"Tripping the Prom Queen: The Truth About Women and Rivalry"

"Tripping the Prom Queen: The Truth About Women and Rivalry"
Susan Shapiro Barash
St. Martin's Press, $22.95





"Mean Girls" is one of my favorite movies. I don't remember having "Mean Girls" in my high school, but I'm sure they exist everywhere. They are the girls who have to better than you at everything, and they will remind you that they are. They will be your friends until it is no longer convenient for them or until you beat them at something. Then they will drop you and find something else where they will be more successful to show you up. Their mission in life is to be better than you. And they will be. And they will let you know.

Susan Shapiro Barash tells us it's not just high school girls. And it's not just enemies. It's friends, best friends, sisters, mothers, daughters, cousins and co-workers. And it happens when they are school girls, collegiates and adults; single, married and divorced; parents and childless; promoted, passed over and fired. Women and rivalry happens all the time.

Barash uses hundreds of interviews with a variety of women as the basis for "Tripping the Prom Queen: The Truth About Women and Rivalry." The unfortunate yet undeniable fact drawn from the interviews and her book is that all types of women of all ages are constantly in competition with each other unless they are able to realize it and make an effort to stop.

I picked up this book thinking I didn't have much rivalry with other women, wondering what this could be about. The more I read about the experiences other women have had, the more I thought about my own experiences in life that were competition and rivalry that came out of envy and jealousy that didn't end until I was convinced I was the better of the two of us in at least one way.

Envy and jealousy provide the basis for most of the competition and rivalry between women. This is clear through Barash's examples of women's friendships ending when one is getting married and the other is perpetually single, or one gets pregnant when another has been tirelessly trying to have children sans success, or one is promoted to a position another has had her eye on for longer. When someone gets something you want, it's natural to feel jealous because you have lost this supposed competition between the two of you.

The big question is why this is so prevelant in relationships among women and not with men. Unfortunately, Barash's book doesn't give us much of the why. She instead tells us the rivalry is inevitable, but there are ways to downplay it so relationships will not be destroyed when a woman meets success and her friend cannot.

So without much of a cause or a permanent solution, Barash just shows that rivalry among women exists. We all like to see the Prom Queen trip, even if she is our best friend. It's something we like to see because it assures us that we, the losers in the popularity contest, are still better than her at something, even if it's as simple as balance or poise.

"Tripping" doesn't provide much insight as to why the phenomenon of women's rivalry occurs, but it will give women readers insight as to why their relationships with other women have broken down, why envy over a minute detail could be the eventual downfall of a seemingly flawless friendship. And Barash's advice at the end of the book may just be the key to saving those that are worth it.

"Everything is Illuminated"

"Everything is Illuminated"
Jonathan Safran Foer
Harper-Perennial, $13.95






It's hard to pick out the good in a book more or less about the Holocaust. But it's hard to pick out the bad, too.

The main character, who shares his name with the author, is an American college student who sets out on a journey to Ukraine to learn about his grandfather. He is guided by Alex, who is the same age and an ardent admirer of everything American, Alex's grandfather, also named Alex, and Alex's grandfather's "seeing-eye bitch," Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior. The younger Alex serves as a translator for Jonathan, who speaks only American.

Jonathan's grandfather escaped the destruction of his shtetl by the Nazis with the help of a woman named Augustine. Armed with the photograph and name of the town, Trachimbrod, the troop sets out hopefully to find something.

But the story isn't told that easily. Foer jumps between Jonathan's novel about his family's history (beginning in the 18th century), Alex's story of the journey to Trachimbrod and their discoveries, and Alex's letters to Jonathan in America.

The best written parts of the book are from Alex, though Jonathan is the one with hopes of becoming a writer. Jonathan's story involves too many sexually explicit stories that don't serve much purpose to the rest of the book, other than perhaps letting us know that even 200 years ago there was heavy primiscuous activity occuring. It's explicit and mostly unnecessary.

Jonathan's story starts with his many greats-grandmother, but after her story is done, jumps to his grandfather. It was set up as though it would contain a more detailed description of his family's history, but perhaps he only saw his many greats-grandmother and his granddather as the only important parts. Besides, with all the intercourse he had to write about, there wasn't much time for him to mention other people from his lineage.

The story from Alex's point of view is more depressing. Here is where we learn the truth about what happened in Trachimbrod and during World War II. But these chapters in the book are also the funniest and most entertaining because of Alex's style of writing in English. The man's desire to use American slang coupled with his obvious use of a thesaurus lead to truely amusing passages that made me laugh at how ridiculous some American sayings must seem to outsiders.

Alex also complains that the characters in Jonathan's stories should be happy and should have happy endings. But they don't get that. And Jonathan doesn't either. There is only sadness and shock in learning about the past and the hate the Nazis displayed to his family and their town.

Finishing this book doesn't give the reader a happy ending either. There are still questions that are unanswered and will always remain that way. There isn't the closure that Alex expects all stories to have.

