Nonfiction offers a ticket to hidden worlds

A great nonfiction book is a ticket to a world you'd never be able to explore otherwise. It's an all-access backstage pass to life with your favorite singer or band, a chance to sit in the director's chair at your favorite TV show.

It can be a hidden-camera view into a job or subculture that doesn't usually allow spies. Sometimes it's a time-machine trip back to a fascinating real-life event, told with all the tastes and smells of reality, leavened with the accumulated knowledge of all the decades that have gone by since then.

It's a shame, then, that so many of us have the opposite view of nonfiction, thinking of it as drearily dull books you were forced to read for classes even the teacher obviously didn't like very much. We've left those dusty days behind and chosen a selection of new nonfiction only the hippest schools included in their curriculum — strippers, jeans, Elvis, Johnny Cash, reality show "The Amazing Race" and more. Pick up your backstage pass here.    —Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, Books Editor

Strippers uncovered
If you think the world of adult entertainment is populated with soulless bimbos, think again. In “Indecent: How I Make it and Fake it as a Girl For Hire” (Seal Press, $15), blogger Sarah Katherine Lewis presents an honest, graphic, hilarious and poignant look at life as a stripper, erotic masseuse and adult-video star.

Tired of working as an underpaid Seattle barista, Lewis decides to make a change — and does she ever. She starts small — at a seedy “tanning salon," where the girls dance for customers in private rooms. Lewis pulls no punches in describing what's involved in her performances, meaning you may want to think twice before reading this book in a public setting where someone can read over your shoulder. Lewis’ feelings about her body change throughout the book; at first she thinks she’s too overweight and tattooed to be considered sexy, but she learns to appreciate her own body. The limits of what she will and won’t do also changes — she pushes herself farther and farther — so that near the end of the book, she’s working at an erotic massage parlor, helping men achieve their happy endings.

Where the book falters is when Lewis feels the need to draw conclusions about life as a girl for hire. By attempting to summarize, she actually ends up saying less than she has by simply describing the life she lived. Nevertheless, the book offers a fascinating look at the person behind the pole.     —Paige Newman

The King is dead
Does the world need another book on Elvis Presley? An Amazon.com search turns up 3,940 tomes on the King of Rock and Roll. Even allowing for twice-listed titles and sheet music, that’s a lot of documentation on one guy, who despite his unarguable cultural influence, only lived to age 42. Yet this fall produces one more: Charles L. Ponce de Leon’s “Fortunate Son: The Life of Elvis Presley” (Hill and Wang, $26).

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Neophytes take note, only two Presley biographies are required: “Last Train to Memphis” and its follow-up, “Careless Love,” both by Peter Guralnick. And Ponce de Leon seems to know it — he quotes Guralnick copiously. The “Fortunate Son” author attempts to stake new territory, placing Presley within with the cultural context of his impoverished Southern childhood and America’s emerging mass culture. The book argues that Presley was a participant in his fate, not the victim of Colonel Tom Parker’s exploitation. Still, it’s hardly worth the debate.

“Fortunate Son” covers the bullet points of Presley’s career, and is a shorter read than Guralnick’s books. But Ponce de Leon’s writing is tedious and didactic. If you want more on Presley, pick up Priscilla Presley’s “Elvis and Me” for dirt, or the photo book, “Elvis 1956 Reflections” for a visceral understanding of the King's reign. But skip “Fortunate Son.” Everything in it you already know from either the countless Presley TV movies or freshman history class.    —Helen A.S. Popkin

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What's hot, what's not in new fall fiction

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