Next Week’s Notable Nonfiction

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, author of The Dressmaker of Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe, will receive  major media exposure next week. She has written the cover story about Hilary Clinton for Tina Brown’s newly-redesigned Newsweek, which debuts next week (with a weekly book section!). The book will be featured on several NPR shows, including Morning Edition, it will be excerpted in USA Today and several reviews are scheduled.

Lemmon’s book is the story of an Afghan woman who became an entrepreneur under the Taliban, employing over 100 women, despite being banned from schools and offices, in the vein of Three Cups of Tea.

Libraries are showing modest reserves on modest orders, but interest could increase as Lemmon makes her media rounds.

The Dressmaker of Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe Gayle Tzemach Lemmon Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 288 pages Publisher: Harper – (2011-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061732370 / 9780061732379

Memoir to Watch

The Source of All Things: A Memoir by Tracy Ross (Free Press) is an exploration of the author’s childhood sexual abuse. Kirkus says, “Ross’s seesawing of emotions left her in a constant state of flux, but this uncertainty of emotion is one of the narrative’s primary strengths. Ross continually explores the boundaries of father-daughter intimacy, never demonizing her stepfather, but instead, humanizing him—a far more difficult task.”

Usual Suspects

The Money Class: Learn to Create Your New American Dream by Suze Orman (Spiegel and Grau) reassesses the American Dream — home, family, career, retirement — in view of current economic realities.

Then Everything Changed: Stunning Alternate Histories of American Politics: JFK, RFK, Carter, Ford, Reagan by Jeff Greenfield (Putnam) is the veteran CBS News reporter and commentator’s journey in what-ifs, based on his extensive research, and has a 100,000 printing. PW calls it “fun but insubstantial.”

Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions by Guy Kawasaki (Portfolio) offers a new perspective on the art of influence, by the author of bestseller The Art of the Start.

Big Debuts

Altar of Bones by Philip Carter (Gallery Press) is a thriller by an “internationally renowned author” writing under a pseudonym (OK, so it doesn’t really count as a debut) with a 200,000-copy printing, about a mysteriously powerful altar in Siberia, the San Francisco lawyer who inherits it, and the ex-special ops agent who protects her from those who wish to control it. Library Journal says the “chase and fight scenes are adrenaline-charged, breath-holding sensations,” but Kirkus calls it a “a competent and action-filled story, if one without much attention to detail,” and PW slammed it, saying, “by the time the unsurprising ending rolls around, all suspense has been drained from the action.”

The Informationist by Taylor Stevens (Crown), is, says the publisher, a “blazingly brilliant debut [that] introduces a great new action heroine, Vanessa Michael Munroe, who doesn’t have to kick over a hornet’s nest to get attention, though her feral, take-no-prisoners attitude reflects the fire of Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander.” Kirkus adds, “the writing is stellar, the heroine grittier than Lara Croft and the African setting so vivid that readers can smell the jungle and feel the heat—a gifted debut with much promise.”

The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht (Random House) is the season’s  (and, perhaps, the year’s) major literary debut. It comes with high expectations; Obreht is the youngest of the New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 fiction writers. LJ, Booklist and PW all call it varying degrees of brilliant. Boolist‘s starred review goes the furthest; “Every word, every scene, every thought is blazingly alive in this many-faceted, spellbinding, and rending novel of death, succor, and remembrance.” Only Kirkus introduces a caution; “…at times at times a bit too dense and confusing.” Laura Miller in Salon this week, finds the book too heavy on descripiton, “…no sooner does Obreht’s narrative work up a little momentum or present a masterful scene than it hits a patch of long, dozy paragraphs filled with way too much detail about the scenery.”

To Watch

Holds are mounting on light ordering for next week’s release of Carol Edgarian’s second novel, Three Stages of Amazement. This exploration of how privleged people cope (or don’t) when fate turns against them, pivots on a seemingly perfect, 40ish Bay Area couple who run into trouble when the surgeon husband needs financing for a new medical invention and gets it from his wife’s dashing and successful ex-boyfriend.

