South Florida Sun Sentinel from Fort Lauderdale, Florida • Page 55

Sun-Sentinel, Sunday, May 9, 1993 11D NONFICTION WHAT THEY'RE READING Western Union retiree connects with history of communications NATIONAL BEST SELLERS The New York Times harSver FICTION Last Week, week on list 1. THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY. Robert James Waller. (Warner, $14.95) 1 3g '2. THE CLIENT.

John Grlsham. (Doubleday, $23.50) 2 8 3. THE LAST COMMAND. Timothy ahn. (SpectraBantam, $21.95) 3 3 A IS FOR JUDGMENT.

Sua firaf. A I. 'If I i 'in 1 i RICHARD MARIUS NOVELIST Seaward Brad Lelthausen "It's about a man who has a psychic experience. Very well-done, published by Knopf. I don't read just this kind of thing.

I read anything and everything that comes along. I just like to read, and I really like nonfiction." THE STORY OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS. By George P. Oslin. Mercer University Press.

$35. 507 pp. By EARL LIFSHEY Special to the Sun-Sentinel Much if not most of the world's troubles, it has been said, have been due to misunderstanding caused by poor communication. One shudders at the thought of how much worse things might be if communication had not progressed as far and as fast as it has and at an ever-quickening pace. Just how fast and how far communication has progressed is told in masterful manner in The Story of Telecommunications by George P.

Oslin, a former New York newspaper reporter. Oslin began researching what would become this book in 1929, when, at age 29, he was hired by Western Union to be its director of public relations. The first morning he arrived on the job, he found a big stack of accumulated letters from a variety of companies, educators, individuals and even government officials asking for information about some aspect of the history of the telegraph, telephone or communications in general. Oslin received approval to write the managers of each of Western Union's 25,000 offices to locate descendants of pioneers and get their diaries, letters and records. Then, after he retired from the company, he and his wife, Susan, traveled the country, researching more than 100,000 original documents about the industry.

"She made this book possible by taking notes and retyping thousands of old documents," he notes. One discovery, for example, was the manuscript of a book by Morse's partner, F.O.J. Smith that had been missing 88 years. "Among hundreds who told me of their experience were Thomas A. Edison, William Henry Jackson (Civil War soldier, pioneer photographer and covered wagon bullwhacker, then nearly 100 years old), William Campbell (last surviving Pony Express rider, then 95), and Martin Cahoon (on the Great Eastern during the laying of the first trans-Atlantic cable)." Now 93, Oslin and his wife live in Florida.

The story they have put together covers media from smoke signals to satellites to fiber optics. More than 150 photographs and illustrations supplement the text of this absorbing historical narrative. The book is rich in historical twists, such as the time in 1858 when, after the initial efforts to lay a cable across the Atlantic failed, a plan was launched to link America with Europe by a cable across the Behring Strait to Moscow. The outcome of that ambitious and risky venture was the United States' purchase of Alaska for 2 cents an acre. Curious details abound: "By 1896, there were 100 bicycle manufacturers in this country" with Western Union delivery boys using most of them and messenger girls in large Western Union offices using roller skates to save time.

In the 1890s, Western Union owned stock in so many telephone companies it could have gained control of a small company called "and become the Western Union Telegraph and Telephone Company." But Western Union's president, Frederick Eckert, preferred to "milk his company for profits." Competition in those days was brutal. In 1903, for example, a legal dispute between Western Union and the Pennsylvania Railroad resulted in the railroad hiring 1,000 men to chop down the telegraph poles on its property. Alexander Graham Bell's right to the telephone patent, we learn, barely survived 600 lawsuits. He later admitted Elisha Gray's preceeded his. If I reserve any criticism of this book, it is the zeal if not the obsession of the author to include every last bit of historical detail in his narrative, which tends to slow down the main story.

Bringing the industry's achievements up beyond Western Union to the electronicslasersatellite era, he wisely refrains from pursuing this absorbing story in such great detail. To do that would demand a volume at least least twice as big. "ton. (Holt, $21.95) 4 4 5. I'LL BE SEEING YOU.

Mary Higgins Clark. (Simon Schuster, $23) 1 6. GAI-JIN. James Clavell. (Delacorte, $27.50) 1 7.

A SEASON IN PURGATORY. Domi- nick Dunne. (Crown, $22) 5 2 8. LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE. taura Esquivel.

