For nearly forty years Iona Opie worked with her husband, Peter, on a notable series of books on the traditional lore of childhood, among them Children's Games in Street and Playground, The Singing Game, and The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren. As part of her fieldwork, she visited a local school playground every week, where she would write down events exactly as they happened, and conversations exactly as they were spoken. The result of these many years of observation, The People in the Playground is a startlingly honest portrait of children at play, at once charming and hilarious, alarming and poignant, and full of infectious vitality.
Here we meet the children of the Junior School playground in Liss—their favorite games, their silliest jokes, their engaging personalities. Opie provides much insight into children's play and human behavior: why crazes begin and stop so suddenly; the reasons for popularity and unpopularity; the ways in which new lore arrives on the playground; the unconcerned killing in the perennial game of "War"; or the tender commiseration for a friend who has stubbed his toe. She follows individual children week by week: the bully and his victim; the intellectual who would rather read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland than join in the games himself; the girl whose tragic home life can be forgotten as she plays a ring game; or the boy who is obsessed with gorillas. A group of boys offer Opie their version of tag ("There's someone got hayfever, right? He catches another one and they get hayfever. And they get tagged by someone who's free and they're all right.") A young girl asks why Opie is writing everything down, and then presents her own rendition of "Popeye the Sailors Man" for the record. And on a rainy day unsuitable for their regular games, a vivacious child offers her very best jokes:"I'm the one who tells you jokes—ta ra! Here's another one. What's the most unfortunate letter in the alphabet? Will you write it down, please. I like you writing them down," she says to Opie and continues, "The letter U—because whenever there's trouble you always find U in the middle of it."
No one has previously attempted to describe and record life in a playground while it is actually happening. In these pages are rich and startling portraits of children at play: their art of storytelling, the friendships and enmities, the excited interest in sex, the diversity of characters, and above all, the hilarity which pervades the playground, creating entertainment out of trivialities.

After the release of her bestselling title, Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap, Peggy Orenstein toured the country talking to groups of parents, teachers, and girls. It was after one of these teen town hall meetings that she decided to write about the crucible of postfeminist socialization at which today's women—not girls—find themselves: the reconciliation of motherhood and personal aspirations. It's a subject she's intimately familiar with. Orenstein began researching Flux when she was in her mid-30s and agonizing over whether to have a child: "I wanted the richness of motherhood in my life but worried over its costs. I could almost hear the traditionalist in me clucking, 'You can't have it all,' and it infuriated me. Why couldn't I? Why couldn't any of us?"

To help her answer these questions, she interviewed about 250 women between 1996 and 1999, and their varied responses serve as a kind of public consciousness-raising tool. She also interviewed their friends, lovers, and partners to get to the root of the expectations, joys, and frustrations of these women living in a "half-changed world." Though most of the women she interviewed come from similar backgrounds (college educated, white, middle class, and heterosexual), their combined experiences provide readers with plenty of different viewpoints to consider. A portrait of a generational Everywoman emerges from these snapshots in a way that furthers the stated purpose of the book: to inspire readers in "the search for a more satisfied life." — J.R.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

The classic account of the hurdles facing adolescent girls in America—now reissued with a new Foreword, to coincide with the award-winning author's new book on women and identity.

Inspired by a study by the American Association of University Women that showed girls' self-esteem plummeting as they reach adolescence, Peggy Orenstein spent months observing, interviewing, and getting know dozens of girls both inside and outside the classroom at two very different schools in northern California. The result was a groundbreaking book in which she brought the disturbing statistics to life with skill and flair of an experienced journalist.

Orenstein plumbs the minds of both boys and girls who have learned to equate masculinity with opportunity and assertiveness, and femininity with reserve and restraint. She demonstrates the cost of this insidious lesson, by taking us into the lives of real young women who are struggling with eating disorders, sexual harassment, and declining academic achievement, especially in math and science. Peggy Orenstein's SchoolGirls is a classic that belongs on the shelf with the work of Carol Gilligan, Joan Jacobs Brumberg, and Mary Pipher. It continues to be read by all who care about how our schools and our society teach girls to shortchange themselves.

