Fools Rush In
By Bill Carter
(Doubleday UK, 2004, £10.99)

Few individuals would make the same choices Bill Carter made during the early 1990s. When faced with the loss of a loved one, he made a circuitous route to the former Yugoslavia, where Serbs were engaged in horrifying campaigns of ethnic cleansing, obviously an unlikely place to find solace. Yet Carter found himself drawn to the area, joining The Serious Road Trip crew—a motley group of young humanitarian aid workers—to deliver food and supplies (some of which were stolen) to needy people in the war-torn areas. He quickly became immersed in the group’s daily missions, facing strife at every turn, but he still couldn’t keep memories of his dead girlfriend and estranged father from haunting him.

In this memoir by the director of the documentary Miss Sarajevo, there are several instances of dazzling prose and entertaining philosophical rants on everything from love to shit. But it’s Carter’s descriptive, heartfelt accounts of the people he encountered—including the old man who hides a cow that provides milk for hungry babies and the nonchalant family who circle bullet holes in their apartment marked with the dates of impact—that truly shine. Teena Apeles

The Rough Guide to Cult Pop: The songs, the Artists, the Genres, the Dubious Fashions
By Rough Guides
(Rough Guides, 2004, $12.95)

An irreverent take on all things related to music of the latter half of the 20th century, The Rough Guide to Cult Pop offers hours of amusement. The chapter “The Lists” is pop trivia at its best, with fun sidebars like “Pop Stars Who Almost Made It As Football Players” (Steve Harris of Iron Maiden being one), while the chapter “Ephemera” covers everything from cool record covers (The Velvet Underground’s Peel Slowly and See with Andy Warhol’s priceless banana sticker) to the obscene amount of money a lock of Elvis’s hair sold for at auction. Music geeks who appreciate knowing random factoids—including that up to 20 percent of pop songs are about booze and that MTV and Britney Spears were born the same year—won’t be disappointed. Teena Apeles