Ambrosia is an interesting sort of book. We’ve all read some study of a particular kind of music or a branch of the art world, and in that sense it does an excellent job of explaining the various genres and sub-genres (house, garage, trance, techno, break-beats, drum n’ bass and hardcore), the people and places where this music came to life. What’s unusual about this is the immediacy of it all. There is no filtering through time and history – the artists and DJs are people you here on the radio, titles that you’ve probably got on your iPod right now. The nightclubs and rave scenes are places you could go to this weekend (well, assuming you can afford a last minute flight to New York or Ibiza). This makes the book current in a way that is really appealing to me.

Now, that also means that there is no great historical distance on these artists and their music. While there is no denying this is a well-established genre and one that will likely continue to influence popular music for a long time, it is still too new, I think, to draw a lot of big, important conclusions. Author James Cummins tries – too hard, at times – to make big and broad statements about the impact of electronica music. This is still a young genre and only time will tell its long-term impact on the culture that surrounds it.

Cummins also paints a rather idyllic picture of the nightclubs and raves where electronica is most popular. As in all musical arenas, there are bad guys and good guys, but reading Ambrosia might give you the impression that the fans of electronica are all staunch anti-drug advocates; this has certainly not been my experience of raves and nightclubs. But if Cummins has an overly-rosy view of the scene, it’s easy to overlook it. He quite obviously loves the music and is really passionate and enthusiastic about these artists and their work, and that scores real points with me.

I will say that my copy could have used a final edit for grammar and sentence structure (mixed tenses are painful to read), but mine may have been an ARC. I could check the book, if I had it, to be sure. Drat. Still, if you are a fan of any sort of electronic music, it makes a very enjoyable read. Check it out at Clark-Nova Books, where you can order direct from the publisher.

The term could have been James Heaphy’s job description.

Legerdemain is the story of Heaphey’s time in Morocco, working for U.S. Air Force intelligence. At the time, the United States had a secret cache of nuclear weapons, hidden in an air force base in Nouasseur. A journalist assigned to the base newspaper, The Minaret, Heaphey’s true assignment is to gather information on the nationalist forces brewing in Morocco. While official US policy was to work with the French colonial forces controlling the region, they secretly worked to encourage and befriend the local nationalists. The US believed that eventually the nationalist forces would drive out the French, and we wanted to be well-positioned to maintain our bases in the region. To do that, we needed to have friends on both sides of the fence.

Spying involves a lot of meetings. There is a lot of sitting around conference tables, looking at files; Heaphey spends a lot of his time and effort putting out an actual newspaper, all the while he is working on more secretive projects. There is a lot – and I mean a LOT – of lying. There are parties to attend and people to meet and you must find a way to convince everyone that you are really on their side. Heaphey uses his cover as a journalist to ask a lot of questions, travel to a lot of restricted areas and move freely amongst a variety of people – anything could be a story. He seems to be very aware of the responsibility he bears for not just his own work, but the people around him. When he involves a good friend, Sargeant Jilly Hopper, in his work, he is keenly aware that an innocent misstep could lead to the end of her promising career, but he still can’t tell her what he knows – even if it would keep her safe.

Anyone interested in the day-to-day work of an intelligence operative will find this a fascinating read. There is no James Bond-style excitement, only a few real confrontations, but it does a good job of explaining old-style intelligence gathering. I must admit that it seems a bit dated, with no mention of the Internet, no wire-tapping or high-tech gadgetry, but it is still a very interesting look at some of the secrets we kept and how we kept them.

Buy your copy at Amazon.com.

How would you like to go to the grocery store or the gynecologist or your graduation wearing a $37,000 diamond necklace? Would it be fun? Would it be shocking? Would it change your life?

In Cheryl Jarvis’ book, The Necklace, Jonell McClain convinces 11 other women to band together with her to bid on a $37,000 diamond tennis necklace. (The 13th – and most reluctant – member is the jeweler’s wife.) They hold regular meetings, they set up guidelines for sharing the necklace (everyone gets it for a month), they talk about where the necklace has been and what they’ve done while wearing it – everything from trips to the gynecologist to sky diving. There are rules about when you must have the necklace (if you are going to Paris) and what you must do while you have it (you must make love wearing only the diamonds, which is how one woman convinces her husband to sign off on the project). The women are very different from each other, they have different reasons for getting involved, but they all find it a novel and exciting experience and they take different things away from it.

Jonell, an ex-hippie, wants to make the necklace an experiment in group ownership. She wants the women to get involved together in social and political movements and she is for some reason surprised to find that not everyone shares her politics. Maggie is an adventurer and her first big adventure with the necklace is to wear it sky diving. When the other women find out that she called a tv station and they were on-hand to film her jump, they are not a bit happy. Others are successful career women and use the necklace (which the group named “Jewelia”) to reconnect with women friends.