Susan Orlean, New Yorker staff writer and author of The Orchid Thief, has always been drawn to the extraordinary in the ordinary, so when her Esquire editor asked her to profile the child actor Macaulay Culkin using the title "The American Man at Age Ten," she insisted instead on writing about a "typical" kid. The result—one of the 20 profiles drawn from magazines such as Esquire, The New Yorker, and Rolling Stone for this collection—is a vivid window into the life of an ordinary and endearing boy from New Jersey who grapples with girls, environmental destruction, and the magical childhood landscape "that erodes from memory a little bit every day." Orlean has two tricks up her sleeve that make her profiles irresistible. First, she's got a mean hook. Take this lead: "Of all the guys who are standing around bus shelters in Manhattan dressed in nothing but their underpants, Marky Mark is undeniably the most polite." Second, she has an uncanny way of drawing her subjects. Bill Blass "is a virtuoso of the high-pitched eyebrow and the fortissimo gasp," while a boxer (the dog kind) wears "the earnest and slightly careworn expression of a small-town mayor."

Orlean is a New Yorker herself, and most of her subjects hail from the Big Apple, including such unique personas as a real estate broker who can describe the inside of almost any apartment in the city ("Walking down a Manhattan street with her is a paranormal experience"); Nat, the new tailor at Manhattan Valet; her hairdresser; the city's most popular clown; an Ashanti king who drives a taxi; and the owner of the only buttons-only store in America. The author is keenly observant and always tries to walk in her subject's shoes, even when it's a show dog ("If I were a bitch, I'd be in love with Biff Truesdale"). When she does tackle the rich and famous, she uses these same talents to create portraits so intimate and zesty they're unlike any other. Orlean writes that her only justification for choosing a story is that she cares about it, and it shows. Her fondness for her subjects rubs off as she draws us into the tight and exquisite focus of their mundane and fascinating lives. —Lesley Reed

Susan Orlean has been called “a national treasure” by The Washington Post and “a kind of latter-day Tocqueville” by The New York Times Book Review. In addition to having written classic articles for The New Yorker, she was played, with some creative liberties, by Meryl Streep in her Golden Globe Award—winning performance in the film Adaptation.
Now, in My Kind of Place, the real Susan Orlean takes readers on a series of remarkable journeys in this uniquely witty, sophisticated, and far-flung travel book. In this irresistible collection of adventures far and near, Orlean conducts a tour of the world via its subcultures, from the heart of the African music scene in Paris to the World Taxidermy Championships in Springfield, Illinois–and even into her own apartment, where she imagines a very famous houseguest taking advantage of her hospitality.
With Orlean as guide, lucky readers partake in all manner of armchair activity. They will climb Mt. Fuji and experience a hike most intrepid Japanese have never attempted; play ball with Cuba’s Little Leaguers, promising young athletes born in a country where baseball and politics are inextricably intertwined; trawl Icelandic waters with Keiko, everyone’s favorite whale as he tries to make it on his own; stay awhile in Midland, Texas, hometown of George W. Bush, a place where oil time is the only time that matters; explore the halls of a New York City school so troubled it’s known as “Horror High”; and stalk caged tigers in Jackson, New Jersey, a suburban town with one of the highest concentrations of tigers per square mile anywhere in the world.
Vivid, humorous, unconventional, and incomparably entertaining, Susan Orlean’s writings for The New Yorker have delighted readers for over a decade. My Kind of Place is an inimitable treat by one of America’s premier literary journalists.

Ingeniously disguised as a weight-loss manual, this bestselling guide to preventing—and in some cases, reversing—heart disease through diet, exercise, and soul nourishing comes from renowned cardiologist Dr. Dean Ornish, the first doctor to prove that there are alternatives to surgery for clearing clogged arteries—namely, diet, exercise, and stress management. Citing his own published research findings, Ornish concludes that eating a vegetarian diet with only 10 percent of the total daily calories from fat is the first step to healthier, happier living. The other key elements—moderate exercise, fostering social support, and reconnecting with the self—take more time and care. For these, Ornish offers about 75 pages of encouraging words, again backed by numerous research findings and his personal experiences.

