Off the beaten path, in both senses
Ideas outside the mainstream seem to have my name written all over them. To me, books about oddball topics invite fresh ways of seeing things, and open up all sorts of possibilities to think about. And this month, two books did this brilliantly.
''Poisons: From Hemlock to Botox and the Killer Bean of Calabar" (Arcade, $25) is Peter Macinnis's fascinating and erudite look at toxins. Painstakingly researched, it uses history, science, and fun poison facts to make lively reading of all things lethal.
Macinnis's witty tour of toxins takes us from cyanide to ricin, and introduces us to celebrated poisoners like Captain Hook, Nero, and William Hardaker, a candy seller who accidentally spiced up his wares with a little arsenic. Poison is responsible for all sorts of bad behavior. Jack the Ripper may have embarked on his murder spree because he was unhinged from eating arsenic, a common Victorian habit meant to alleviate all sorts of minor ills. Abraham Lincoln was known to be so volatile he could literally ''shake the democracy" out of a person. Perhaps we can blame mercury, which he took for his melancholia, a whopping dose of 375 grams compared with the dose considered safe today, 21 grams.
Poison has always been a political weapon of choice. The ancient Greeks shut up Socrates with sips of hemlock. The release of sarin gas in a Japanese subway was a terrorist act, and Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko still bears the scars of dioxin poisoning from his presidential campaign. But since beauty, too, can be considered a weapon, we find poisons in cosmetics too. Arsenic, at one time, was considered good for a pale complexion, right along with belladonna, which dilated the pupils for that ''come hither" look. Today, botox is our poison of choice, immobilizing and erasing those pesky frown lines.
But lest you think there's something unnatural about poison, consider this. Poisons are everywhere: in our food, our homes, our workplace. Even the medicines that cure what ails us can have deadly side effects. Plants pack on the poisons to keep from being eaten. Our bodies naturally poison us, too, with chemicals that cause apoptosis, or the death of cells, which is a necessary process for organ development. All of which proves that the skull and crossbones associated with toxins might at times be not a warning but a benefit.
What's more off the beaten track than roadside attractions? ''Roadside Religion: In Search of the Sacred, the Strange, and the Substance of Faith" (Beacon, $24.95), by Timothy K. Beal, instantly draws me in with a delicious front cover, showing a crisscross of construction beams standing alongside a sign proclaiming: ''Noah's ark being rebuilt here!" Plus, the book is filled with black-and-white photographs of the various attractions that not only illuminate the text -- but astonish. How can I resist?
The book covers one hot summer when Beal and his family hit the rural roadways in search of religious attractions like biblical miniature golf and the world's largest Ten Commandments. Beal is a professor of religion, a onetime Evangelical Christian who's grown ambivalent about his faith. And although he says he intends to write a wry, quirky tome about religious attractions, the book quickly becomes a personal rumination about faith.
In his travels, Beal visits Missouri's Precious Moments Inspiration Park, where kitschy paintings and figurines of saucer-eyed children comfort the bereaved. There's Cross Gardens in Alabama, where William Rice has planted thousands of crosses of all sizes and shapes, complete with warning signs like ''You will Die. Hell is hot hot hot," and there's even a stop to contemplate a collection of 4,000 rosaries in Washington state. What I love about the book is that Beal treats these places with respect and curiosity. ''Religion," he says, is often ''the most fascinating and most revealing when it's least expected." Biblical re-creation, he feels, is an attempt to re-create oneself, to find a more personal meaning to life.
Beal quietly goes beneath the surface to show you that what you see is not always what you get. Consider two different theme-park Holy Lands, both attempting to re-create the gospel story with exhibits that follow the life of Jesus from stable to tomb. To enter Orlando, Fla.'s, Holy Land, you have to pay a hefty admission, and the experience is Disney-fied with gift shops, throngs of tourists, and actors posing for photos, dressed as scowling Roman centurions or begging lepers. The Holy Land in Bedford County, Va., has neither actors nor gift shops, and no more than a handful of tourists, and it asks only for donations. Surreal, two-dimensional figures are placed among the makeshift exhibits, and it's much quieter. So why does it seem more real to people? Perhaps, Beal reports, because people belong to an experience that seems more divine than Disney, more personal than profit making, and they can't help but be genuinely moved
For Beal, being faithful means you have to be vulnerable. And in one poignant moment, he realizes his own limitations. His father is suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, but Beal, struggling, can't make the leap of faith he needs to ask a religious healer for his help.
What started out a book about the wacky ways people believe takes an important detour. You don't have to share the fervor of these people, and many of the attractions do lend themselves to ribbing, but how can you disdain something that brings so much meaning and comfort to people? How can you fault anyone who is willing to express his beliefs in the face of ridicule? Here, as in ''Poisons," is an account most notable for answering questions you might never have thought of asking, even as it keeps the pages turning.
Caroline Leavitt's latest novel, ''Girls in Trouble," is now in paperback. She can be reached at www.carolineleavitt.com. 