In the New York Times, Janet Maslin calls it “a fiery, deeply involving book with an eccentric streak that keeps it constantly surprising,” and compares it favorably to Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, saying it handles its “high-strung, hot-blooded, restless people conflating their own private crises with the political and economic turmoil of their times” in half the space Franzen does, “with less loftiness but more soap-operatic plot tricks.” O Magazine finds it “generous and graceful and true.”

Usual Suspects

The Jungle by Clive Cussler and Jack Du Bruhl (Putnam), the eighth Oregon Files thriller, finds Juan Cabrillo and his crew of mercenaries engage in one daring rescue operation after another with progressively higher stakes. PW says, “The frenetic action moves from Afghanistan to Singapore and the Burmese jungle with lots of derring-do at sea before climaxing in a surprising locale in a fashion sure to delight series fans.”

Silent Mercy by Linda Fairstein (Dutton) finds Alexandra Cooper, the ADA who heads Manhattan’s Special Victims unit, investigating a fire at a Baptist church in Harlem. Kirkus says, “Above average for this bestselling series, though not up to the mark of Hell Gate (2010).”

Love You More by Lisa Gardner (Bantam) finds Detective D. D. Warren of the Boston police and Massachusetts state trooper Bobby Dodge together again, as partners in the investigation of a state trooper who shot and killed D.D.’s husband. Booklist gives it a starred review: “Winner of the 2010 International Thriller Award for The Neighbor, Gardner hits an even higher mark this time and will have a national marketing campaignauthor tour, TV advertising, online saturation bombing, etc.to support her.”

Fans of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series have been waiting, none to patiently, for the next volume in the series. On his Web site today, Martin finally announces an end to the six-year wait; the next volume in the series, A Dance with Dragons, will be published on Tuesday, July 12.

Addressing fans who have had their hopes dashed in the past, Martin acknowledges,

Yes, I know.  You’ve all seen publication dates before: dates in 2007, 2008, 2009.  None of those were ever hard dates, however.  Most of them… well, call it wishful thinking, boundless optimism, cockeyed dreams, honest mistakes, whatever you like.

This date is different.   This date is real.

The book will be huge, literally, at more than 900 pages.

A Dance with Dragons (Song of Ice and Fire) George R.R. Martin Retail Price: $35.00 Hardcover: 1008 pages Publisher: Bantam – (2011-07-12) ISBN / EAN: 0553801473 / 9780553801477

Entertainment Weekly simultaneously posted the news and also an exclusive new trailer for the HBO Game of Thrones series, an adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire, which begins April 17.

The official Web site is at HBO.com.

One of the most-discussed titles on Tuesday’s GalleyChat was Townie, the memoir by Andre Dubus (we also hear that in lands on the upcoming NYT Extended Nonfiction Hardcover list).

One of the chat participants, Angela Carstensen, writes about Townie on SLJ‘s Adult Books for Teens.

She also points out that segments of Dubus’s ALA presentation are available on YouTube. The videos give new meaning to the term “hand-held” (if you have a tendency towards dizziness, close your eyes and listen to the audio), but they give a good sense of the style of both the author and the book.

Below, he reads from the book (Dubus is the narrator for the audiobook, from Blackstone):

In the following segment, Dubus talks about why he loves libraries and how he became a “reluctant memoirist.”

…………………….

Townie: A Memoir Andre Dubus III Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (2011-02-28) ISBN / EAN: 0393064662 / 9780393064667

Audio: Blackstone; UNABR, simultaneous; read by the author

Gabrielle Hamilton, owner of Prune restaurant in New York City, is interviewed in the Dining & Wine section of today’s New York Times. Her memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter, which was released yesterday, is already in its third printing and received a rare near-rave from NYT critic Michiko Kakutani last week. Libraries are showing heavy holds on light ordering (who would expect a book by the owner of a restaurant that few people in the country have been to — it has only 30 seats — to be a hit?)

