Alfred A. Knopf

Age of betrayal; the triumph of money in America, 1865-1900.

A senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly, Beatty tells how, having redeemed democracy during the Civil War, America betrayed it during the Gilded Age. That time, he says, saw the birth of the plutocracy and inequality that rules the country a century later. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

A history of Israel; from the rise of Zionism to our time, rev. 3d ed.

Sachar (emeritus, history, George Washington U.) presents a general political and economic history of Israel intended in large part for university students and general readers that begins with the forerunners of the modern Zionist movement in the late 19th century and, with this new edition, continues through 2006. While generally sympathetic to the Israeli national project, Sachar is not uncritical of some of its political tendencies, be they from "an aggressive minority of fundamentalist zealots," "colonialist militants," or "transgressors of public morality." (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The life of Kingsley Amis.

This comprehensive biography of British comic novelist Kingsley Amis (1922-1995) draws on interviews with those who knew him, his fiction and poetry, memoirs, and letters to describe his life. Leader (English literature, U. of Roehampton, UK) uses six themes to construct the narrative: the influence of his early upbringing, aggression in his character and writings, his energy, his sense of writing as craft or profession, his issues with distinctions between high and low culture and love of popular forms, and his obsession with egotism, selfishness, and inconsiderateness. He also discusses his writing methods and the relationship of his writings to his contemporaries. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The long exile; a tale of Inuit betrayal and survival in the high Arctic.

Arriving in the Inuit community of Inukjuak, on the east coast of the Hudson Bay, in 1920, Robert Flaherty set about filming his influential film Nanook of the North. After finishing his filming, Flaherty would leave never to return, but the son he fathered, Josephie Flaherty, would remain behind to suffer with his community as they were forcibly moved hundreds of miles north by the Canadian government some 30 years later, not to receive any form of redress until the mid-1990s. This book both describes the making of the movie and the influence it had on perceptions of the Inuit and the fortunes of Robert Flaherty's Inuit descendants as they coped with exile and hardship. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)