Asbury Park Press from Asbury Park, New Jersey • Page 42

PAGE C4 ASBURY PARK PRESS SUNDAY, JAN. 9, 2000 BOOKS Author says we are what we throw away Struggles, successes "Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash" by Susan Strasser Metropolitan Books, $27.50. By TED ANTHONY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Goodwill Industries takes American Express that was Susan Strasser's first major surprise of the afternoon. Credit cards to buy castoffs? Just perfect. This miniature revelation, at the Goodwill shop just off Broadway on Manhattan's Upper West Side, fits Strasser's notion about the nation that Americans have a complicated relationship with the things they throw away.

Strasser, a social historian who has plumbed everyday life for, among other things, a history of housework, thinks a lot about such things. Throw it away, and she's interested. Garbage yours, mine and everyone's; out on the curb, in the wastebasket or inside the Dumpster is the source of her fascination, perhaps a curious notion in a world increasingly crowded with adjectives like "new," "fresh," "clean" and "sterile." But that's exactly why Strasser, who has a knack for making the obscure into the fascinating, wrote her new book, "Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash." In a country where acquisition and novelty are king and queen, Strasser sees the politics of disposal Susan Strasser dissects trash in as the flip side of materialism a way in an increasingly disposable culture to seek insight into what we're all about. "In many circumstances, we throw things out because we don't know what to do with them," she says. "People have a tremendous discomfort about the subject.

Some FICTION NONACTION 1. Timeline. 1. Tuesdays with Morrie. Michael Crichton.

Random House, Mitch Albom. Doubleday, $21 $26.95 2. The Greatest Generation. 2. Atlantis Found.

Tom Brolaw- Random House, $24.95 Clive Cussler. Putnam, $26.95 3. The Greatest Generation Speaks. 3. Hearts in Atlantis.

Tom Brokaw- Random House, $1 9.95 Stephen King. Scribner, $28 4. Us: A Memoir. 4. AW.IktoRemnb.

Frank McCourt. Scribner, $26 Nicholas Sparks. Warner, $19.95 5 WorW Recofdj 2000 Edited by Guinness Media Inc. Guin- 5. Pop Goes the Weasel.

ness Records, $25 James Patterson. Little, Brown, $26.95 6. Life: Our Century in Pictures. Edited by Richard Stoiley and Tony 6. Saving Faith.

Chiu. Bullfinch, $60 David Baldacci. Warner Books, $26.95 7. The Century. Peter Jennings, Todd Brewster.

Dou- 7. Hunting Badger. Tony Hillerman. HarperCollins, $26 8. And the Crowd Goes Wild.

Joe Garner. Sourcebooks, $49.95 8. Plainsong. Kent Haruf. Knopf, $24 9 Mankind.

Hay, Njce ay! Mick Foley. Regan Books, $25 9. Irresistible Forces. Danielle Steel. Delacorte, $26.95 10.

When Pride Still Mattered. David Maraniss. Simon Schuster, 10. Monster. $26 Jonathan Kellerman.

Random House, $25 .95 Publishers Weekly By ELEANOR O'SULLIVAN STAFF WRITER "The Way We Lived Then. Recollections of Well-Known Name Dropper," by Dominick Dunne, Crown Publishing, New York. 218 pages. $27.50. Only a man who has hit rock bottom and returned to the living, as Dominick Dunne openly tells us in his Hollywood memoir "The Way We Lived Then," would offer this recounting of an 1960s' confrontation with Henry Fonda's then-wife: "Afdera Fonda, an Italian social figure, told me off in front of a lot of people at a party at the director Jean Negulesco's house when I said something inappropriate, after too many drinks.

The gist of her attack on me was that I was not important, that I was where I was on a pass, that I was without significant achievement. As hurtful as it was, I knew it wasn't untruthful." Note that. Dunne, a gifted chronicler of privileged people and places, gives us an anecdote that involves an important man's party and a socially prominent European. The fascinating duality of Dunne's book is that it is both realistic and steeped in unreality. And what better place for such a story to take place than Hollywood, during its last palmy heyday the 1950s into the 1970s? Dunne, born in 1925, was the son of a prominent Connecticut physician but the family was Irish Catholic, still a notch below the rarified precincts of Waspdom.

He married very well (Ellen Griffin) of the Griffin Wheel Company Griffins they made the wheels for all of this country's railroad trains. His own good schooling and ability to chum up with the right people brought work in early New York TV, which relocated to Hollywood, which was followed by film work. But "The Way We Lived Then" is not so much about the work as about the play. Parties were held nightly and the Dunnes Nick and Lenny as they were called by their highly placed friends dined out and parried or gave their own soirees with the inevitability of death and taxes. They held their famous black-and-white ball on their 10th wedding anniversary 1964 and everybody came.

Backward By JOHN HOLLENBECK KING FEATURES II are done not only with Till century, but anil if other millennium. Or are we? John Man in his fascinating "Atlas of The Year 1000," (Harvard University Press: $26), makes two telling points. First, other faiths use calendars different from the Christian; and second, in "the year 1000 for the first time in human history it was possible to pass an object right around the world." Such contrasts, as he vividly describes, impacted time as much as those we experience in our space age. DK Publishing highlights the rapidly moving events of our era in "20th Century Day By Day," The book contains 1,600 pages of news headlines about people and happenings from the Victorian Era to the present. A 72-page, closely typed index to this profusely illustrated volume indicate its inclusiveness.