(Doubleday, 17.50).. 7 4 9. ANGEL. Barbara Taylor Bradford. (Random House, $23) 1 10.

PERFECT. Judith McNaught. (Pocket, $22) 6 2 NONFICTION 1. WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES. Clarissa Pinkola Estes.

(Ballantine, $20) 1 39 2. HEALING AND THE MIND. Bill Moyers. (Doubleday, $25) 2 12 3. THE WAY THINGS OUGHT TO BE.

Rush Limbaugh. (Pocket, 3 34 4. CARE OF THE SOUL. Thomas Moore. (HarperCollins, $20) 5 21 5.

A WORLD WAITING TO BE BORN. MV Scott Peck. (Bantam, $22.95) 4 4 6. BANKRUPTCY 1995. Harry E.

Fig-gie Jr. with Gerald J. Swanson. (Little, Brown, $19.95) 10 25 7. REMEMBERING DENNY.

Calvin Trillin. (Farrar, Straus Giroux, $19) 6 2 8. ASSEMBLING CALIFORNIA. Joh McPhee. (Farrar, Straus Giroux, $21) 11 9 9.

AMY FISHER: MY STORY. Amy Fisher with Sheila Weller. (Pocket, $22) 9 3 10. THINKING OUT LOUD. Anna Quindlen.

(Random House, $22) 8 3 FICTION 1. THE PELICAN BRIEF. John Gris- ham. (IslandDell, $6.99) 1 12 2. IS FOR INNOCENT.

Sue Grafton. (Fawcett, $5.99.) 2 3 THE FIRM. John Grisham. (Island-' Dell, $5.99) 3 67 NONFICTION 1. THE SILENT PASSAGE.

Gail Sheeny. (Pocket, $5.50) 1 2 2. THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED. M. NONFICTION Aumatzimg Rawidi JUAN MANUEL FANGIO II PROFESSIONAL CAR RACER Profeta Herman Hess By Maria Riva "I've read several of his books.

read them in Spanish. I like books that make you think. Books that leave you feeling they've made a Books that give philosophical reasons for what they say. And this one did all that." pells si fast one Scott Peck. $10.95) 2 496 3.

A YEAR IN PROVENCE. Peter Mayle. (Vintage, $10) 4 82 -si I I CRITIC'S CHOICE BATS OUT OF HELL. By Barry Hannah. Hougton Mifflin.

$22.95. 382 pp. Aside from a rather obvious and unimaginative title, Barry Hannah's new collection of short stories is downright amazing. His bizarre characters display some of the most cockeyed Southern inventiveness this side of Flannery O'Connor. Hannah's least successful technique is his Joycean foray into dialect, but he makes up for this lapse with an abundance of wonderfully crafted sentences.

And his characters may be clueless about what makes them do the things they do, but they usually awaken from disaster awe-struck at their survival. That's where Randi and Geller parted company. Geller would never concede that his much-publicized stunts bending spoons, moving objects around a tabletop, "reading" minds were illusions. And that made Randi very cantankerous indeed. Geller, a crafty showman, attracted international publicity for his demonstrations.

He wasn't doing them on Wonderama, as Randi had a few years earlier. By the time Geller arrived on the scene, there were better venues available and there was vastly more money to be had. Geller merits only a few pages in Conjuring, which is as it should be. Although the subtext of the book is a James Randi polemic on the right and wrong of a charlatan posing as a mystic, the book at its best is devoted to showmanship. And Conjuring is, at its best, a wonderful book.

Devoted primarily to the more flamboyant magicians of an earlier day, it conjures the time about which Randi writes with an almost palpable atmosphere. This was an era when wide-eyed Midwestern lads still ran away to join the circus. A 10-cent afternoon at the neighborhood bijou, watching a touring magician's 90-min-ute show, could transform a kid for life. One of the strengths of Conjuring is that, finally, a magician is writing about other magicians. Better still, this magician can write.

And Randi is a capable historian: The appeal of each illusionist, and why he or she captured the public's attention at a specific time in show business history, is explained with clarity and contagious excitement. Paraded for the reader's inspection are the elegant, tuxedo-clad Harry Blackstone and his son and successor, Harry the legendary escape artist and movie star, Harry Houdini; Thurston, Hellstrom and other "mental- CONJURING. By James Randi. St. Martin's Press, New York.

