| Menachem's Seed, Carl Djerassi,
professor of chemistry, University of Georgia Press, 1997; $21.95
(fiction). |
 The father of the
birth-control pill started his second career as a writer a decade ago.
Djerassi has developed a genre he calls "science-in-fiction," in which
he smuggles science into storylines to provoke interest in important
issues. The characters in this novel are high-flying scientists whose
sex lives and research expertise intertwine in startling ways. Ethical
problems spring up when the female protagonist, desperate to conceive a
child, procures sperm by questionable, high-tech means. Ever the
experimentalist, the author mixes some unlikely elements in his
literary lab: erotic fantasy, global nuclear politics, rabbinic law,
operatic librettos and biochemistry minilectures. The author has an
inventive imagination, but the book's science is real and so are its
moral issues. Menachem's Seed is the third in a tetralogy, with
the final book, NO, due out in 1998.
|
Just over 100 years
ago, the newly appointed Russian Orthodox bishop arrived in San
Francisco to take up his post. The position was a holdover from the
early 19th century, when Russia owned Alaska and Russian influence
stretched as far south as California. Bishop Vladimir brought with him
a colorful entourage of 20 clergymen and 11 boys from a seminary in
Russia and almost immediately clashed with Nicholas Russel, a Russian
revolutionary exile and leader of San Francisco's small Russian
community. What followed were three-and-a-half years of bitter enmity
between the combative bishop and the self-proclaimed nihilist. In this
"microhistory," Emmons writes of the stories of "sex abuse and libel,
murder plots and duels," gleefully reported in Hearst's Examiner
and the rival Chronicle. But Emmons also shows how the sordid
conflict reflected the ongoing clash between church and state in Russia
itself.
After coming up with
the brilliant business plan, taking over the family garage and
sweet-talking the venture capitalist, the would-be Silicon Valley
entrepreneur still needs to know a copyright from a conversion right.
Enter Bagley and Dauchy with their guide to all things legal. This
546-page manual walks prospective entrepreneurs through every legal
step of starting and running a business, from the implications of
quitting a corporate job to the intricacies of the ultimate start-up
triumph--going public. Bagley is a senior lecturer at the Graduate
School of Business, and many of the book's examples are drawn from a
variety of companies started by Stanford alums.
Turner was making a
sausage and tomato omelet when his 10-year-old son, T.J., suggested
writing down the recipe. One thing led to another and now, less than
two years later, the team has written and self-published a cookbook
stocked with recipes that include peanut butter and jelly bagel pizza,
chocolate fish cake, jello jigglers and pink soup (the secret
ingredient: beet juice). The lessons go beyond basic cooking. Roasting
a turkey, for example, requires "direct application of physics and
linear algebra." Each recipe takes just 30 minutes to prepare--not
including "any time spent at the emergency room." The Turners clearly
have no illusions about competing with Martha Stewart. They are writing
for a less refined audience that might actually appreciate their
instructions for using a paint-removing heat gun to make a grilled
cheese sandwich.