BOOKS IN BRIEF
Traitor's Kiss by Gerald Seymour (Overlook, 428 pp., $24.95). In life and on the page, espionage has changed. When Captain Viktor Archenko, chief of staff to the commander of Russia's Baltic Fleet and a spy for British intelligence, is threatened with exposure, the question is not how the compromised agent will be rescued (ex-filtrated in spy speak) but whether an attempt will even be made in a time of cynical and pragmatic statecraft. To computer-savvy new-school spy Gabriel Locke, Archenko is a traitor, a relic of an earlier era, and utterly expendable. But Rupert Mowbray, recently retired Cold Warrior and self-proclaimed "old fart," appeals to his superiors' sense of loyalty, insisting that effecting a rescue is the only honorable course. Mowbray's assistant Alice North formed a romantic and sexual relationship with Archenko, the one great love of her life. While it's clear where the reader's sympathy will lie, nothing is as simple as it seems when the highly risky rescue plan is put into action.
The overall tone of the book is-pessimistic, and carnage is high among the large cast of characters, though some achieve at least a provisionally happy ending. A reluctance to accept responsibility afflicts the upper echelons of British espionage, while a Polish proverb explains the self-serving activities of some of the other characters: "The devil dances in an empty pocket."
Seymour, formerly a British television reporter, has been producing intelligent political and espionage fiction since Harry's Game. While he provides enough action, danger, and hardware to satisfy the bread-and-butter thriller buff, his complex and conflicted characters commend him to readers of masters like Eric Ambler, John Le Carré, and Graham Greene. His political message never overwhelms the human story, but Seymour clearly believes Russia's threat to the West did not end with the fall of the Soviet Union.
--Jon L. Breen
Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences by-Leonard Sax (Doubleday, 320 pp., $24.95). For the past few decades, progressive parents have valiantly tried--and certainly have been urged to try--to raise their children in more gender-neutral ways. The goal of Leonard Sax's book, recently released in paperback, is to prove that such gender-blind parenting is not only a futile pursuit, but also a damaging one.
To do so, Sax relates in an engaging and accessible manner the recent scientific evidence for innate sex differences. Take sight. Given the option to look at either a dangling mobile or a smiling face, infants on the day they are born already show a large disparity in preference: Baby boys are more than twice as likely as baby girls to look at a mobile rather than a human face. Sax argues that these hardwired preferences may go some distance in explaining why boys are more interested in objects that move, like trucks and balls, and girls are more adept at identifying facial expressions: They simply see them better.
The most important point of the book--indeed, its raison d'être--is to convey the message that "sex differences in childhood are larger and more important than sex differences in adulthood." Even in areas where males and females eventually reach parity, such as reading and writing, the rate at which they develop these skills as children varies tremendously by gender. Clearly, educational strategies that recognize, respect, and take advantage of these differences--rather than unnaturally suppress them--will be more successful. The gender-neutral education that predominates today defeats that purpose by turning a blind eye to nature. Parents and teachers bucking this androgynous education trend will be gratified to have at their disposal an arsenal of objective, scientific data of just the type Sax provides.
- Susan Hamilton