Adam Smith, Female Brains, Hearst's Camels: August Nonfiction

Adam Smith, Female Brains, Hearst's Camels: August Nonfiction

July 31 (Bloomberg) -- A trio of 9/11 books, a new biography of Adam Smith, a history of fly fishing and a feisty study of the female brain are among the highlights of new August nonfiction.

``The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11,'' by Lawrence Wright (Knopf). A New Yorker writer's well-wrought group portrait of four men -- terrorists Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, FBI counterterrorism czar John O'Neill and ex-Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal -- and how each influenced the events preceding and culminating in Sept. 11, 2001.

``Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11'' by David Friend (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). A study of how 50 pictures associated with the terrorist attacks -- whether the grim specter of falling bodies, the now-iconic ruin at Ground Zero or prisoners at Abu Ghraib -- continue to influence our personal and public politics.

``Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission'' by Thomas H. Kean & Lee H. Hamilton (Knopf). The chairman and vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission describe how it managed to deliver an estimable account of the terrorist attacks despite limited resources, divisive politics and a suspicious American public.

``Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror'' by Robert Young Pelton (Crown). Fear junkie and proprietor of ``The World's Most Dangerous Places'' franchise of travel books, Pelton reveals the clandestine, often lawless world of mercenaries, private armies and independent military contractors, and how they've influenced the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other flashpoints around the globe.

``Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur's Odyssey to Educate the World's Children'' by John Wood (HarperBusiness). A former banker and executive in Microsoft's China division explains how he found fulfillment by giving up his corporate career to start the nonprofit Room to Read, which has built 2,500 schools and libraries in rural Asia.

``The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million -- and Bucked the Medical Establishment -- in a Quest to Save His Children'' by Geeta Anand (Regan Books). The extraordinary story of John Crowley, who founded Novazyme Pharmaceuticals Inc. to seek a cure for rare, degenerative Pompe disease, which was killing his young son and daughter. Starting with an endowment of $37,000, Crowley was able to sell the firm within two years to Genzyme Corp. for $137.5 million, virtually ensuring that research for a cure would continue.

``The Authentic Adam Smith: His Life and Ideas'' by James Buchan (Norton). Buchan notes that the 18th-century philosopher wrote far more than ``An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations'' and shows that his ``invisible hand'' was influenced as much by his religious beliefs as by his Scottish pragmatism.

``Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security'' by Christopher Cooper and Robert Block (Times Books). The two reporters explain how the post-Katrina fiasco revealed the extent to which the Department of Homeland Security is unprepared to handle any grand catastrophe, be it natural or man-made.

``The Female Brain'' by Louann Brizendine (Morgan Road Books). A University of California neuropsychologist offers a scientific examination into why women appear more intuitive, remember arguments that a man forgets, use 13,000 more words a day than men, and other sobering differences between the sexes.

``Casting a Spell: The Bamboo Fly Rod and the American Pursuit of Perfection,'' by George Black (Random House). An eloquent history of American fly fishing and the manufacturing of bamboo fly rods -- an erstwhile cottage industry that has morphed into a multimillion-dollar market.

``The Perfect $100,000 House: A Trip Across America and Back in Pursuit of a Place to Call Home'' by Karrie Jacobs (Viking). The architecture critic and founding editor-in-chief of Dwell magazine takes a 14,000-mile road trip in search of a house that is attractive, well built and affordable. Surely any real-estate agents worth their fee would have told her she can have two, but not all three.

``Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death'' by Deborah Blum (Penguin). The story of how a group of brilliant 19th-century and early 20th-century scientists and thinkers became obsessed with discovering empirical evidence of the afterlife and found a few supernatural phenomena they couldn't quite explain.

``The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids'' by Alexandra Robbins (Hyperion). Robbins, who coined the term ``Quarterlife Crisis,'' chronicles the lives of a group of Bethesda, Maryland, high-schoolers as they try to mold themselves into desirable college applicants -- with perfect grades, stellar test scores and a well-rounded mix of extracurricular activities.

``The Wonga Coup: Guns, Thugs, and a Ruthless Determination to Create Mayhem in an Oil-Rich Corner of Africa'' by Adam Roberts (PublicAffairs). The far-fetched story of how in March 2004 a mercenary army partially funded by Margaret Thatcher's son tried to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea and get rich by seizing the country's oil -- a scenario straight out of Frederick Forsyth's 1972 novel ``The Dogs of War.''

``The Medici Giraffe and Other Tales of Exotic Animals and Power'' by Marina Belozerskaya (Little, Brown). Why did William Randolph Hearst keep kangaroos, camels and yaks at San Simeon? Why did the Medicis import lions to roam Florence's Piazza della Signoria? These are just two of the questions answered by this compelling history of how exotic pets bestow prestige and glory on their rich and powerful owners.

(Edward Nawotka is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)