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Show I BOOK BUZZ wife was involved in all this. Though "Rules of Decep- By LAURA WADLEY tion" has thrills aplenty, and many unexpected twists and turns, some of the stock characters are a disappointment. It's hardly original to have a Christian fundamentalist step into the breach where the evil Russian megalomaniac used n to operate; the officious type who throws roadblocks into the way of the d honest and investigators farther down the food chain is nothing new, either. Still, "Rules of Deception" is a ripping yarn just the thing to while away a couple of hours in the summer 'Rules of Deception' Dr. Jonathan Ransom is a beach-rea- d hero: handsome, prematurely gray, probably because he works in dangerous conditions for Doctors Without Borders and eschews all and suit-lik- e be- assorted nastiness breaks loose "policemen" try to kill him, as does an assassin who dips his bullets in a rare South American poison. Ransom escapes by killing a policeman and brings a world of trouble down on his head. While the reader follows his near misses, heshe also sees the other players in the game, but most of them are operating with shadowy motives: Has the Company gone bad in taking third-stringer- s, upper-echelo- havior. When his wife, a nurse and administrator for DWB, perishes in a crevasse after a nasty climbing accident, he discovers two baggage claim tickets in her mail When he picks up the stuff, better-informe- sun. on the Division? Are Iranian enrichment facilities the real thing, or a set up? On the run, Ransom has to try to figure out who is trustworthy, what everyone is up to, whether anyone can stop the launch of a drone filled with plastic explosives in time to save an airliner with 600 people on board and how his 'A Few Seconds of Panic Not since George Plimpton's iconic "Paper lion" was published over 40 years ago has a journalist penetrated the secretive bastion of the National Football League as a player. In "A Few Seconds of Panic," Stefan Fatsis writes a fascinating account of his time as a "5- - become a teammate to a group of guys who will automatically view him with suspicioa One of the most interesting aspects of this book is how different real life in the NFL is from what we see and are told on television. What Fatsis conveys with poignant precision is how hard life is for the the guys who may get a $20,000 signing bonus and then have to feed their families on $400 a week while they wait to see if they will be kept on for one more season, or even through the next month. Most players will not last more than three years in professional football, if that, and then what? Some are prepared to leave; many are not because football is what they do and who they are. "A Few Seconds of Panic" is a deeply-fe- lt and enlightening view of the world of profes- foot-8- , sportswriter" playing in the NFL for the Denver Broncos. What professional players make look easy on the field is revealed to be the result of very, very hard work. We follow Fatsis as he gets his aging (in sports years) body into shape, practices hours on end with a kicking coach until he transforms his good soccer skills into football skills, and then joins the squad to try to sional sports. I Laura Wadley is a librarian with the Provo City Library. her at laurawprovo. lib.ut.us. History of children's books is surprisiny interesting Karen Macpherson SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE From the publication of lesson-fille- d Primer" to the midnight bookstore parties for the latest "Harry Potter" volume, children's books have and provided a valuable fascinating window into American culture. That's the premise of "Minders of (Houghton Mifflin, $28), the newest histobook by children's-boo- k rian Leonard S. Marcus. In this highly readable book aimed at adults, Marcus details the rise (and, often, the fall) of major Make-Believ- U.S. children's-boo- k publishers, as well as the key role played by librarians in the 20th century in determining what American children should read. A book focused on the history of American children's-boo- k publishing might seem as dull as dishwater to some readers. Nothing could be further from the truth in this book, where Marcus drawing on years of research masterfully pulls together strands of history and literature to show how the answer to the question of "What should children read?" has changed radically over the past couple of centuries. Along the way, Marcus introduces readers to characters like "impresa- rio" Mason Colonial-era-publishin- g Locke Weems, who wrote the first biography of George and Edward Strate- - meyer, whose publishing syndicate used assembly line techniques to churn out the "Nancy Drew" and "Hardy Boys" series, among many others. Marcus provides sketches of such famous children's-boo- k creators as Robert McClos-key- , Margaret Wise Brown and Maurice Sendak. Readers also make the acquaintance of the many grande dames of children's books during the middle of the 20th century, especially Anne Carroll Moore, the imperious head of the New York Public Library, and her nemesis, Ursula Nordstrom, whose career coups as a noted children's-booeditor included "Where the Wild Things Are," -- k "Charlotte's Web" and "Harriet the Spy." In an example of how Marcus skillfully weaves in memorable details, he notes how Moore once asked Nordstrom what qualified her someone who wasn't a librarian, to publish teacher or parent children's books. Nordstrom replied: "I am a former child, and I haven't forgotten a thing." "Children's books are reinto the ally a kind of y culture at any given moment," Marcus said during a recent talk about his book at Politics & Prose bookstore in Washington. "Children's books are the most basic expression of the ideas and dreams of one gen- eration for the next." But, as Marcus notes in his foreword: "Children's books have had a history in America, and for nearly all that time there has been scant agreement as to the books that were best. "Yet overall it has been a defining feature of children's publishing, as contrasted with other kinds, that the people who buy the books have not been the people for whom the books were intended." Today, children's books are big business, as demonstrated by the millions of copies of J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" books. It's hard to imagine a time, less than a century ago, when the bulk of children's books generally were sold only to libraries and schools and thus weren't readily available for to parents or children books that should be published. While many of the women who pioneered children's-boodepartments at key publishers agreed with her, others, like Nordstrom, refused to bow to Moore's tastes. k purchase. It was a time when people like Moore, the librarian, sought, often successfully, to dictate the kinds of children's ;? iCARE 't-- 03 375-5- 1 v r V O -- 4', v |