$29.95. 314 PP- By BILL KELLEY Special to the Sun-Sentinel Readers with a keen memory for footnotes of popular culture may recognize James Randi as the man who took on Uri Geller in the late 1970s. Randi made it his personal crusade to expose all reputed psychics and specifically Geller as headline-hunting illusionists and nothing more. If you grew up in the New York area during the 1960s, you remember another Randi: The Amazing Randi, a magician who was a popular fixture on local television and the club circuit. More than a few young couch potatoes badgered their parents into buying them a magic kit after seeing The Amazing Randi enthrall studio audiences on Wonderama or some other weekend TV show.

Of course, James Randi and The Amazing Randi are the same man. Randi actually is an accomplished magician to say "serious" magician still seems an oxymoron and with Conjuring, his ninth book, he enters the peerage of accomplished authors as well. For magic buffs, Conjuring is an indispensable account of stage magicians in this and other western countries in our century. For the average reader, who pauses a few seconds while channel surfing if he sees a magician pop up on his TV set, the book is simply a charming, handsomely illustrated diversion. To judge from Conjuring, Randi doesn't believe in "pure" magic, at least not the kind purportedly practiced by stage magicians.

He considers them charlatans. Randi does, however, admire a good trickster, as long as the performer acknowledges that's all it is a trick. I-. SOUTH FLORIDA 1 Southern Book Service HARDCOVER FICTION 1. THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY.

Robert James Waller. Warner, $14.95) 1 36 2. A SEASON IN PURGATORY. Domi- nlck Dunne. (Random House, $22) 3 3 .3.

WHISPERS. Belva Plain. (Double-day, $22.95) 1 4. I'LL BE SEEING YOU. Mary Higgins Clark.

(Simon Schuster, $23) 4 2 5. THE CLIENT. John Grisham. (Doubleday, $23.50) 2 9 6. PERFECT.

Judith McNaught. (Pocket, 7 2 7. FOR LOVE. Sue Miller. (HarperCollins, $23) 1 8.

WINTER PREY. John Sandford. (Putnam, $21.95) 8 6 9. IS FOR JUDGMENT. Sue Grafton.

(Holt, $21.95) 9 5 10. GAI-JIN. James Clavell. (Delacorte, $27.50) 1 NONFICTION 1. HEALING AND THE MIND.

Bill Moyers. (Doubleday, $25) 1 12 2. WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES. Clarissa Pinkola Estes. (Ballantine, $20) 2 22 3.

I THINKING OUT LOUD. Anna Quindlen. (Random House, $22) 4 2 4. THE WAY THINGS OUGHT TO BE. Rush Limbaugh.

(Pocket, $22) 3 34 CARE OF THE SOUL. Thomas Mnhro Marnorrnlllne tOt 7 i 12 James Randi and Chung Ling Soo, "the marvelous Chinese conjuror" of the early 1900s, who died when his "Defying the Bullets" trick failed. Augmenting Randi's meticulous, encyclopedic assessment of his forebears and colleagues is a splendid display of poster art. The text is rich enough, but it is complemented by superbly reproduced illustrations photos of the illusionists, posters heralding their appearances "in your town!" many from Randi's personal collection of memorabilia. Conjuring seems to have been a lifelong project for the author, and he obviously lavished great care on every aspect of it, from the writing to the packaging.

Randi re-creates the heart-stopping excitement felt by every youngster of a certain generation when confronted by the first appearance of a touring magician in his city. For anyone who savors the memory of those innocent sensations, this is a chance to experi-en i them again. Conjuring is a gorgeous book. And for some of us, it's indispensable. CHARMS FOR THE EASY LIFE.

By Kaye Gibbons. Putnam's. $19.95. 254 pp. One of the rising younger generation of Southern writers, Kaye Gibbons seems to get better with every novel she publishes.

She manages to look at life from a sharpely feminist point of view without sacrificing humor, humanity or a vivid sense of the South. Charms for the Easy Life tells the story of three generations of women facing progress, regress and the vacillations of life with the opposite sex. But all survive loneliness, bad choices In marriage, even feminine strife with nobility and dignity. CHAUNCEY MABE FOOTNOTES Feature Writing for Free-lancers, with John DeGroot of the Sunr Sentinel, is offered Wednesdays through May 19, 6:45 to 8:45 p.m., at Imperial Point Library, 5985 N. Federal Highway, Fort Lauderdale.