Says the interviewer,

On the page and in the kitchen, Ms. Hamilton can be charming, tempestuous, persnickety, vulgar, poetic, provocative and mothering, sometimes all in the course of a single flurry of sentences. Whatever scars she has, she is not inclined to cover them.

The prepub reviews back up that observation; Booklist calls it a “lusty, rollicking, engaging-from-page-one memoir.”

Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef Gabrielle Hamilton Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Random House – (2011-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 140006872X / 9781400068722

Audio: Books on Tape; narrated by the author; 3/1/11

In the New York Times, Janet Maslin gives the minority opinion on The Paris Wife, Paula McLain’s novel based on the lives of Ernest Hemingway and his first wife in Paris after WW I, which has been enjoying ebullient prepub and consumer reviews. She agrees that the book shows a great deal of research, but parts ways on the book’s quality, nonetheless suggesting we, “Get ready for abundant debate on issues raised by The Paris Wife, because what it lacks in style is made up for in staying power. This is a work of literary tourism that expertly flatters its reader.”

In that, she may be right. The book is now at #37 on Amazon sales rankings and library holds are rising quickly. Expect to see it in the top five on the upcoming NYT hardcover fiction list. The March Oprah magazine also features it, along with reading questions.

The Paris Wife: A Novel Paula McLain Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Ballantine Books – (2011-02-22) ISBN / EAN: 0345521307 / 9780345521309

Audio; Random House and Books On Tape
OverDrive; WMA Audio and Adobe EPUB eBook

We’re  always on the lookout for insight on which forthcoming titles will become hits, so we’re excited to find a new tool; Edelweiss, the company that produces online catalogs for publishers, has released lists of titles most-ordered titles through their system. Since most of the orders come from independent booksellers, the lists offer a interesting look at the upcoming months.

We’ve posted the Fiction and Nonfiction lists, which represent the top 30 titles ordered during the previous two months (only the publishers that use the Edelweiss system are included, representing the majority of the larger publishers, with a few exceptions, most notably, Simon and Schuster). You’ll notice that few of the repeat blockbuster authors appear on the lists; most independent booksellers find they don’t do as well in their stores (which is clearly reflected on the Indie Best Seller lists).

A few highlights:

Fiction

At #1 is State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, coming from Harper in June. Libraries, of course, have already placed their orders.

Surprisingly few libraries are showing orders for #12 title, The Kid by Sapphire (Penguin Press, Jul 5). It’s the sequel to Push, which was the basis for the last year’s surprise box office hit, Precious.

At #16 is The Last Werewolf by Duncan, Glen (Knopf, Jul 12); a new entry in the paranormal category that few libraries have ordered yet.

On GalleyChat, librarians have been talking about the thriller Before I Go To Sleep by Watson, S. J. (Harper, Jun 1) which appears at #17.

Nonfiction

Tina Fey has already been getting kudos for her New Yorker essay, “Confessions of a Juggler,” which offers a preview of her forthcoming book Bossypants (Reagan Arthur/Hachette, Apr 5), at #1.

Few libraries seem to have ordered the #2 title, Boomerang by Lewis, Michael (Norton, Jun 13).

We’re not surprised to see the new book by Eric Larson, author of the beloved Devil in the White City (fingers crossed that the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio sees the light of day and does it justice) at #3 with his upcoming book about an American family in Berlin in 1933,  In the Garden of Beasts (Crown/ Random House, May 10).

On our special edition of GalleyChat, the #7 title,  Lost in Shangri-La by Zuckoff, Mitchell (Harper; May 1), emerged as a favorite with librarians as well.

The debut to watch this week is Cleaning Nabokov’s House by Leslie Daniels (Touchstone). It follows a woman rebuilding her life after losing her children to her ex-husband. It’s an in-house favorite at S&S because it “hits the sweet spot of being both literary and commercial.” PW agrees, “Despite the curiosities of the grief-to-gumption plot, Daniels’s writing is slick and her characters richly detailed, and even when it dips into sheer goofiness, it’s still a pleasure to read.” Blackstone publishes the unabridged audio and a large print version is coming from Thorndike in July (9781410438478; $30.99). The author lives in Ithaca, NY.

