Book
Michael Chabon: The Yiddish Policemen's Union
(harpercollins)
With his Pulitzer-winning 2000 novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Berkeley’s Michael Chabon staked a claim to writing the best novel about Jewish identity since Philip Roth’s Zuckerman trilogy in the 1980s. Chabon’s latest is also preoccupied with questions of cultural identity and assimilation. But Chabon is a child of comic books and pulp fiction, which makes his approach a diverting feint: a compelling allegory wrapped in a Raymond Chandler novel as it might be conceived by Doris Lessing. The setting is Alyeska—that is, an Israeli-occupied region of Alaska, a God-forsaken ghetto of depredation. It seems the Jews were cast out of Israel in 1948 and forced to settle in this Arctic outpost. One of the castoffs, Meyer Landsman, is a sad-sack detective trying to solve the murder of a chess-playing junkie, but what begins as a crime story turns into a wrenching tale of exile and loss, written in a brilliantly conceived, high-beam prose style. Landsman’s partner, Berko, has a “regal” profile, “worthy of a coin or a carved mountainside”; a seedy bar is “as empty as an off-duty downtown bus and smells twice as bad.” Chabon’s gift for levity perfectly calibrates the novel’s serious intent, so you wind up with a book that’s both good and good for you. Expectations are high for this novel, and Chabon has knocked the sucker right out of the ballpark. A
MARC WEINGARTEN

CD
MIGUEL MIGS: THOSE THINGS
(SALTED MUSIC)
My usual complaint with house music is that it’s so damn predictable. Sure, a million subgenres have sprouted up over the years—tech house, microhouse, progressive house—but mainstream house still features the same unbending 4/4 beats, murmuring disco-diva vocals, and soft keyboard filigrees. It’s sexy, it’s unsurprising, it’s no wonder a million former sorority girls use it to pad their cleavage with sophistication. At first, the sophomore LP by San Francisco’s Miguel Migs (who has remixed the likes of Britney Spears and Macy Gray and was nominated for Best DJ in the 2004 House Music Awards) follows the usual pattern. Even when he’s applying live congas, trumpet, or guitar, his tracks sound indistinguishable from those on every 12-inch around. On the new CD’s second half, however, Migs offers the raunchy grit of “Shake It Up” (with guest vocals from rap MC Sadat X), the neo-Prince soul of “Body Never Lies,” and the reggae-infused “Fire” (featuring Jamaican legend Junior Reid). By the time Migs heads back to houseland for the final two cuts, he sounds like a complete artist rather than a one-trick pony.B+
DAN STRACHOTA

BOOK
KAUI HART HEMMINGS: THE DESCENDANTS
(RANDOM HOUSE)
It takes skill to make readers root for your narrator even when he is not particularly likable. In her impressive debut novel, San Francisco–based writer Kaui Hart Hemmings (who came out with a well-received story collection, House of Thieves, in 2005) does just that. Matt King, father of two troubled daughters and husband of one thrill-seeking and currently comatose wife, is also a wealthy landowner of royal blood. His wife’s coma forces him to step into his own life and place for the first time, as a father, as a husband, and finally as a Hawaiian. He does so with several awkward missteps as he takes his daughters island-hopping to find the truth about their mother’s private life. Hemmings has a light, comedic touch and is especially good at nailing the mysteries of 21st-century adolescents, with their text messages and tattoos. As father and daughters gradually decode each other and learn to face the family tragedy together, we find ourselves not only rooting for the Kings but hailing them. B+
SHEERY AVNI

BOOK
JONATHAN KEATS: CONTROL+ALT+DELEATE
(THE LION PRESS)
With words like google entering Webster’s, it’s only a matter of time before all manner of tech jargon becomes fully integrated into the English language. Although San Francisco
contributor Jonathon Keats’s book will probably be out­dated in, like, two nanoseconds, it’s a handy reference for those who care about keeping their cyberslang up-to-date. Some of the entries seem unnecessary: if you don’t know what “email” or the “Web” is at this point, finding this book is probably the least of your worries. But a definitive reference should include all the basics, and in his clear, concise way, Keats explains dozens of new terms. Are you familiar with “spam lit,” for instance? It’s the randomly generated, misspelled gobbledygook in the text of spam e-mail messages—and some people actually read it, considering it similar to dadaist poetry. It’s hard not to poke a little fun at the whole idea, but if geek speak’s your bag, then this is your book. B
BYRON PERRY

BOOK
PAUL HAWKEN: BLESSED UNREST
(VIKING)
Here’s a thought: what if that guy with the “Free Mumia” sign at every local protest is actually helping the cause of global justice, rather than muddying the waters with his small-bore concerns? That question, writ large, is at the heart of the latest big-think missive from Sausalito-based ecoprophet and entrepreneur Paul Hawken. After more than a decade of surveying civil-society groups around the globe, Hawken has concluded that these disparate reformers—from American environmentalists to Maya Indian human-rights workers to Nigerian activists—are actually part of one massive, hydra-headed movement with common bedrock values. It’s an intriguing argument, and Hawken, in lucid if sleep-inducing prose, teases out the philosophical underpinnings that unite these wildly divergent groups. But then he takes it a step further: this leaderless David, he posits, could one day be powerful enough to counter Goliaths like the World Bank, Chevron, and the U.S. government. So far there’s little evidence to support that theory, and Hawken admits as much. Ultimately, his predictions sound like little more than wishful thinking, fairy tales for the progressive set. Hawken’s safer, saner world might come one day, but it won’t be anytime soon. B-
CHRIS SMITH