The book is an interesting read, although I sometimes felt a little skeptical. No one seems concerned about the necklace being lost (skydiving? you’re going to jump out of a plane wearing our hugely expensive diamonds? I don’t think so!) or stolen. They loan it to everyone in town, sitting in coffee shops and letting strangers wear it around for varying periods of time. They host fundraisers where people make large charitable donations just to spend the evening with the women who bought the necklace – why? One of the things that kept bothering me was that they continually refer to it as a “$37,000 necklace.” That was the original price; however, the price had been dropped to $22,000 and at the silent auction they bid $12,000. A lot of money, but even I found the larger number to have more impact in print. I’m just not sure it’s accurate.

Perhaps it’s because I’m not a big fan of jewelry that I cannot imagine a necklace changing my life, or so many women being moved by the power of some diamonds. Patti, a personal shopper and a woman with a huge wardrobe and closets full of accessories, finds that owning the necklace changes her whole perspective on being a consumer, so perhaps it’s possible. It was interesting to see the different ways the women connected. I’m not sure that it has anything profound to say about our consumerist culture, but it says a lot about how women form friendships and the value of those friendships. I also found that necklace gave the women something to talk about with other people and a reason for people to take an interest in them. This seemed to make them blossom, far more than you could credit to pretty jewelry.

My copy was an Advance Reader’s Edition; buy your copy at Amazon.com.

Here’s one interesting tidbit I picked up: Have you ever wondered how tennis bracelets got their name? Check the comments for the answer.

Sin in the Second City is the story of the Everleigh Sisters, who ran the most notorious brothel in Chicago in the 1890′s/early 1900′s. This was at a time when brothels were not exactly illegal: prostitution and gambling were confined to “vice districts”, so that decent folks didn’t have to see it and only folks who went looking for vice would find it. A very pragmatic attitude. Prostitutes in the brothels were registered with the police. Madams paid for protection from police, politicians and crime bosses alike. In the midst of all that, the Everleigh Sisters created an empire.

Their house was unique in the city and perhaps in the country. In other houses, the working girls appeared in tawdry lingerie and lined up so customers could make their selection. The Everleigh girls (called “butterflies” by the sisters, Ada and Minna) appeared only in evening gowns and jewels. They recited poetry for their clients, dining with them and providing champagne in lavishly decorated parlors. The girls were instructed to never rob or “roll” their clients, on threat of expulsion from the house – a serious threat, since there was always a waiting list of women from all over the country, looking for positions at the Everleigh Club. The women received regular medical examinations, required by law, but often forged in other houses. Their patrons were politicians, athletes, writers, socialites and celebrities. They almost made prostitution glamorous.

The truly interesting thing about this book is getting a look at the way politics and vice worked together. For a long time, segregated vice districts were common in cities, and the police helped work to maintain them. As times and attitudes changed, there were increasing pressures on the police and politicians to clean up the districts. There is an interesting discussion of the changing attitudes about prostitutes – from vixen to victim to feeble-minded – that influenced the way society viewed the vice districts and the women who worked there. If you are interested in city politics in all its interactions, you’ll find this an excellent object lesson, with a dash of racy history to spice things up. I found it an enjoyable read.

You can order your copy of Sin in the Second City on on Amazon.com.

I was most interested in this book because of my interest in political rumors, and it is interesting to consider them in the light of some of the information presented here. For example, people spread political gossip not just to sway your vote, but also to reinforce their own status within the group; according to DiFonzo, “people are are not always primarily interested in the truth when they speak together, but rather to find ways to affiliate and bond with one another.”

Another interesting issue is that of fact-checking. I have often wondered why people who forward those viral emails don’t take a minute or two to check their facts. After all, who wants to look foolish, forwarding a hoax? Apparently, that is part of the answer: people don’t check their facts because they don’t want to embarass the person who sent them the rumor. (That has never stopped me, for the record. I am in favor of embarassing mass-forwarders whenever I can.) No excuse, in my opinion, for some of the dreck that gets passed around.

Generally speaking, this is an interesting and timely book, but you won’t find any startling revelations here. There are some interesting anecdotes and a lot of common sense information, including some techniques for managing the rumor mill that might be useful for those readers forced to deal with office politics.

My copy of The Watercooler Effect was an Advanced Reader Copy. You can order your copy here.

Do you know where the term “scuttlebutt” comes from? Check the comments for the answer!

Dangerous Joy is a collection of essays and magazine pieces on the strange and fascinating people that Kennedy has interviewed and profiled. The title piece tells the story of Alex Comfort, a British biologist and the author of The Joy of Sex, the book that started the sexual revolution. Any ideas you might have had about how this book came into being are wrong – the facts are much stranger than you would have imagined.

Kennedy writes about people who are changing the world in their own ways. Several are inventors – scientists finding ways to bring food to starving villages, people who have converted their cars to run on french fry grease, engineers developing tools that can be built for pennies and change the lives of people in third world countries. She writes about the strongest girl in the world and about a parrot with remarkable communication skills and about treating depression with nine volt batteries. It is clear in every word that she is genuinely interested in these people and their innovative ideas and their oddball behavior. I love a nonfiction writer who is willing to get involved in their stories – Kennedy lets a researcher hook her brain up to a battery, just to see what happens. The book is a fast, fun read and I highly recommend it. I mean, this is a woman who writes essays about finding a scorpion in her shorts…it makes you wonder what great stories she has yet to tell.