Usual Suspects

Sing You Home by Jody Picoult (Atria) follows a custody battle for fertilized embryos between a lesbian couple and one of their newly religious ex-husbands. Booklist says  “Picoult’s gripping novel explores all sides of the hot-button issue.” It has a 150,000 copy first printing, and includes a CD of songs that correspond to each chapter.

Minding Frankie by Maeve Binchy (Knopf) takes place in a closely knit Irish neighborhood where a young alcoholic struggles with unexpected fatherhood. Library Journal calls it “an enjoyable novel about life, love, and second chances.”

The Night Season by Chelsea Cain (Minotaur/Macmillan) is, amazingly, the fourth novel featuring Portland detective Archie Sheridan. The Wall Street Journal features the author today, calling the new book Cain’s “tamest to date” and says her “bid to reach a broad, mainstream audience without disappointing Gretchen fans may prove tricky.”

The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss (DAW)  is a continuation of the 2007 fantasy novel The Name of the Wind, in which an innkeeper recalls a life of heroic deeds. Library Journal declares it “reminiscent in scope of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series and similar in feel to the narrative tour de force of The Arabian Nights, this masterpiece of storytelling will appeal to lovers of fantasy on a grand scale.”

Rodin’s Debutante by Ward Just (Houghton Mifflin) follows a boy’s adolescence and early adulthood in Chicago during the mid-20th century. Entertainment Weekly gives it an A-, “Don’t be misled by the title; this engaging coming-of-age tale has little to do with either Auguste Rodin or a debutante.”

River Marked by Patricia Briggs (Ace) is book six in the supernatural Mercy Thompson series.

Children’s Books

Fancy Nancy: Aspiring Artist by Jane O’Connor and illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser (HarperCollins) is a children’s book about the artistic aspirations of a little girl with glitter markers.

The memoir category continues to grow, as proved by the large selection coming next week.

Already making headlines is Tiger, Tiger by Margaux Fragoso (FSG), the memoir of the author’s seduction and molestation, beginning at age 7, by a serial child rapist in his 50s, it follows their 15-year relationship. New York magazine reviewed it this week, calling  it “an unstable mixture of bildungsroman, dirty realism, and child pornography” and calls it “beautiful and appalling.”

Andre Dubus‘smemoir of his childhood, Townie (Norton), an EarlyWord favorite since his appearance at ALA Midwinter, has already garnered admiring reviews.

A natural outgrowth of the public fascination with celebrity chefs and their cookbooks is the celebrity chef memoir. Next week brings two with strong backing from their publishers:

Gabrielle Hamilton recently confirmed her chops as a writer with an excerpt in the New Yorker from Blood, Bones and Butter, which recounts her trajectory from a 1970s Pennsylvania childhood that disintegrated in divorce to opening her acclaimed New York restaurant Prune.

The memoir has also wrested rare praise from New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani, who says,

…the book is hardly just for foodies. Ms. Hamilton, who has an M.F.A. in fiction writing from the University of Michigan, is as evocative writing about people and places as she is at writing about cooking, and her memoir does as dazzling a job of summoning her lost childhood as Mary Karr’s “Liars’ Club” and Andre Aciman’s “Out of Egypt” did with theirs.

Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef Gabrielle Hamilton Retail Price: $26.00 Hardcover: 304 pages Publisher: Random House – (2011-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 140006872X / 9781400068722

Grant Achatz, whose Chicago restaurant Alinea was crowned the best in America by Gourmet magazine, also delivers Life, on the Line: A Chef’s Story of Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat. Co-written by Nick Kokonas, the book has a 75,000 copy first printing. An excerpt in the new issue of People (March 7) chronicles Achatz’s struggle with tongue cancer.

