H.W. Brands' The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream is history the way it ought to be written: expansive, thorough, wide-ranging, and filled with interesting people and events (in some cases so interesting that it's hard to believe that the people were real and that the events really did occur; but this isn't a "memoir," it's a history--they were and they did). The California Gold Rush did many things in addition to making a lot of people very rich--it probably also hastened the coming of the Civil War by pushing forward California's dreams of statehood. But perhaps Brands' most interesting contention is that it also changed the way Americans thought, and still think, about success. Before the Gold Rush, our vision of success was that it came after a lifetime of hard work and diligent application--but the Gold Rush rewarded luck, pure and simple. You didn't succeed simply because of your hard work, or because you were a good person or did good works, but because you happened to be in the right place at the right time. (In a sense, it was a real debunking of, or at least rebuttal to, the Protestant ethic of our nation's Founding Fathers.) This is a good choice for any American history buff, especially those most interested in 19th-century Americana.

The subject matter of Ann Gibbons' book, The First Human, is revealed by its subtitle: 'The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors.' What the subtitle doesn't give readers a taste of is just how entertaining and informative a tale the author has to tell, all about the events and individuals (in some cases, "characters" would be a more apt descriptor) involved in the quest to discover the oldest hominids and answer the question of when humans split off from apes. Aimed at the reader who has an interest in, but not necessarily any significant knowledge of, the subject, science writer Gibbons (who began this book as an article for Nature magazine) offers enough of a basic introduction to the fields of paleontology, paleo-anthropology, and even geology, to get us going. And what a story it is: she begins with the early disagreements over whether mankind originated in Asia or Africa (Africa won out); introduces us to some of the early paleontologists, including Louis Leakey and his family; covers the major discoveries, such as Donald Johannson's Lucy (who was featured prominently in popular science magazines as "the mother of mankind"), and Toumai, uncovered in a dig in Chad; explains the many disagreements and controversies that arise in a field when you're talking about events that took place many millions of years ago; explores the personalities of the various major players; and much more. Here's her take on why the field of paleontology is so contentious:

Even experienced researchers often react with more emotion to the discovery of human ancestors than they do to fossils of any other animal, including dinosaurs. New fossils almost always shatter preconceived notions of what our ancestors should look like, revealing our origins as ordinary apes rather than as exalted beings marked from the beginning with a big brain or some other sign of special destiny.

Gibbons' book exemplifies the best in popular science writing--she makes the reader want to delve more deeply into the topics she covers.

After reading Amy Stewart's Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful, I will never look at a rose quite the same way. Indeed, despite Gertrude Stein's assertion that "A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose," according to Stewart it's more the case today that a rose is no longer simply a rose, but rather a business (as are lilies, larkspurs, and almost any other flower you can name), and a highly successful one at that. Despite her love of blossoms (she describes herself as having "a smutty sort of lust for flowers"), Stewart takes a long, illuminating, and highly readable (although frequently disillusioning) look at how flowers are bred, grown, shipped, and marketed to the consumer. We meet some interesting flowerfolk and learn some startling facts and figures along the way, some good for trivia contests and some more substantive. They include: almost a third of Americans tend to purchase a flower or plant for Valentine's Day; Americans buy about 10 million cut flowers a day; Costco plays an important role in the flower industry; the number of carnation growers has shrunk by three-quarters in the last dozen years; many cut flowers (including roses) now lack a fragrance; and Holland no longer has a monopoly on tulip bulbs. Stewart mourns the loss of the many small, independent growers, whose passion translated into gorgeous flower blooms with robust fragrances, but who couldn't compete with the big producers (many of whom are now located in the Andes) and their cheap labor. Think global, smell local, is a motto she might wish the industry would adapt.

