Review of reviews:?Books

Book of the week

The New Cold War: Putin’s Russia and the Threat to the West

by Edward Lucas

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(Palgrave Macmillan, $27)

The West has trusted Russia too long, says veteran Economist correspondent Edward Lucas. Russian President Vladimir Putin and his circle are not interested in building a modern democratic state. Putin came to power in the wake of bombings that were blamed on Chechen rebels but may have been set off by his own Federal Security Service. He has crushed dissidents. He has used Russia’s gas monopoly to bully neighboring states. Estonia has accused Russia of cyberattacks. Ukraine has been notified that Russia will target the country with nuclear weapons should it join NATO. As Putin’s handpicked successor, Dmitri Medvedev, prepares to assume the Russian presidency, says Lucas, the West must wake up to the regime’s true ambitions. “We are facing people who want to harm us.”

Lucas “is a brave man to stick his neck out so far,” said Daniel Johnson in The New York Sun. “In Russia, journalists have been murdered for saying less” than he does in this “extremely persuasive” book. Even so, the author isn’t blindly alarmist, said Thomas de Waal in the London Sunday Times. The New Cold War acknowledges that Russia’s armed forces are in collapse. It accepts that the nation’s oil and gas wealth, boosted by a huge worldwide spike in energy prices, is buoying an otherwise flimsy economy. If Lucas’ “impressive polemic” fails to convince every reader that Putin has indeed initiated a new “cold war,” it is at least “a useful appeal for vigilance.”

The “most arresting passages in the book,” in fact, are Lucas’ pleas for the West to renew its moral principles, said Marcus Warren in the London Sunday Telegraph. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder set a particularly bad example when he accepted a lucrative post inside Russia’s Gazprom gas monopoly shortly after leaving office. Warns Lucas: “If you believe that capitalism is a system in which money matters more than freedom, you are doomed” when people who don’t believe in freedom attack you using money as a weapon. The end of Putin’s presidency isn’t likely to change the essential dynamic, said Angus MacQueen in the London Guardian. Not only will Putin assume the title of prime minister, “rumor is” that he will replace Medvedev as chairman of Gazprom.

The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food

by Jennifer 8. Lee

(Twelve, $25)

There are more Chinese restaurants in America than McDonald’s, Burger King, and KFC franchises combined. Many of the dishes they serve can’t be found in China but are considered staples to customers from Sarasota to Seattle. “Our benchmark for American-ness is apple pie,” says author Jennifer 8. Lee. “But ask yourself: How often do you eat apple pie? How often do you eat Chinese food?” Lee, a New York Times reporter and American-born child of Chinese immigrants, long took for granted the coast-to-coast ubiquity of lemon chicken and chop suey. But once a twist of fate started her asking questions about fortune cookies, she realized that the origins of the entire Chinese restaurant industry were shrouded in mystery. Who, for instance, created those beautiful cardboard takeout boxes that every Chinese restaurant uses? And who was General Tso?

The answers she’s come up with are so fascinating that “anyone who has ever eaten a single egg roll should read her book,” said Jessica Bernstein-Wax in the Associated Press. Lee travels the world to find the

best Chinese food outside China, and she tracks down a dwindling community of Chinese Jews in the city of Kaifeng, hoping to find out why American Jews seem to like Chinese food so much. Her tastiest findings concern the food itself, said Kate Ward in Entertainment Weekly. The fortune cookie, she found, is actually a Japanese invention that Chinese restaurateurs started spreading across America during World War II. Your average soy sauce, she tells us, contains no soybeans.

Lee’s “stir-fry of a book” can sometimes grow unwieldy, said Heller McAlpin in Newsday. Her narrative focus tightens, though, when she tells stories about the immigrants who work in America’s 43,000 Chinese restaurants. If you’re a Chinese immigrant who arrived illegally or speaks no English, said Jennie Yabroff in Newsweek, chances are your American dream will start by consulting cryptic restaurant job postings in New York City and raising bus fare to whichever area code catches your eye. Anyone who reads Lee’s book will recall such stories vividly, said Bich Minh Nguyen in the Chicago Tribune, the next time they open their doors to a guy bearing mu shu pork.

Dangerous Laughter

by Steven Millhauser

(Knopf, $24)

Steven Millhauser is “consistently fun to read,” said Jeff Turrentine in The Washington Post. The Pulitzer-winning author of Martin Dressler apparently

“has never forgotten what it was like to be an 11-year-old boy, fueled by

curiosity and wonder.” He regularly puts comic-book spins on quotidian life to reawaken readers to its dazzling mysteries. In one story in his latest collection, an adolescent boy becomes obsessed with a girl he has come to know only through long talks in a pitch-black attic. In another, a small town replicates itself in every physical detail so that residents have a place to go to relax. Some of the 13 stories in Dangerous Laughter go nowhere after Millhauser establishes their central gimmicks, said David L. Ulin in the Los Angeles Times. “When fully developed,” though, “his work is among the most thought-provoking I’ve encountered.” In his most ambitious stories, he’s capable of “opening our imaginations, telling a story, and commenting on it all at once.” Even if the quality of this collection varies, said Michael Upchurch in The Seattle Times, its range makes it “a perfect introduction” to a writer who’s been dazzling readers for more than three decades.