A century after the Model T appeared as a flex-fuel vehicle, the alternative-fuel movement has really picked up steam. And Iain Carson and Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran’s Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future (Twelve) is your essential primer on the movement. Zoom is less interested in the science or handicapping the various technologies than in describing the surprising array of players involved — such as former CIA director James Woolsey, who calls himself and his allies “tree-huggers, do-gooders, sodbusters, cheap hawks and evangelicals.” There’s also Gates and Allen, PayPal and SpaceX founder Elon Musk and the boys at Kleiner Perkins. If these guys think they can make money on fuel cells, who are we to argue?

An alternative to the resource wars is the culture wars, hilariously explored in Tom Perrotta’s new novel, The Abstinence Teacher (St. Martin’s). One day Perrotta’s heroine, Ruth Ramsey, has the gall to suggest in a high-school sex-education course that “some people enjoy” oral sex. Soon she’s in hot water with the local evangelicals, who think of their suburb, Stonewood Heights, as “Sodom with good schools and a 24-hour supermarket.” The school district avoids a lawsuit by agreeing to an abstinence curriculum — and Ruth, as the health instructor, has to teach it.

Soon after, Ruth attends her daughter’s soccer game and watches in horror when the coach, Tim Mason, has the team kneel in prayer. Mason is a recovered addict and a former professional rock n’ roller who now plays only in the church band — a man genuinely struggling to be a good Christian.

After the smashing success of 2006’s Little Children, Perrotta once again proves himself the funniest, most thoughtful satirist of the suburban condition. Ruth, for example, abhors the abstinence curriculum but is, in fact, abstinent, albeit involuntarily so. Tim buys a lovemaking manual to spice up his second marriage. As the battle heats up, Tim and Ruth become adversaries and confidants. John Cheever would be proud.

Scott Lasser, formerly of Lehman Brothers, is the author of the novels Battle Creek and All I Could Get.

Next article » Deals Aweigh

Previous article « Say Hola to Spanish Wines and Farewell to Baby Jayne