There's nothing that gets Intern Alexis more excited than a good ol' examination of deadly epidemics, so this week's New York Times Book Review was sure to delight. After relishing the double-fisted coverage of polio, Alexis looks into the NYTBR's Vanity Fair/blogger hivemind and finally confesses her illiteracy. Her weekly review follows.

Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio
 By Jeffrey Kluger
Polio: An American Story
 By David M. Oshinsky
Reviewed by Jerome Groopman

We like to fashion ourselves a bit of an epidemaniac. So we were pleased as punch with last week s review of Michael Kelly s history of the Black Death. And we were thrilled when we saw Jerome Groopman s review of Jeffrey Kluger and David M. Oshinsky s recent Poliographies. What we weren t thrilled about, though, was the massive size of Groopman s ego. It s totally cool to open a review by recalling personal experiences in order to establish a connection between the author and book; in fact, it was kind of neat that Groopman spent the first 202 words of his review describing his own battles with polio. That was until we arrived at this blue-balls of a sentence: Tests ultimately showed that it was not polio; the cause of my malady was never identified. You mean you DIDN'T have polio? Dude, we had to go through all that personal shit and in the end you didn t have the damn disease? Those were 202 words of our life that we will never get back. Then, instead of ending his review with a discussion of the two books which he has been assigned to review, Groopman ties things up with another me me me homage In describing Jonas Salk, he writes: I happened to be on a panel with him at a scientific meeting in Paris and goes on and on talking about his impressions of the man. Keep it to yourself, Groopman the NYTBR isn t Jerome s Daily Deadly Disease Diary.


Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise
 By Ruth Reichl
Reviewed by David Kamp

David Kamp takes on Ruth Reichl s memoir Garlic and Sapphires and while he likes the book a lot, finds some of the characters that Reichl took on to disguise herself a bit much and infers that Ms. Reichl might be something of a crackpot. He writes:

When she reanimates her late mother, Miriam, as ''Miriam,'' one of her dining aliases, complete with silver wig, fake wrinkles and Mom's old jewelry, and creates holy hell for the waiters at ''21,'' sending almost every dish back to the kitchen and screaming about the prices, you wonder precisely what constituency she is serving: the everyman consumer who deserves a fair shake, or that particular breed of restaurant patron who shows up in a headache-inducing wig, layers of makeup, false clothing and achy shoes, wielding her unresolved Mommy issues like a cudgel? (You know the type.)

Yeeeee. Welcome to Crazytown, USA. Population: 1. Ruth Reichl.

Finally, Kamp goes ombudsman on Reichl s ass, tsk tsk-ing her for not revealing up front that: in some cases I ve exaggerated, in others I ve conflated a few meals into one, or combined events that took place over a space of time into a single afternoon or evening. Oh, don t be so hard on her, Kamp. You know we've all had trouble with the space-time continuum.

The Just Saying Department

Hey, here s an idea; why don t you change it from New York Times Book Review to Vanity Fair Hoo Ha s Book Review Three of this week s reviewers come courtesy of Vanity Fair (VF contributing editor David Kamp, VF contributing editor David Margolick and VF columnist Christopher Hitchens). Speaking of taking a ball and running with it, five reviewers come from the World Wide Web (Andrew Leonard of Salon, Lizzie Skurnick of Old Hag, Choire Sicha of Gawker Media, and William Saletan and Michael Agger of Slate). Here s raising a glass to not diversifying the portfolio!

Crime
 By Marilyn Stasio

In all our months reviewing this Book Review, we ve never once touched upon Ms. Stasio s Crime column. Don t get too excited, because this week is no exception. We can t be bothered reading about crime. It turns out that not only are we poetry-illiterate, but we also don t care for crime. No wait, slash that, come to think of it, we don t care about any literary genre. Nooooooo waiiit, what s a literary genre?!? We can t read! We re actually illiterate!!!!!!!??!!!!!?! What's illiterate?

We can look at pictures, though, and we loved the author photo of Bill Fitzhugh and his cat. He is just rocking the backwards Kangol cap, isn t he? And we admire the balls that it took to include a photo of himself with his cat, we really do. We even think the red eye lends an appropriately gritty touch to this crime writer s persona. Kendall Fitzhugh, wife of Bill, we think you are really talented — have you ever thought of going professional?


The Position
 By Meg Wolitzer
Reviewed by Choire Sicha

Sex, suburbia, parents, bloggers! We were titillated, we were until we got distracted by the ad on the entire left side of the page for a book called Joy at Work: A Revolutionary Approach to Fun on the Job by Dennis W. Bakke. Apparently, President Bill Clinton called the book A timely and inspiring book that challenges us to rethink the purpose of business. We d trust Bill s review of a book on foreign policy or open heart surgery, but if there s one thing the former president doesn t know much about, it s sitting at a desk for eight hours, compulsively checking weather.com and google-searching his own name. Sicha who?