About 250 gourmet recipes from two dozen famous chefs help ease the blow to those who view becoming vegetarian as a dramatic lifestyle change. The good news is, entrées like Polenta Alla Veneziana and Tofu Gumbo will surely tickle the taste buds; the bad news is, the sheer number of ingredients and lengthy prep time required for most recipes could send readers running back to their favorite fast-food joints. Plenty of cooking methods, tips, and food descriptions help demystify the recipes; Ornish also provides a comprehensive nutritional analysis of common foods as well as for each dish. But the great strength of Eat More, Weigh Less is in Ornish's opening sections, where he builds a solid case for curbing fat, tossing out the meat and dairy, and fostering mental and emotional happiness. —Liane Thomas

What was a nice Eton boy like Eric Blair doing in scummy slums instead of being upwardly mobile at Oxford or Cambridge? Living Down and Out in Paris and London, repudiating respectable imperialist society, and reinventing himself as George Orwell. His 1933 debut book (ostensibly a novel, but overwhelmingly autobiographical) was rejected by that elitist publisher T.S. Eliot, perhaps because its close-up portrait of lowlife was too pungent for comfort.

In Paris, Orwell lived in verminous rooms and washed dishes at the overpriced "Hotel X," in a remarkably filthy, 110-degree kitchen. He met "eccentric people—people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent." Though Orwell's tone is that of an outraged reformer, it's surprising how entertaining many of his adventures are: gnawing poverty only enlivens the imagination, and the wild characters he met often swindled each other and themselves. The wackiest tale involves a miser who ate cats, wore newspapers for underwear, invested 6,000 francs in cocaine, and hid it in a face-powder tin when the cops raided. They had to free him, because the apparently controlled substance turned out to be face powder instead of cocaine.

In London, Orwell studied begging with a crippled expert named Bozo, a great storyteller and philosopher. Orwell devotes a chapter to the fine points of London guttersnipe slang. Years later, he would put his lexical bent to work by inventing Newspeak, and draw on his down-and-out experience to evoke the plight of the Proles in 1984. Though marred by hints of unexamined anti-Semitism, Orwell's debut remains, as The Nation put it, "the most lucid portrait of poverty in the English language." —Tim Appelo

Celebrated scholar Joseph Campbell shares his intimate and inspiring reflections on the art of living in this beautifully packaged book, part of a new series to be based on his unpublished writings.

At first glance, a novel that promises to expose the unethical practices of the American meat industry may not be at the top of your reading list, but Ruth Ozeki's debut, My Year of Meats is well worth a second look. Like the author, the novel's protagonist, Jane Takagi-Little, is a Japanese-American documentary filmmaker; like Ozeki, who was once commissioned by a beef lobbying group to make television shows for the Japanese market, Jane is invited to work on a Japanese television show meant to encourage beef consumption via the not-so-subliminal suggestion that prime rib equals a perfect family:TO: AMERICAN RESEARCH STAFF
FROM: Tokyo Office
DATE: January 5, 1991
RE: My American Wife!...

Here is list of IMPORTANT THINGS for My American Wife!

DESIRABLE THINGS:
1. Attractiveness, wholesomeness, warm personality
2. Delicious meat recipe (NOTE: Pork and other meats is second class meats, so please remember this easy motto: "Pork is Possible, but Beef is Best!")
3. Attractive, docile husband
4. Attractive, obedient children
5. Attractive, wholesome lifestyle
6. Attractive, clean house...

UNDESIRABLE THINGS:
1. Physical imperfections
2. Obesity
3. Squalor
4. Second class peoples

The series, My American Wife!, initally seems like a dream come true for Jane as she criss-crosses the United States filming a different American family each week for her Japanese audience. Naturally, the emphasis is on meat, and Ozeki has fun with out-there recipes such as rump roast in coke and beef fudge; but as Jane becomes more familiar with her subject, she becomes increasingly aware of the beef industry's widespread practice of using synthetic estrogens on their cattle and determines to sabotage the program.

Cut to Tokyo where Akiko Ueno struggles through the dull misery of life with her brutish husband, who happens to be in charge of the show's advertising. After seeing one of Jane's subversive episodes about a vegetarian lesbian couple, Akiko gets in touch and the two women plot to expose the meat industry's hazardous practices. Romance, humor, intrigue, and even a message—My Year of Meats has it all. This is a book that even a vegetarian would love.