Google's Rivals, Rushdie's Clown, Dowd, Vlad: New Paperbacks

Google's Rivals, Rushdie's Clown, Dowd, Vlad: New Paperbacks

By Edward Nawotka

Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Vlad the Impaler is still alive and sucking in Elizabeth Kostova's novel ``The Historian,'' one of October's paperback releases.

Also this month: books on porn, Google, Teddy Roosevelt.

In ``Shalimar the Clown'' (Random House), Salman Rushdie explores the origins and mind-set of a Muslim assassin. Rushdie, who himself remains under a fatwa, argues that terrorism originates not with religion and politics but with personal grudges. The story in this impassioned novel centers on a Jewish U.S. diplomat slain by a Kashmiri Muslim. The novelist, whose recent work has slipped of late, benefits from the return to the subcontinental settings of his powerful early novels ``Midnight's Children'' and ``Shame'' and portrays the mountainous region of Kashmir as a lost Eden corrupted by its collision with modernity.

``The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture'' by John Battelle (Portfolio). Google has a huge slab of the market in finding out what the world wants and so an edge in leveraging that knowledge into real dollars and cents, argues this highly regarded Silicon Valley journalist.

``Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide'' by Maureen Dowd (Berkley). The New York Times columnist offers her gloss on the age-old question of boys-versus-girls and applies a provocative smear of high-heeled, lipsticked pragmatism to the face of 21st- century feminism.

``The Historian'' by Elizabeth Kostova (Back Bay). A fat page turner in which an American living in Europe is led on a dangerous quest across Europe to find evidence that the 15th- century villain Vlad the Impaler, aka Dracula, is still alive.

``The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J.P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy'' by Charles Morris (Owl). A hagiographical portrait of the four men who embodied the Gilded Age and amassed vast fortunes in oil, gold and steel in the years following the Civil War.

``The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey'' by Candice Millard (Broadway). Millard, a former National Geographic editor, recounts the 1914 exploration of a remote section of the Amazon River in Brazil where the plump ex- president was tracked by cannibals, contracted malaria and nearly died.

``Mission to America'' by Walter Kirn (Anchor). A young member of a dwindling matriarchal cult in Montana is sent forth to locate and convert a mate and finds himself irreversibly transformed by the uninhibited sexuality, self-obsession and vapidity he encounters in a Colorado resort town.

``Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy'' by Moises Naim (Anchor). The editor of Foreign Policy looks at a side effect of globalization: the booming underground trade in drugs, weapons, laundered money, counterfeit goods and human beings.

``How to Make Money Like a Porn Star'' by Neil Strauss and Bernard Chang (Regan Books). The author of porn star Jenna Jameson's biography ``How to Make Love Like a Porn Star'' depicts the behind-the-scenes reality of the skin-flick industry in this unnerving graphic novel, equal parts titillation and morality tale.

``Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife'' by Mary Roach (Norton). A frequently funny chronicle of Roach's encounters with researchers looking for evidence that life continues beyond the grave, including a man trying to weigh the consciousness of a leech.

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