So there's good and there's bad. Foer took a sad story and wrote it in a way that could be comical — and at some parts is actually laugh out loud funny. He has a talent for creating characters that the audience can imagine and predict, complete with their personalities, quirks and speeches.

Foer has written a fake real story, and it hurts to know that there is truth behind this fiction.

"Booking in the Heartland"

"Booking in the Heartland"
Jack Matthews
Johns Hopkins University Press, $16.95




Jack Matthews tales his joy of collecting rare books in this book of essays that will be most enjoyed by a bibliophile — more specifically, a bibliophile from Ohio.

If you are neither of those, it is not likely you will derive the same sort of joy from this book that Matthews surely got from writing it.

I picked up this book because I had written down the title after a professor mentioned it in a class I took a year ago. And in it I found the same sort of treasure that I'm sure Matthews finds when he is out booking. There are interesting stories that I otherwise never would have heard. And although they aren't always interesting, I feel enlightened, maybe even educated for now knowing them.

I've also always been interested in the not textbook version of history — the personalities, the interactions, the conversations that made things the way they are. And I have particular interest in Ohio, being that it is the only place I have ever lived.

Matthews seems to share this same passion, sharing the locations he found books or their characters' ties to different areas of Ohio. He writes with a high level of intellect, subtlely injecting humor, sometimes about the authors of the books he has found.

Perhaps that is the weakness of the book. Although it is short, it was a more difficult read because of the prose. But then again, considering the targeted audience for this book, I'm sure that wouldn't be a problem for most readers.

And perhaps the only other weakness is Matthews does not give full details about the books he discusses, probably to keep the book on the topic at hand — the booking, not necessarily the topics of the books obtained through the booking — and it might only be ignorance on my part that I don't know more about these books or the historical events mentioned.

Matthews' books are rare, special. People who otherwise would have disappeared in the pages of history come alive.

That's the main point: There is a story behind everything. You might think that artifacts from a past life are meaningless, but they are the only things that tie the future to the past — what gives our society and culture some sort of explanation. Books are the very glue that holds everything together. A man may have just scrawled details in a journal about a trek by a wagon train, but his stories make those adventures and his life real to the person who picks up the faded, torn leather at a used book sale.

Matthews book will inspire his targeted audience to find rarities in their own collections, to share them, to search for more, to find characters forgotten as their years have passed, to write their own journals in hopes that someday other bibliophiles will drive hours to find them.

"The Female Brain"

"The Female Brain"
Louann Brizendine, M.D.
Morgan Road Books, $24.95






To all women who think they are a little crazy and all men who don't understand them: Read this book.

Ever wondered why there aren't more women in engineering jobs? How women can read men's minds? Why men don't understand why their girlfriends go from what they think is fine and normal to a mess of tears and wailings, while the girlfriends don't understand why they didn't see it coming? Why boys play rough and girls role play? Why men are always ready for sex and women have to be "in the mood"?

There are biological explanations for all of those, and Louann Brizendine illustrates what they are.

Brizendine uses examples from her patients and her own life to sensibly explain the differences between men and women. Their actions, personality traits, and job, family and mate choices are more than just differences in nurturing; nature has played a role in what makes a man a man and what makes a woman a woman.

Scientists and doctors used to think that women's brains were just a smaller version of men's, and therefore similar, Brizendine says. She disproves that theory by showing the scientific actions of the testosterone, estrogen, amygdala, oxytocin, etc., produce the different actions and reactions men and women have to varied situations.

In one case, a man goes to play poker with his buddies instead of calling his girlfriend. His girlfriend assumes he has found someone else and is cheating on her. She becomes upset with him and he has no idea why. Somone might just think the girlfriend has a jealous, controlling problem, but in reality, because of the way the human species has evolved, her brain was trained to think her boyfriend was out with someone else for the basic biological needs of humans — to reproduce.

Brizendine explains that throughout evolution, those who have survived to reproduce and pass on their traits to future generations have affected the way the human race is now. A man's job is to reproduce with as many women as possible, while a woman's job is to be assured that she will have comfort from this man and he will be there when she needs him. Of course she would fear the worst if her boyfriend doesn't call — biologically, it would make the most sense for him to be out with other women.

Now if that isn't assurance that women aren't crazy, I don't know what is!

But I wouldn't recommend this book just because it made me feel better about myself, the things I have done, the things I have experienced and the things I will look forward to encountering in the future.

My biggest complaint about the book is the lack of discussion about homosexual men and women. There are a few pages tucked after the main part of the book but before Brizendine's citations where she explains that homosexual women tend to have brains that may react more like men's in different situations because they have more testosterone, but that is about it. I was disappointed that there wasn't a chapter devoted to differences between heterosexual and homosexual women, but I'm guessing that's because of lack of research there. Perhaps there isn't much of a significant difference, but I still think it's something that should be addressed.

Women should read "The Female Brain" to know they are not alone in the ways they feel about things and that it is normal for them to go through different phases and feelings. Men should read it so they can get a better understanding of why women react the way they do in different situations.

The book probably won't help any man understand women any better, but it's probably a good start.