About the Archive

This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.

Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems. Please send reports of such problems to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.

October 28, 1990, Page 007038Buy Reprints The New York Times Archives

WONDERFUL LIFE: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, by Stephen Jay Gould. (Norton, $10.95.) Drawing on the lessons of the Burgess fossils in western Canada, Stephen Jay Gould argues that mankind is not the pinnacle of evolution but the result of a series of unlikely accidents. "Mr. Gould is an exceptional combination of scientist and science writer" who tells his story "with fervor and intelligence," James Gleick said here last year.

MILE ZERO, by Thomas Sanchez. (Vintage Contemporaries, $10.95.) In this novel by the author of "Rabbit Boss," St. Cloud, a burned-out case from the 60's, languishes in Key West, Fla., finally finding some direction when he tries to help a young refugee who faces certain death if he is deported to Haiti. The story's "brilliantly contrived plot uncoils with the suspense of a thriller," Erica Abeel said in The Book Review in 1989. "Nothing is gratuitous: characters and actions are linked in a hidden web, sometimes with devastating irony."

THE SECOND SHIFT, by Arlie Hochschild with Anne Machung. (Avon, $9.95.) After interviewing 50 working couples, the authors conclude that the social revolution that got women into the work force can go no further until men take more responsibility for child care and other chores. "It is the best discussion I have read on what must be the quintessential domestic bind of our time," Robert Kuttner said here last year.

THE STORYTELLER, by Mario Vargas Llosa. Translated by Helen Lane. (Penguin, $8.95.) In the jungles of Peru, an anthropologist is so enchanted by an isolated group of Indians that he becomes part of the tribe. This is "science fiction at its best," our reviewer, Ursula K. Le Guin, said last year. "The concerns of 'The Storyteller' are intellectual, ethical and artistic, all at once and brilliantly so. To me this is Mr. Vargas Llosa's most engaging and accessible book, for the urgency of its subject purifies and illuminates the writing." Farrar, Straus & Giroux's Noonday imprint has reissued Mr. Vargas Llosa's novel CAPTAIN PANTOJA AND THE SPECIAL SERVICE ($8.95), which was first published in English in 1978. Translated by Gregory Kolovakos and Ronald Christ, it tells the story of an officer who is commissioned to organize a contingent of women to entertain the soldiers on Peru's Amazonian frontier.

YOU GOTTA HAVE WA, by Robert Whiting. (Vintage, $10.95.) An American journalist finds that in Japan baseball is taken with a seriousness that might astound even the most avid American fan. "Put down the heavy tomes on United States-Japan trade policies," Robert J. Collins said here last year. "Robert Whiting has hit upon a brilliant way of demonstrating the very different psyche of our major trading partner across the Pacific."

Continue reading the main story

SKIN TIGHT, by Carl Hiaasen. (Fawcett Crest, $5.95.) A former Florida state investigator trying to lead a quiet life in Biscayne Bay is drawn into a case involving an incompetent plastic surgeon. Last year our reviewer, Katherine Dunn, called this novel "Carl Hiaasen's latest dangerous weapon -- Uzi satire in 9-millimeter bursts aimed at those classic baddies, vanity and greed. . . . The dialogue is crisp and hot. The logic is clean, and the plot twists with sinewy coherence."

SEEING VOICES: A Journey Into the World of the Deaf, by Oliver Sacks. (Harper Perennial, $8.95.) The author of "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" argues that the deaf make up a separate culture that should have the right to develop American Sign Language, instead of English, as its own private tongue. Last year our reviewer, Paul West, said this book "brings afresh to our attention a problem that is never easily going to be solved."

MOSCOW 2042, by Vladimir Voinovich. Translated by Richard Lourie. (Harvest/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, $12.95.) A dissident Russian writer travels to the future, where the authorities try to get him to revise a book -- called "Moscow 2042" -- that he didn't even know he had written. This novel "is a comic delight, not least because it is a satire on satires, on itself," Malcolm Bradbury said here in 1987. "It is, quite simply, a wonderful book."

THE NEW MONEY MASTERS: Winning Investment Strategies of Soros, Lynch, Steinhardt, Rogers, Neff, Wanger, Michaelis, Carret, by John Train. (Harper Perennial, $10.95.) An investment adviser tells the stories of eight people who made fortunes by reacting to events in the news that were ignored by just about everybody else. "His descriptions are so admiring, I suspect he has overlooked some ugly details, but even so, I was riveted," Robert Krulwich said here last year.

IN TRANSIT: Twenty Stories, by Mavis Gallant. (Penguin, $7.95.) Set in Paris, Moscow, Helsinki and other places, these short stories are about people in transit, misunderstanding and being misunderstood by the people around them. Last year our reviewer, Ronald Bryden, said Mavis Gallant quietly demonstrates "how much of language, culture and their ideological designs on us is simply noise to most people, in this shifting world where fewer and fewer of us are at home, linguistically or otherwise."

WHOSE BROAD STRIPES AND BRIGHT STARS? The Trivial Pursuit of the Presidency 1988, by Jack W. Germond and Jules Witcover. (Warner, $12.95.) When this account of the recent campaign for the White House was published last year, our reviewer, Tom Goldstein, said it "provides sustenance for political junkies and a chance to catch up for those who may have boycotted newspapers and television news for the 18 months preceding last year's Presidential election."

Correction: October 28, 1990

Sunday, Late Edition - Final

A picture with the New & Noteworthy column in The Times Book Review today was printed in error. It shows the novelist Rafael Yglesias, not Thomas Sanchez.

Continue reading the main story
https://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/28/books/new-noteworthy.html?sq=Robert+Whiting%2C+baseball%2C%25&scp=40
www.nytimes.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2019-18
78951
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:XX3YHS3JAVZPCCABQGQQLYYFNSE7SNWC
<urn:uuid:526b6f92-52ae-4277-b562-4bb0e66a8117>
2019-04-25T04:35:45Z
151.101.201.164
text/html
sha1:BOXMNWDZEFEGPRIMG5JPIP2BTFQ6EIW2
<urn:uuid:5d1c76b7-61b1-4f95-b5fb-91308b65ee03>
https://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/28/books/new-noteworthy.html?sq=Robert+Whiting%2C+baseball%2C%25&scp=40
response
<urn:uuid:67780476-b068-4e57-87f2-b90fc461d42f>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2019-18
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for April 2019
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-169-175-90.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.15 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.1-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/