Miami Herald: Books

A Carnival King watches a Caribbean nation come into being.

Pop’s most successful female songwriter finally opens up about her past.

Columnist and author Anna Quindlen has been examining the anxieties of her generation for decades, mining her own experiences as what we used to call a “working mother” to make some sort of sense of Baby Boomers’ lives.

“I’m just wading into <span class="italic">Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis</span> by Cynthia Barnett. Her first book, <span class="italic">Mirage</span>, was a devastating look at how Florida squandered its water resources, and this engaging new book takes on our national penchant for wasting H2O.”

The first African-American basketball player in the University of Miami history is sprouting a nationwide movement encouraging residents in low-income communities to reverse their health issues through urban farming.

“Robert Morgan’s <span class="italic">Lions of the West</span>; it’s history, about Andrew Jackson, Sam Houston and Jim Bowie. And it’s history written by a man who’s a good poet so it’s beautifully written, but it’s really interesting, too.”

Any one of Gregg Allman’s stories about his life could lure a reader into his new memoir, but the 64-year-old Allman begins <span class="italic">My Cross to Bear</span> with his biggest moment of shame, the induction of the Allman Brothers Band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.

A federal judge on Monday dismissed a civil lawsuit against author Greg Mortenson, calling claims “flimsy and speculative” that the humanitarian and his publisher lied in his best-selling <span class="italic">Three Cups of Tea</span> and <span class="italic">Stones Into Schools</span> books to boost sales.

According to her website, author Grace McCleen grew up in a fundamentalist Christian household in Britain. Encouraged by teachers on a path she had not set her sights on, a university education, she attended Oxford, only to lose her faith and fragile sense of self.

Repetitive but compelling fourth volume on the life of Lyndon Johnson opens as 1960 looms.