Life, on the Line: A Chef’s Story of Chasing Greatness, Facing Death, and Redefining the Way We Eat Grant Achatz, Nick Kokonas Retail Price: $27.50 Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: Gotham/Penguin – (2011-03-03) ISBN / EAN: 1592406017 / 9781592406012

Other Notable Nonfiction On Sale Next Week

Getting to Heaven: Departing Instructions for Your Life Now by Don Piper and Cecil Murphey (Berkley) is an “instruction book” regarding the Christian idea of the afterlife by the author of the multimillion-selling 90 Minutes in Heaven.

Bringing Adam Home: The Abduction That Changed America by Les Standiford and Joe Matthews (Ecco) is the story of the 1981 kidnapping and murder of six-year-old Adam Walsh—son of John Walsh, host of the Fox TV series America’s Most Wanted—which went unsolved for a quarter of a century. It will get a major round of publicity, including a March 1 Q&A with the authors in USA Today, a March 2 appearance by Joe Matthews and the Walshes on the Today show; and a March 3 segment on Nightline.

Revolt!: How to Defeat Obama and Repeal His Socialist Programs by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann (Broadside Books) advocates no tax increases, weakening federal regulations and cutting social programs in the name of deficit reduction.

Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer (Penguin Press) chronicles the training process of a once forgetful U.S. Memory Champion. The author was interviewed on All Things Considered on Wednesday.

The New York Times Book Review will post an additional, online-only picture book review each week. The first one is for Il Sung Na’s book about the change of seasons,  Snow Rabbit, Spring Rabbit.

Snow Rabbit, Spring Rabbit: A Book of Changing Seasons Il Sung Na Retail Price: $15.99 Hardcover: 24 pages Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers – (2011-01-11) ISBN / EAN: 0375867864 / 9780375867866

Also available in library binding

Library holds are rising rapidly for The Paris Wife by Paul McClain. More will be coming; it’s a People Pick in the 3/7 issue and has risen to #37 on Amazon sales rankings. A fictionalized version of the love story between Ernest Hemingway and his first wife and their lives in Paris in the 20’s (which Hemingway paid tribute to in A Moveable Feast, published after his death), People says it is “impossible to resist.”

The Paris Wife Web site provides historical background material as well as a photo gallery.

The Paris Wife: A Novel Paula McLain Retail Price: $25.00 Hardcover: 336 pages Publisher: Ballantine Books – (2011-02-22) ISBN / EAN: 0345521307 / 9780345521309

Audio; Random House and Books On Tape

OverDrive; WMA Audio and Adobe EPUB eBook

In today’s New York Times, Dwight Garner offers a review of Andre Dubus’s memoir, Townie, that is nearly a love letter,

Townie is a better, harder book than anything the younger Mr. Dubus has yet written; it pays off on every bet that’s been placed on him. It’s a sleek muscle car of a memoir that — until it loses traction in clichés about redemption at its very end — growls like an amalgam of the best work by Richard Price, Stephen King, Ron Kovic, Breece D’J Pancake and Dennis Lehane, set to the desolate thumping of Bruce Springsteen’s “Darkness on the Edge of Town.”

Laura Miller gives it an equally strong review, but for different reasons, in Salon, underscoring that there are many things readers will take away from this book.

Since the book offers an insightful look at the male perspective on growing up (Dubus makes you understand why some boys are drawn to brawling and weight lifting), it would be a great choice for a male/female and father/son book clubs.

Dubus will appear on NPR’s Diane Rehm Show on 2/28, the book’s official publication date.

Libraries we checked are showing heavy holds on modest orders.

Townie: A Memoir Andre Dubus III Retail Price: $25.95 Hardcover: 400 pages Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company – (2011-02-28) ISBN / EAN: 0393064662 / 9780393064667

Audio: Blackstone; UNABR, simultaneous; read by the author

On Thursday, Stephen Colbert grilled historian Eric Foner on the real causes of the Civil War. Foner’s book, The Fiery Trial, was also featured on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday and is currently at #166 on Amazon sales rankings.

Joyce Carol Oates’ memoir, A Widow’s Story, shares the cover of the new NYT BR, following on the heels of much media attention (fetures in USA Today, and Time magazine this week). More attention will be coming, including an interview with Charlie Rose and a feaure in Newsweek.

