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who had always dreamed of being a balle-
rina, dies just before Christmas 2012, and
Mathews spreads her ashes in the snow
outside of a local Nutcracker performance.
Mathews conveys potentially heavy and
gut-wrenching family crises with page-
turning style and heaps of wit. This tender,
beautifully written celebration of familial
love will resonate with readers. (May)
★ The Louvre: The Many Lives of
the World’s Most Famous Museum
James Gardner. Atlantic Monthly, $30 (416p)
ISBN 978-0-8021-4877-3
Art critic Gardner (Buenos Aires) traces
the turbulent history of Paris’s Louvre
Museum from fortress to castle to center
of France’s cultural universe in this
engrossing account, revealing a building
that Gardner calls “as great a work of art
as anything it contains.” The Louvre was
a nexus of French art, architecture, and
culture, and Gardner argues that through
the Louvre one can see the growth of
“Paris itself.” The site was originally a
campground 7,000 years ago; in 1191,
King Philippe Auguste constructed a
fortress there; a century and a half later,
Charles V had remodeled the Louvre into
a castle, which in the early 16th century
became the primary residence for King
Francois I. After Louis XIV moved the
royal court to Versailles in 1682, the Louvre
suffered neglect until it was converted
into a public art museum in 1793, during
the French Revolution. In elegant prose,
Gardner describes how over the next 200
years the Louvre endured constant evolu-
tion and construction as its reputation as
a leading repository for art treasures grew
and it became the world’s most famous
museum (“there is something at once
presumptuous and miraculous in its emer-
gence out of nothing”). Fast-paced and
evocative, this is a must for Francophones
as well as art and architecture lovers. (May)
An Onion in My Pocket:
My Life with Vegetables
Deborah Madison. Knopf, $26.95 (320p)
ISBN 978-0-525-65601-2
From the austere training ground of a
Buddhist kitchen to her legacy as founding
chef of San Francisco’s renowned Greens
Restaurant, Madison (Vegetarian Cooking
for Everyone) relates how she became a
doyenne of vegetarian cooking. Her
mother, who “cooked and ate from a sense
of scarcity,” made her anxious about food,
and, at 16, an extended stay with family
friends introduced Madison to “cheese
soufflés, chicken poached in wine... all so
delicious... all new to me.” Captivated by
Japanese culture, she later joined the San
Francisco Zen Center (SFZC), where
meditation and simple meals taught her
how the goodness of plain food “resided
in my mouth and my attention.” At the
center, she developed a “tenderness for both
food and people,” eventually becoming the
head cook; in 1977 she was invited to
work at iconic Berkeley restaurant Chez
Panisse. Two years later, Madison left to
open the SFZC-owned Greens Restaurant
“next to the marina... in view of the
Golden Gate Bridge.” An omnivore, she
“didn’t like the vegetarian label,”
believing that naming “the way I eat...
can become divisive.” Chapters covering
the “twenty missing years”—after she left
the SFZC, Greens, and her monasticBuddhist life—build on the tension
between abstinence and abundance,
hunger and satiation, and anticipation
and enjoyment of food and life. Madison’s
richly told story is one for foodies of all
stripes. (May)Poland 1939:
The Outbreak of World War II
Roger Moorhouse. Basic, $30 (432p)
ISBN 978-0-465-09538- 4
Military historian Moorhouse (Berlin at
Wa r) revisits the opening campaign of
WWII—the 1939 invasion of Poland—
in this dense and exhaustive account.
Contending that the Poles have long been
rendered “nameless, voiceless victims,
bit-part players in their own narrative,”
Moorhouse uses diaries, memoirs, and
archival documents to correct the historical
record. Caught between Hitler’s determi-
nation to annex historically German regions
lost under the Treaty of Versailles that
brought an end to WWI and Stalin’s desire★ Great Demon Kings: A Memoir
of Poetry, Sex, Art, Death, and
Enlightenment
John Giorno. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $28 (368p)
ISBN 978-0-374-16630-4T
he creativity and debauchery of gay artists and
writers blooms in this exuberant memoir of
avant-garde New York City from the 1950s
through the 1990s. Giorno (Subduing Demons in
America), a poet and artist who died last year, recounts
his relationships with a countercultural pantheon
including Allen Ginsburg, whom he considered a
“living god” before meeting him and who proved to be a “disappointment”;
Andy Warhol, who filmed Giorno sleeping in the six-hour film Sleep; artists
Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, with whom he carried on tempestuous
affairs; and Beat deity William S. Burroughs, with whom he had an intense,
mainly platonic friendship for decades. Giorno also discusses his conversion to
Tibetan Buddhism and his technology-driven poetry innovations, including tape-
recorded sound poems, multimedia readings, and a “Dial-a-Poem” service offering
callers recorded poems. The narrative is a whirl of parties, art openings, colorful
personalities, and lots of graphic sex, written in prose that twines earthiness with
Buddhist austerity. (“Pale light from a streetlamp streamed through the window
mixed with the humid air and gave William a rat-gray fungus-like complexion,”
he writes of having sex with Burroughs. “Our minds mingled in one taste, in the
vast, empty expanse of primordially pure, Wisdom Mind.”) The result is an
engrossing, passionate ode to a revolution in art and sensuality. Photos. (June)