Better than any book I can think of, White Noisecaptures the particular strangeness of life in a time where humankind has finally learned enough to kill itself. Naturally, it's a terribly funny book, and the prose is as beautiful as a sunset through a particulate-filled sky. Nice-guy narrator Jack Gladney teaches Hitler Studies at a small college. His wife may be taking a drug that removes fear, and one day a nearby chemical plant accidentally releases a cloud of gas that may be poisonous. Writing before Bhopal and Prozac entered the popular lexicon, DeLillo produced a work so closely tuned into its time that it tells the future.

Philip K. Dick's searing metaphysical comedy of death and salvation is a tour de force of panoramic menace and unfettered slapstick, in which the departed give business advice, shop for their next incarnation, and run the continual risk of dying yet again.

What makes Disney tick? This theoretical cultural analysis is an alternative ride through "the happiest place on earth" that asks "What makes this forty-three-square-mile theme park the quintessential embodiment of American leisure?" Considering the park as both private corporate enterprise and public urban environment, the authors focus on questions concerning the production and consumption of leisure. Featuring more than fifty photographs and interviews with workers, this captivating exploration illustrates the high-pressure dynamics of the typical family vacation while taking the reader on a tour that looks well beyond Disney World's controlled facade.

Celebrity chef Rocco DiSpirito is best known for his short-lived reality TV show The Restaurant, which chronicled the start-up (and disintegration) of DiSpirito's Manhattan dining spot, Rocco's 22nd Street, whose menu was partially devised by his mother Nicolina. Rocco's Italian American offers 150-plus recipes—restaurant-connected dishes like Nicolina's much praised meatballs plus her Eggplant Rollatini and Pizza Fritta, among others. Worthy versions of old favorites include Spaghetti Carbonara, Linguini with Clams, and Stuffed Artichokes. Requiring fewer than ten ingredients, the recipes are as tempting as they are approachable.

But recipes are only part of the package. Following the introduction (a bumpy start, as DiSpirito writes that "every American has in common... one émigré in his family who started it all by coming to America," a statement that Native Americans, among others, will find objectionable) the book offers "Nicolina’s Story" and "Rocco’s Story," 60-odd pages of detailed reminiscence that some readers will welcome and others find excessive. Photos throughout illustrate the dishes; the chef and his clan (this reader stopped counting shots of DiSpirito at 22); and, unaccountably, portraits of common ingredients like lemons, walnuts, and red pepper flakes, among others. This lavish "editorializing" means recipe squeezing, resulting in the use of a very small font that makes reading the methods, especially at "cooking distance," difficult. There are other problems as well, including the "loss" of recipes promised on the flyleaf and in the seafood section intro.

These objections aside, the book promises much good eating—including "dolce" like Elena's Ricotta Grain Cake and Chocolate Walnut Budino—and for DiSpirito fans, another chance to learn from, and gaze at, the master. —Arthur Boehm

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Jim Doherty • Neil Anderson • Paul Della Maggiora

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Covers: General Networking