Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography

Everyone knows Tom Cruise —or at least what he wants us to know. We know that he overcame a difficult childhood to star in astonishing array of blockbusters: Top Gun, Rain Man, Born on the Fourth of July, A Few Good Men, Interview with the Vampire, Jerry Maguire, three Mission: Impossible movies, War of the Worlds, and more. We know he has taken artistic chances, too, and as a result has earned three Academy Award nominations and three Golden Globes, along with the respect of acting legends like Paul Newman and Dustin Hoffman.

After that, the picture becomes a little less clear. We know that Tom is a Scientologist, but not necessarily what that means in his life. We know that, despite persistent rumors about his sexuality, he has been married to Mimi Rogers, Nicole Kidman, and Katie Holmes. But it was not until the spring of 2005, when he jumped on Oprah’s couch to proclaim his love for Katie and denounced Brooke Shields for turning to the “Nazi science” of psychiatry, that we began to realize how much we didn’t know about the charming, hardworking star.

For two years, award-winning biographer Andrew Morton has been tirelessly seeking out everyone from former teachers and girlfriends to Scientology insiders to friends who have watched a once-bullied, “nothing special” outsider transform himself into an icon Forbes has called the most powerful celebrity in the world Here, with never-seen photos and never-heard revelations, is a riveting, sometimes shocking portrait of the real Tom Cruise—his work, his love life, his marriages, his religion—from a master at uncovering the true story behind the public face of celebrity. See details

A Thousand Splendid Suns

A Thousand Splendid Suns. People in the west have a fundamental difficulty in understanding the religious fundamentalist movement in the Islamic areas of the world. While most people in the west are exposed to Christian religious fundamentalists, the differences between the Christian and Islamic are generally in kind rather than in degree. That difference is most pronounced in Afghanistan, where the extreme group known as the Taliban ruled the country for several years until overthrown in a military action backed by the United States. However, they were not completely defeated, and there are signs that they are once again gaining strength, which is where this novel ends.

“A Thousand Splendid Suns” is the story of two women living in Afghanistan during the last three turbulent decades of that nation’s history. In Part One we meet Mariam, the illegitimate daughter of Jalil, one of the wealthiest men in Herat and the owner of a cinema. Jalil has three wives and nine legitimate children, all of whom are strangers to Mariam, while Mariam lives with her mother in the “kolba” that Jalil and his sons built with sun-dried bricks and plastered with mud and straw. Laila is introduced in Part Two, the young daughter of the university educated Babi. Laila’s mother is in mourning for the death of the two sons who joined the jihad against the Soviets and were killed. The paths of Mariam and Laila cross but once in these early parts before their lives become irrevocably linked in Part Three. There is really no need to tell you more, because your ability to anticipate the joining of these two threads will not allow you to guess what is to come in this story and all I really have to say is that those of you who loved “The Kite Runner” will not be disappointed by “A Thousand Splendid Suns.” See details

The Secret

The Secret. Supporters will hail this New Age self-help book on the law of attraction as a groundbreaking and life-changing work, finding validation in its thesis that one’s positive thoughts are powerful magnets that attract wealth, health, happiness… and did we mention wealth? Detractors will be appalled by this as well as when the book argues that fleeting negative thoughts are powerful enough to create terminal illness, poverty and even widespread disasters. The audio version of this controversial book, read by Byrne and contributing authors such as John Gray and Neale Donald Walsch, is uneven at best. The cheesy, obvious sound effects will not do much to add intellectual respectability to a work that has been widely denounced as pseudoscience. Mostly, this audio is hampered by its confusing and disjointed organization—techniques that worked reasonably well in the print version and the movie, such as cutting every few seconds from one enthusiastic expert to another, make for a choppy and somewhat bewildering listening experience. The gentle cadences of Rhonda Byrne’s breathy, Aussie-infused voice are certainly the best part of the audio, but her material is scarce and provides mostly connective tissue between the testimonials.