"Eyewitness to the 20th Century," (National Geographic Books: $40) records the century's incidents and innovators from the Associated Prui of it is guilt, but some of it is confusion 'What do I do with this? I don't feel comfortable that I'm generating all of these disposable items, but I don't know how else to Strasser's book is an impressive piece of research, especially given the understandable paucity of Literary events TUESDAY Fiction Lovers' Discussion Group. "Reservation Road," by John Burnham Schwartz, 7:30 p.m. Barnes Noble, 3981 Route 9, Freehold Township. (732) 409-2929. Book Signing and Discussion.

"Sunnyside," by Donna Cantor, 7:30 p.m. Barnes Noble, 753 Route 18, Brunswick Square, East Brunswick. (732) 432-0100. Discussion. "The Sunflower" by Simon Wiesenthal, 10 a.m.

Eastern Branch of the Monmouth County Library, 1001 Route 35, Shrewsbury. (732) 842-5995. WEDNESDAY Discussion. "The Sunflower" by Simon Wiesenthal, 7:30 p.m. Eastern Branch of the Monmouth County Library, 1001 Route 35, Shrewsbury.

(732) 842-5995. Especially for children THURSDAY ADVERTISEMENT 3 Michael Johnson, a classroom teacher in Voorhees, is the elected head of 162,000 teaching staff, support staff, and retired members of the Sew Jersey Education Association, It was all downhill after that. Despite the wealth, beauty and comfort of the scene, there is curiously little joy in Dunne's retelling. He had real friendships with the highly visible, including Natalie Wood, Peter Lawford and Pat Kennedy, Princess Margaret, the Ronald Reagans, Oscar Levant and Maria Cooper, but he also had pals among Hollywood's unseen executives. He had work, money, a good marriage, three children and friends.

What happened? Dunne doesn't tell us why he became an alcoholic and a drug addict and impossible to live with. But if we look closely at the glamorous amateur photos Dunne took over the years, we realize nothing is at it seems. Hindsight reminds us that the vivacious Betsy Bloomingdale's marriage to Alfred Blooming-dale wild come to a horrible ending. Wood looks stunning and happy, but the book's most unsettling chapter describes how makeup men and hair stylists put her drowned, bloated body back together for her funeral viewing. Moreover, Dunne's lovely wife Lenny wears the best gowns and jewels, but she develops multiple sclerosis in her 40s and eventually is confined to a wheelchair.

Their sweet-faced daughter Dominique will be murdered by a former boyfriend, who serves only 2'A years in prison. Dunne himself changes from a polished preppy achiever and bon vivant to a wasted-looking producer of a flop with Elizabeth Taylor called "Ash Wednesday" (1973). After harrowing drug episodes a companion set him on fire in a closet Dunne cleans up and becomes a novelist and much-praised writer for Vanity Fair magazine. He also becomes famous in his own right covering the sensational L.A. trials of O.J.

Simpson and the Menendez brothers. Despite his "deluge," as he calls it, from being too in love with celebrity and fame, Dunne can't get enough of it. He ends his book on this note: Covering the trials "brought me the sort of public attention that I have spent a lifetime observing in famous friends. It was a fabulous experience. I couldn't have enjoyed it more." glances Boxer Rebellion to the Columbine High School Massacre decade by decade, year by year, with the same style and authority imparted by all its imprints.

TimeCBS News' "People of the Century," (Simon Schuster $35) may not include everyone's favorites, but its diverse choice of "one hundred men and women who shaped the last one hundred years" will leave no one dissatisfied. Pick a name: Freud, the Roosevelts, Margaret Sanger, Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Muhammad Ali, Pope John Paul II, Bart Simpson it's quite a list. "The Oxford Children's Book of Famous People," (Oxford University Press: $37.50) presents 1,000 illustrated bios of personalities who made imprints in the past millennium. DK also appeals to young readers with its "Children's History of the 20th Century," with supplementary thumbnail sketches of leaders in many fields. along; and Ricky and Lucy got divorced), and Family Feuds (Natalie Wood once suggested that her younger sister Lana stop trying to act and get a job as a stewardess).

In addition to the main bouts he writes about, Hadleigh also gives us mini-descriptions of such major battles as the James WoodsSean Young battles and the Johnny Carson Jack Parr rivalry. You can read this book and come away thinking that your own longstanding fight with your cousin Ernie is almost as silly as Cindy Williams' and Penny Marshall's constant envy-driven brouhahas. during the "Laverne and Shirley" years. source material about garbage. She had to do a lot of bibliographic trash-picking.

