thought this was the best novel I’d read for a while. It’s a great set-up–Harry Bloch, a struggling writer who toils in the trenches of genre fiction while his ex-girlfriend runs with a higher-class literary crowd. Gordon really nails the struggling genre-writer thing, and he creates a character who’s painfully aware of his own short-comings.

Then the plot kicks in, with Bloch being commissioned by a serial killer on death row to do some freelance work. From there, the writer’s pulled into the story, and must play detective for high stakes in a deadly game of cat and mouse (yes, I know I’m mixing metaphors…I’m paying homage to the genre). To me, once you’ve got bodies turning up, the story gets much less engaging. Serial killers are just about all the same: they’re narcissistic sadists. Struggling writers, though, come in all different shades of desperation and failure. There’s just more room for real novelty (and literary experimentation) there. I know there are probably way too many writers writing about writing, but to me it’s more fun to read that than a writer writing about serial killers. If you like grisly, though, you’ll get your fill.

It’s still a good slice of crime genre fiction, and it’s an interesting twist on the concept of a writer (or editor) getting entangled in his story, much like Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, but tending towards the pulps rather than the esoterics. Could have done without the Al Gore reference in one of the stories, though–if it’s earnest, oh please, and if it’s ironic, that was maybe too subtle. In any event, it took me out of the story and got me thinking about the politics of climatology, which probably wasn’t the author’s intention.

At the end, it was an entertaining book, and decent crime fiction. By half-way through, I wasn’t as entranced as I was in those first 20 pages, but it still delivered something good.

Joel J. Miller. The Revolutionary Paul Revere. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010. 304 pages.

Paul Revere is famous for his midnight ride, but his life says a great deal more about the founding of the American republic than that single incident. In this new biography, Joel Miller uses Revere’s life to tell readers a little more about the social, cultural, and political milieu of Revolutionary Boston.

Revere had an interesting life, outside of his ride. Born to a French immigrant and a native New Englander in 1734, he followed his father into silversmithing and imbibed the whig politics of Boston. Well-established by the time that Boston’s independence-minded merchants, lawyers, and editors began to question British rule, as a Mason and respected artisan, he became a key player in the opposition–not quite at the center, with Adams, Hancock, Otis, and others, but not so far from it, either. While the Revolutionary War itself didn’t bring Revere the military success he hoped for, he was fortunate to live a long and prosperous life, even in his last years extending his business from precious metals to copper refining.

Miller’s produced a short, readable life of Revere. At times, it’s perhaps a bit too casual, as on page 138 when a young boy gets “smacked upside the head” with a musket stock. Miller doesn’t give the reader the peri-wigged colonial America that you might remember from elementary school; instead it’s a bustling place, filled with strivers, con artists, and idealists. He provides an interesting window on the American Revolution, and by synthesizing material from the bountiful scholarship on Revere, the period, and its major characters, gives readers a good glimpse at one American city at the dawn of the republic.

Jack Cashill. Popes and Bankers: A Cultural History of Credit & Debit, from Aristotle to AIG. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010. 259 pages.

With many of our current economic problems blamed on over-leveraging (both nationally and right here in Las Vegas), it’s a good idea to get a sense of how credit and debt have historically developed. In POPES AND BANKERS, Jack Cashill does just that, explaining how, every step of the way, there have been those who have opposed borrowing and lending.

Cashill weaves together philosophical, religious, and cultural discourses on credit, pulling together a variety of sources to take us from Biblical prohibitions against usury to current anger against sub-prime lenders. Cashill makes his sympathies clear right off; instead of focusing our wrath on “predatory lenders,” he suggested we might find the roots of our current economic crisis by looking at “predatory borrowers,” a group for whom Cashill revives the Aristotilean term “prodigal.” He does a good job of pulling in ideas about debt from various sources, including the writings of Aquinas, Dante, and Bentham (to name a random few) to show how our ideas of credit and debit have changed over the years.

From the time of Martin Luther to at least that of Henry Ford, many of those who rage against “usury” have been avowedly anti-Semitic. Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice figures heavily in Cashill’s discussion of this strand of anti-usury, but he demonstrates that the Bard was merely scratching the surface. As he moves closer to present-day America, Cashill is able to shift his discussion from morality to politics. His interpretation of the New Deal is likely at odds with that in your college textbook. Within the past decade, he traces how political interference in the mortgage process, from the Community Reinvestment Act (1977) to the American Dream Downpayment Act (2003) led lenders to make loans they probably shouldn’t have. The result was the current housing bust.

All in all, this is a thought-provoking book that pulls from many diverse sources; if nothing else, after reading it you’ll be able to browse the business section with a little more perspective than yesterday’s closing Dow, and it might force you to think a little more closely about your own borrowing habits.

Bud Smith and Michael McCallister. Word Press in Depth. Indianapolis: Que, 2010. 410 pages.

If you haven’t noticed, this blog is in Wordpress. I’ve been using the software for about five years, and I’ve never felt that I’ve unlocked its full potential. So I was eager to read WORDPRESS IN DEPTH to get some insight into how to improve it.

Most of the book is geared towards those who host their blogs on wordpress.com, who are generally less invested in blogging than those who install WP themselves and run a blog on their own server space. So there’s a great deal of information about getting started with a blog–all of it useful–including whether to stake out your own domain name and what upgrades to consider on top of the standard, free WP hosting. I’m sure that much of the material walking new users through themes and widgets will be very helpful for…new users.

It’s not until page 229 that we get to wordpress.org-specific stuff, and again much of it is a walk-through. There’s a lengthy section on creating your own theme from scratch, something I’m most interested in, that looks comprehensive, though I haven’t put it into practice yet.

All in all, this looks like a solid guide for someone who hasn’t used WordPress before and doesn’t want to slog through the wordpress.org support forums for hours trying to figure things out. If you’re just getting started, this is probably a good investment, just from the time and frustration you’ll save. More experienced users might not get as much out of it, though they may find that it helps them extend their abilities a bit.

David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler. Henry Clay: The Essential American. New York: Random House, 2010. 624 pages.

Henry Clay was a giant of early American politics. As Speaker of the House, senator from Kentucky, secretary of state, and de facto leader of the Whig opposition to Andrew Jackson, his power often rivaled that of presidents. But today, though most Americans might acknowledge him as vaguely important, few know much about his actual accomplishments.

In this book, Heidler and Heidler provide a welcome correction to this trend with an exhaustive biography of Clay that might reintroduce him to a new generation. The Heidlers have drawn on a range of sources, including the work of other historians, contemporary news accounts, Clay’s speeches, and private correspondence. The result is a balanced portrait of Clay that does justice to a man full of contradictions, who owned slaves and advocated a protectionist tariff yet spoke as a champion of liberty.

The authors not only present the reader with a life of Clay; they reevaluate several ideas about Clay, such as the claim that, in 1841, he deliberately sabotaged John Tyler’s presidency in order to clear the field for his own run in 1844. The Heidlers suggest that this wasn’t true, and that Clay posthumously became the victim of an organized smear campaign orchestrated by political enemies with axes to grind. Points like this make the book an interesting, critical read; since the authors are actively evaluating the extant sources, the reader gets to do the same.

HENRY CLAY as comprehensive a book about Clay that the non-specialist is likely to want. While it is quite readable, it’s readable in the sense that a marathon is runnable: it’s good enough to keep you turning the pages, but with 624 of them, it’s a long haul. Those looking for a briefer introduction might find the going a bit tough, but there is a great deal of good writing–and powerful history–in these pages.