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A Rip In Heaven; Heart of the Storm; How Tough Could It be?; A Chimp In the Family
A Rip In Heaven Heart of the Storm How Tough Could It be A Chimp In the Family Author:Jeanine Cummins; Col. Edward Fleming; Austin Murphy; Vince Smith A RIP IN HEAVEN — On the night of April 4, 1991, during a spring-break family vacation to St. Louis, Cummins's 19-year-old brother, Tom, and his two female cousins were attacked while walking on the abandoned Old Chain of Rocks Bridge. During the attack, the girls were raped; afterward, all three were pushed off the bridge by the four assailants.... more » Tom survived; the girls did not. Cummins presents a mesmerizing, highly balanced memoir of the events, writing in the third person to give readers "an intimate knowledge of each facet of the story." She introduces her own family, referring to herself by her childhood nickname, and then does the same for each of the assailants, thoughtfully painting an in-depth portrait of each character without ever passing judgment. Moreover, she takes what could be cold, dry factual information from "court documents, police records, electronic media" and her own interviews and deftly weaves them into a compelling, novel-like account. She explores the family's initial horror over the police holding Tom as a suspect for this crime that made national headlines. (One of the attackers wound up with a 30-year plea; the others are currently on death row.) For someone so closely related to a crime victim to strike such a fine balance in chronicling it is a highly admirable feat. Cummins's noble account will ultimately draw readers into all sides of the story.
HEART OF THE STORM
During his 30 years in the Air Force and Air National Guard, Fleming made a career of descending from the sky to pluck disaster victims from the jaws of floods, storms, sharks and polar white-outs. His gripping memoir vividly illustrates how tenuous the life of a deus ex machina can be. Fleming recalls the tragic and sometimes gruesome deaths of unlucky colleagues who succumbed to the elements and recounts hair-raising missions that often took place at night, flown through hazardous weather (including the vicious nor?easter Sebastian Junger made famous in The Perfect Storm) in fragile helicopters prone to mechanical breakdown. Avoiding gung-ho special-ops bluster, he probes the human flaws and lapses?incompetent, panicky pilots, abusive officers, penny-pinching bureaucrats who refuse to pay for much-needed equipment?that bedevil even elite outposts of the military. Fleming?s sober, straightforward, well-paced style lucidly conveys the lore of helicopter flight and the practical difficulties of rescue missions while letting the heroics speak for themselves. Photos.
Copyright ? Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
HOW TOUGH COULD IT BE
From Booklist
Murphy, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, has a way-cool gig, covering all the major sports, but he decided to take a six-month sabbatical as a stay-at-home dad while his wife pursued her career, also as a writer. The result is hardly a surprise: Murphy learns that domestic engineering is a tough job and that mixing love with discipline is even tougher. There are the usual comic set pieces involving off-to-school chaos and terrible dinners, but somehow Murphy keeps it fresh with self-deprecating humor, a genuine desire to connect with his kids on a higher plane than middle-aged playmate, and a crisp style that incorporates some of the absurdist sensibilities of Dave Barry. Despite Murphy's Sports Illustrated connection, the target audience here is the off-the-sports-page crowd. Don't be surprised if Murphy turns up on The View singing the praises of enlightened parenthood. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright ? American Library Association. All rights reserved
A CHIMP IN THE FAMILY
From Publishers Weekly
Sophie, a chimp, was orphaned when her mother rejected her at the Chester zoo in England. In this engrossing story, Smith, Sophie's foster "parent," takes readers on a fascinating interspecies journey of love, heartache and the frustrations and joys of primatology. Smith and his wife, Audrey, raised Sophie alongside their baby son, Oliver, in the early 1990s-and the two even share teething pains. Smith eventually takes the family to Kenya, where he works for Sweetwaters Game Reserve Ranch to set up a chimp sanctuary. In the role of loving foster parent, Smith even goes so far as to eat termites to try to wean Sophie onto a diet closer to that of her closest biological relatives. Readers also get stories of biting safari ants, lion attacks, garden-raiding elephants, African politics and, of course, chimpanzees, who are 98.4% genetically similar to humans. Eloquently arguing that chimps have their own type of culture, Smith shows that chimps self-medicate to rid themselves of parasites, groom each other and use tools; Sophie uses an acacia thorn to remove a splinter from Oliver's foot. While much of Sophie's story is tragic, Smith's humor and insights make for a heartfelt read.
Copyright ? Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and The Third Chimpanzee
[This] wonderful, moving book...gives us unique insights into our closest animal relative.« less