In the book, she delves into how and how slowly the notion of people thinking about trash developed. She tells of clothes recycled into quilts and furniture upholstery, of localized barter systems evolving into a mass market of goods, and of the staggering and often unnoticed changes that the emergence of paper products and sanitary napkins wrought upon the material world. She shines the most in her exploration of emerging consumerism especially the historical backdrop against which it occurred. "The taste for novelty, the conviction that new things represented progress," she writes, "contributed to the celebration of the modern way." StorytimeCraft Featuring "Reading Rainbow" books; ages 5 to Barnes Noble, 753 Route 18, East Brunswick. (732)432-0100.

FRIDAY Baby Club. Moms, dads and "babies" of all ages; 10:30 a.m.; Barnes Noble, 3981 Route 9, Freehold Township. (732) 409-2929. SATURDAY Guest Appearance. Meet Winnie the Pooh, 4 p.m.; Barnes Noble, 3981 Route 9, Freehold Township.

(732) 409-2929. To submit items for this calendar, write to Ronna Weinberg, Bookings, Asbury Park Press, 3601 Highway 66, Neptune, NJ 07754-1551, or fax (732) 922-5885. For more information, call (732) 922-6000, Ext. 4587. A family journey "Waltzing the Cat" Pam Houston.

288 pages. Washington Square Press, New York. $14. Reading Pam Houston's collection of short stories, "Waltzing the Cat," is a bit like having a long, heart-to-heart conversation with a friend who is equal parts compassion and logic: The insights offered are concise and pragmatic yet allow for the unexpected twists and turns our heart can cause in life. Houston looks at how convoluted emotions can make life, how we can see the truth yet ignore it.

In the title story, the cat has become the focal point of the speaker's parents' relationship in a family as dysfunctional in its quiet way as are most families. Then, the mother dies. And the woman speaking must cope with her father's grief, her own mourning, and the need to protect herself. Her father asks if she will not be home soon a journey of distance as well as as grief should the mother be cremated now? The woman says yes, then tells her father she loves him, "trying the words out on my father for the first time since I was five." In the midst of such bravery, she says, with great, painful clarity, to a friend: "I think I am about to become valuable to my father." Houston tackles everything from our ability to invite into our lives the very people we know with absolute certainty are the worst for us, to our need to learn to be independent. If anything, this wise and very human writer tells us that if life is worth living, we must take the risk of accepting and expressing our uniqueness and reach out to love and be loved.

Barbara P. Seidel Staff Writer What went wrong in the Charter Schools? Serious flaws in the law. parents share the governance responsibility. Given the complexity of opening and operating a completely new school, one might have expected that "conversion schools" would be the preferred method of implementing the charter school law. Such schools could take root in existing public school facilities, while enjoying the opportunity for innovation by a Despite valiant efforts to ensure that charter schools would not become targets of outside, for-profit corporations, New Jersey's charter school law is in obvious need of repair.

Our law, and state regulations, are clearly no match for zealous privateers who work behind the scenes to woo charter school founders with promises of full-scale, pre-packaged programs and services. This "cookie-cutter" approach to education is being forced upon under-compensated teaching staffs that often struggle with inadequate instructional resources while a private corporation earns a profit. The law permits the State to approve up to 135 charter schools across New Jersey by this coming school year, Several of the existing schools and at least 28 of the proposed new ones are managed by private companies. with a minimum of three charters per county. The law requires that each charter school be managed by a board of trustees functioning as a public body Inside stargazing at some juicy feuds committed group of teachers and parents.

However, in reviewing the charters of New Jersey's 50 approved schools and the 45 pending new applications, it's clear that the complete opposite has occurred. There is not a single conversion school among them. Moreover, several of the existing schools, and at least 28 of the proposed new ones, are managed by private companies. In addition, several new applicants include 'private entities' on their boards that may be linked with national corporations but have no link to New Jersey, other than having filed incorporation papers here. While they are legally public schools, the private entities and individuals running them have no connection to the communities in which they operate -other than using local property tax revenues, while not being required to file the same budgetary documentation and information as the public schools.

Charter schools could serve as many as 28,000 New Jersey public school students by next year. NJEA believes steps must be taken to keep this burgeoning model of private management of public charter schools from continuing to proliferate and from becoming entrenched under current laws if public education is to survive. independent of the local board of education. The school can be established by a group of teachers in a particular school district, a group of parents whose children attend public school in the district, or a combination of the two. However, the law also permits a charter school to be established by an institution of higher education or a "private entity" located in New Jersey provided teachers and parents are also involved, and the private entity does not hold a majority of the board seats or earn a "net profit" from the charter school.

The law also allows a charter school to be established by and within an existing public school, provided at least 51 of the staff and 51 of the parents agree to the move. In such a "conversion" school, the teaching staff and By MICHAEL RILEY STAFF WRITER "Celebrity Feuds! The Cattiest Rows, Spats and Tiffs Ever Recorded," by Boze Hadleigh (Taylor Publishing, Tolstoy once observed that "happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Well, in the one big "happy" family that is show biz, there is a whole lot of quirky egomaniacal unhappiness running around, and Boze Hadleigh's latest book seeks to tell nearly all about the juiciest ones. He divides the feuds into such categories as Co-Star Wars (While all of America may have loved Lucy, hardly anybody on the set could stand each other. Fred hated Ethel and vice-versa; Lucy and Ejhel didn't get.