This week's book picks come from Publisher's Weekly April 16 non-fiction reviews and are heavily abridged to fit your schedule.

My Favorite:

Never Shower in a Thunderstorm: Surprising Facts and Misleading Myths About Our Health and the World We Live In
Anahad O'Connor. Times, $14 paper (256p) ISBN 978-0-8050-8312-5

Wive's tales and health rumors exposed. "...everything from the potency of Spanish fly to the cancerous effects of cellphone use [...] whether bicycle seats cause impotence or if knuckle cracking can lead to arthritis [...] All of O'Connor's research is backed by legit scientific studies, but he refers to them only in passing."

Other Books of Interest

Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America
Eric Jay Dolin. Norton, $27.95 (416p) ISBN 978-0-393-06057-7

The epic tale of whaling and its effects on the world. "Many of America's pivotal moments were bound up with whaling: the ships raided during the Boston Tea Party, for example, carried whale oil from Nantucket to London before loading up with tea. Dolin also shows the ways whaling intersected with colonial conquest of Native Americans-had Indians not sold white settlers crucial coastal land, for example, Nantucket's whaling industry wouldn't have gotten off the ground. He sketches the complex relationship between whaling and slavery: service on a whaler served as a means of escape for some slaves, and whalers were occasionally converted into slave ships."

Truth: New Rules for Marketing in a Skeptical World
Lynn Upshaw. Amacom, $24.95 (272p) ISBN 978-0-81447376-4

A call for all marketers to act with integrity. "...while his argument about the need for integrity in an age of information overload, corporate malfeasance and consumer cynicism rings true ... he does not fulfill his promise to teach companies the practical, daily discipline of operating and marketing on the basis of truth."