Registration fee is $50. 1-305-763-4968. Katherine Goldman, author of My Mother Worked and I Turned Out Okay and her mother Lois Wyse, author, will autograph 3-4 p.m. Sunday at Liberties, 309 Plaza Real, Boca Raton, 1-407-368-1300. -wiv, yi I Ul Willi IW, VbVf A IllAni iifaivikis ne AnLI Bill Kelley is a free-lance writer based in Fort Lauderdale.

iiinunLU nwiinu iudcdwiuii M. Scott Peck. (Bantam, $22.95) 8 3 7, BANKRUPTCY 1995. Harry E. Figgis Jr.

with Gerald J. Swanson. (Little, Brown, $19.95) 10 15 8, REMEMBERING DENNY. Calvin Trillin (Farrar, $19) 9 2 9, AMY FISHER: MY STORY. Amy fisher and Sheila Weller.

(Pocket, $22) 5 3 10, MARILYN MONROE. Donald Spoto. (HarperCollins, $25) 3 PAPERBACK ROUNDUP Medicine makers, king crabbers cash in SERPENT-HANDLING BELIEVERS. By Thomas Burton. University of Tennessee Press.

$19.95. 208 pp. ills. ket. But prices on brand-name drugs don't go down, as might be expected.

Instead, the originating company raises its prices, knowing that doctors will continue to prescribe their product regardless of price. WORKING ON THE EDGE. By Spike Walker. St. Martin's.

$10.95. Walker calls king crab fishing the most dangerous profession in the world, And he should know, having spent nine years doing it. This book calls up memories of Jack London, with its real-life portrayals of men pitted against the sea at its most brutal. King crabs are harvested from the icy, roiling waters of the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska. Ships sink in the 30-foot breakers; men die 42 in 1988, for example.

But the survivors get rich, earning as much as $100,000 for a two-month fishing season. This Is an extraordinary book, Thomas Burton spent time with small Southern sects that pick up venomous snakes or drink water spiked with strychnine as part of their worship. He investigates the origins of these practices, finding they likely were established by a man named George Hensley in rural Tennessee about 1913. Hensley and his followers based their beliefs on Mark which states in part: "They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them." Hensley eventually died of snakebite, as have many other adherents, but such developments don't seem to have dampened the enthusiasm of the faithful. By MONICA STRAND Special to the Sun-Sentinel MAKING MEDICINE, MAKING MONEY.

By Donald Drake and Marian Uhl-man. Andrews and McMeel. $5.95. Miracle drugs are being developed continually by the big pharmaceutical companies. High blood pressure, depression, ulcers, AIDS, cholesterol, heart attacks and many other maladies are becoming increasingly controllable through the discovery of new medicines.

Unfortunately, the drugs are being priced out of the reach of many Americans. Drake and Uhlman, reporters for the Philadelphia Inquirer, show how drug companies manage to keep the consumer costs of their products high. For example, at the end of the seven-year monopoly granted to companies that develop and market a new medicine, generic versions flood the mar PAPERBACK FICTION 1. THE FIRM. John Grisham.

(Island- Dell, $5.99) 2 69 2. A TIME TO KILL. John Grisham. (Wynwood, $9.95) 3 15 3. THE PELICAN BRIEF.

John Grisham. (IslandDell, $6.99) 1 13 4. JURASSIC PARK. Michael Crlch- ton. (Ballantine, $5.99) 4 15 .5, WITCHING HOUR.

By Anne Rice. (Ballantine, $6.99) 11, vU.flOna NONFICTION 1. TEACHING YOUR CHILDREN VALUES. Linda and Richard Eyre. (Simon Schuster, $11) 1 2.

T-FACTOR FAT GRAM COUNTER. Martin Katahn. (Norton, $1.95) 1 81 3- LIFE'S LITTLE INSTRUCTION BOOK, II. H. Jackson Brown.

(Rut-ledge Hill, $5.95) 2 5 4. THE SILENT PASSAGE. Gall Sheehy. (Pocket, $5.50) 3 2 Mark Richard, PENHemingway Award winner, author will read from his novel Flshboy 8 p.m. Wednesday, May 12 at Book and Books, 933 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach.

1-305-532-3222. Martin Spethman, author of How to get Into and graduate from college In four years, will be available from 7-10 p.m. Friday, 1-5 p.m. and 7-10 p.m. Saturday at Barnes Noble (corner of Atlantic University) across from Coral Square Mall.

1-305-753-6650. Richard Watson, author, will be signing his new book Niagara Monica Strand is a free-lance writer v.m p.m. Saturday, at Liberties. in Miami..