There are some books that make you realize just how lovely the book as an object can be. Nature's Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick, by Jenny Uglow, is one of them. Printed on heavy, creamy paper adorned with small, intricate woodcuts, this is clearly a book to treasure; the care taken in its production is apparent. How fortunate, then, that the excellence of the contents matches the quality of its packaging. Although I very much enjoy biographies, I had never even heard of Uglow's subject, Thomas Bewick, and would probably never have even picked up her book, save that I was one of the judges for a national contest in which it was a finalist. (I'm thrilled to say that it won.) Uglow writes elegantly, in simple and unadorned prose that perfectly illuminates a time, a place, and her subject. Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) grew up and lived all his life in Northumberland, England. As was then the fashion, as a young teenager he was apprenticed, in his case to an engraver, and began a long and successful career of depicting scenes of nature in the medium of wood engravings. (The book includes many, many beautifully reproduced examples of Bewick's meticulous work, each one worthy of looking at long and carefully--one could weave whole tales around each engraving. This slows down the reading of the book significantly!) Woven in with Bewick's biography is the larger story of what was happening in England during his lifetime, most notably the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution (which would reach its zenith after Bewick's death, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries), and the competing energies of the Romantic movement, which was characterized by intellectual and artistic hostility toward that revolution. (Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a prominent example of Romanticism's take on the dangers of the new industrialization.)

Jess Walter's Citizen Vince, set in the final days leading up to the presidential election of 1980 (Jimmy Carter vs. Ronald Reagan), is the story of Vince Camden, currently hiding from his past in Spokane, Washington, and working as a doughnut maker--courtesy of the federal government's witness protection program. His past, or at least that part of it relevant to Walter's story, consisted mainly of low-grade criminal activity--Vince is the kind of guy our mothers warned us against. The novel takes off when that past catches up with him, in the form of a hitman sent by none other than the youngish (but already extremely powerful) mob boss John Gotti, who didn't take kindly to his cooperation with the Feds. Trying his best to evade death sends Vince back to New Jersey, involves him in a heart-pounding poker game, and forces him to put his relationship with his girlfriend Beth (a prostitute with a heart of gold) on hold. But this is also the story of a man's one last try for redemption (even if it does involve merely doughnuts--"Fry, frost and fill," Vince muses at one point. "No reason such a sequence should be any less satisfying than some other sequence--say, scalpel, suction and suture,") framed against a presidential election that turned on the hostage crisis in Iran and Ronald Reagan's inspired question: "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?" Part crime novel, part character study, it all adds up to a terrifically entertaining book--and one that's particularly appropriate for this run-up to the national election this coming November.

Remember Robert Redford in the film Out of Africa? Meryl Streep did her usual superb job of inhabiting the character of Isak Dinesen, but when I finished Sara Wheeler's engrossing and fluent Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton, I realized what a terrific choice the casting director made when Robert Redford was cast as the great love of Dinesen's life (although, as we read here, his great love was East Africa, particularly Kenya). Wheeler moves Finch Hatton (1881-1937) into the spotlight, illuminating this complex (not to mention handsome, non-conforming, dashing, charismatic, and daring) man, from his childhood in a once-wealthy family, his happiness at Eton, and his fascination with the wide open spaces of East Africa, where he spent both his happiest and most bitter days. For World War I history buffs, there's a lot of very interesting material here on warfare in East Africa, in which Finch Hatton was a combatant. Wheeler writes: "It wasn't the troglodyte world of the trenches, but it was another kind of hell. The war in East Africa--virtually unknown to the outside world--was, in its safari through purgatory, a negative metaphor for the Kenyan paradise of the epoch handed down in literature and myth. And the campaign remains buried under the weight of history, whereas Karen Blixen's luminously famous first line--'I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills'--has irreversibly enshrined the lyrical romance of the same landscape." Although Finch Hatton left no diaries, indeed, little sign of an inner, contemplative life at all, Wheeler does an admirable job of giving us a strong sense of a man of whom it can seemingly be said that to meet him was to love him. If you have any doubts, just read Out of Africa and Beryl Markham's West with the Night and you'll see. Book clubs looking for a "mini-series" of books might consider reading Wheeler, Markham, and Dinesen over a three-month period.