It is now at #55 on Amazon sales rankings.

A Widow’s Story: A Memoir Joyce Carol Oates Retail Price: $27.99 Hardcover: 432 pages Publisher: Ecco – (2011-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 0062015532 / 9780062015532

Cowboys and Aliens by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg is a graphic novel about an alien invasion of Arizona in 1873, and the basis for a big movie coming this summer. The movie trailer shown during the Super Bowl generated so much discussion that director Jon Favreau (Iron Man), fearing people didn’t get it defended it to MTV.

Our guess is that the combination of star Harrison Ford and Jon Favreau (Iron Man) will result in a hit. But whether that will make people want to read the comic is anyone’s guess. Still, libraries haven’t ordered it and may want to give it serious consideration.

Cowboys and Aliens Scott Mitchell Rosenberg Retail Price: $24.99 Hardcover: 112 pages Publisher: It Books – (2011-03-01) ISBN / EAN: 0061646652 / 9780061646652

Fiction Worth Watching

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain (Ballantine), a fictionalized portrait of Ernest Hemingway’s first marriage can be seen as A Moveable Feast from Hadley Richardson’s point of view. Entertainment Weekly gives it an A-, saying, the “biographical and geographical research is so deep, and [McLean’s] empathy for the real Hadley Richardson so forthright (without being intrusively femme partisan), that the account reads as very real indeed.”

The ARC was featured at the Random House booth at Midwinter. Cuyahoga P.L. has taken a strong stand on the book, partly because the author is local (she’s from Cleveland Heights). Cuyahoga’s Coll. Dev. Manager Wendy Bartlett read the ARC and says it’s got “book discussion group” written all over it.

The Sweet Relief of Missing Children by Sarah Braunstein (Norton) is a “complex and multifaceted study of children who conquer bad childhoods—and children who cannot,” according to Library Journal, which declares,”Braunstein paints gorgeous portraits of a wide variety of characters, all fully realized.” The author won the 2007 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award and was named as one of the National Book Foundations 5 under 35, which recognizes five young fiction writers chosen by National Book Award winners and finalists.

Usual Suspects

Gideon’s Sword by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child (Grand Central) is the first in a new thriller series about the newly hired employee of a secretive government contractor. PW says the “tired and predictable story line isn’t helped by a protagonist lacking the quirks of the authors’ popular series hero, FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast.” Kirkus largely concurs, but adds, “Crew is a great character, and this series holds promise.”

Treachery in Death by J.D. Robb (Putnam) is the 33rd novel with New York homicide detective Eve Dallas. Booklist says, this “entry in Robbs gritty, futuristic procedural series is one of the best yet: a sexy, high-stakes, high-adrenaline read that will delight series stalwarts, hook readers new to Eve Dallas, and please both mystery and romance readers.”

Pale Demon by Kim Harrison (Harper Voyager) is book nine in the supernatural Hollows series. Library Journal says, “This one features plenty of action and a strong central character, but it is a little bit lighter in tone than the last few installments in the series. Urban fantasy and paranormal romance fans will undoubtedly place plenty of holds, so purchase accordingly.”

Nonfiction

Despite an embargo, news is already breaking about Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown’s memoir, which includes the story of his abusive childhood, Against All Odds (Harper). We will be hearing a great deal more in the coming days; he is scheduled to appear on 60 Minutes this Sunday, followed by The Early Show, Today and The View the next day, plus more media attention throughout the week. As The Atlantic points out this month, politicians have only recently found political capital in writing about childhood traumas (just twenty years ago, a George Bush, Sr. spokesman famously said, “Real men don’t get on the couch”). On the other hand, the Boston Herald accuses Brown of hypocrisy.

A Simple Government: Twelve Things We Really Need from Washington (and a Trillion That We Don’t!) by Mike Huckabee (Sentinel) advocates a significantly smaller federal government.

Our Last Best Chance: The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril by King Abdullah II of Jordan (Viking) chronicles the life of the king of Jordan and possible peace plans for the region.