The Best Nonfiction and Teen Books of 2013 by Kirkus Reviews

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Chairman H E R B E RT S I M O N

contents nonfiction REVIEWS................................................................ 3 10 Vicarious Experiences You’ll Never Forget..................................................43

teen REVIEWS..............................................................45 10 Great Love Stories (Not Just That Kind of Love)........................................ 58 10 Books That Will Get Your Pulse Pounding............................................. 65

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This Issue’s Contributors

Maude Adjarian • Mark Athitakis Joseph Barbato • Amy Boaz • Derek Charles Catsam • Marnie Colton Daniel Dyer • Julie Foster • Alan Goldsher • Peter Heck • BJ Hollars Robert M. Knight • Christina M. Kratzner • Louise Leetch • Angela Leroux-Lindsey • Peter Lewis • Joe Maniscalco • Don McLeese • Gregory McNamee • Clayton Moore • Mike Newirth • Mike Oppenheim • Jim Piechota • William E. Pike • Kristen Bonardi Rapp • Erika Rohrbach Linda Simon • Arthur Smith • Wendy Smith • Sarah Suksiri • Bill Thompson Steve Weinberg • Rodney Welch Carol White • Chris White

nonfiction It’s December 1, and that means time to start seriously considering Christmas gifts. For the nonfiction lover in the family, 2013 has provided yet another literary bounty. Sure, the usual suspects are here: Pulitzer winner Doris Kearns Goodwin returns with a psychologically charged biography/history of the relationship between Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft; Nathaniel Philbrick takes on Bunker Hill; Terry Teachout dazzles yet again in a biography of Duke Ellington; New Yorker writer George Packer channels John Dos Passos in his incisive appraisal of American culture; Tracy Kidder teaches us about good prose; Allen Guelzo commemorates Gettsyburg with a stirring portrait of that pivotal battle; and even ’ole Samuel Clemens makes an appearance. However, as in previous years, much of the enjoyment of assembling these lists is derived from the discovery of the many debut authors and other relative newcomers who burst onto the scene in style: Boris Kachka navigates the always-entertaining history of the gold standard in literary publishing, FSG; Roots drummer and musical encyclopedia Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson weaves his autobiography into an illuminating discussion of soul music and hip-hop; Charles Graeber meticulously tracks the shocking true story of a murderous nurse; and Duncan Wall negotiates an impressive highwire act in his memoir/history of the circus. I have worked hard to create a diverse selection of books to appeal to a wide variety of tastes, and I hope you discover your next favorite author among this exceptional list of the year’s 100 best nonfiction books. —Eric Liebetrau

THE UNWINDING An Inner History of the New America

Packer, George Farrar, Straus and Giroux (464 pp.) $27.00 May 21, 2013 978-0-374-10241-8

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FINDING FLORIDA

Allman, T.D. Atlantic Monthly (528 pp.) $27.50 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-8021-2076-2 A rich and lively history of Florida, minus the Disney gloss. “To find the real Florida you…must tear up the picture postcards! Get rid of the plumed conquistadors and Confederate cavaliers!” writes veteran journalist and native Floridian Allman (Rogue State: America at War with the World, 2004, etc.). In this colorful, sometimes angry account, he shatters five centuries of mythmaking to tell the real story of a soggy, inhospitable place with few resources, whose most memorable events are often fabrications and whose real history has been hidden by boosters and historians. Ponce de León did not discover Florida. Nor was he searching for the legendary Fountain of Youth, popularized by Washington Irving. But the courtier Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, since airbrushed out of history, did secure Florida for Spain in 1565, slaughtering Frenchmen near St. Augustine. In 1816, on Gen. Andrew Jackson’s orders, Americans committed “one of the worst massacres in American history,” killing hundreds of civilians in the Indian, black, and mixed-race community known as Negro Fort, now the Fort Gadsden Historic Recreation Center. A turning point in the U.S. acquisition of Florida, the massacre was followed by years of inhumane policies toward Indians and blacks. The author lambasts the work of historians who have whitewashed Florida’s unseemly moments in the apparent belief that people do not like to be reminded of unpleasant things. Much of his gripping narrative focuses on key figures like Seminole resistance leader Osceola, who later became a celebrity Indian chief; industrialist Henry Flagler, one of the indefatigable promoters who made waterlogged land seem like real estate; and go-getter Walter P. Fraser, who turned St. Augustine into a travel destination and precursor of Florida theme parks. A splendid rendering of the messy human story of our fourth-most populous state.

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“Als’ work is so much more than simply writing about being black or gay or smart. It’s about being human.” from white girls

WHITE GIRLS

Als, Hilton McSweeney’s (300 pp.) $24.00 | Nov. 12, 2013 978-1-936365-81-4 Meditations, appraisals, fictions and personal inquiries about sex, race, art and more from the longtime New Yorker staff writer and cultural critic. In the Kirkus review of Als’ (The Women, 1996, etc.) first book, we praised the author for his “ability to combine extreme honesty with sharp critical discourse, his willingness to explore the shadows of complex lives, including his own, that challenge clichés about race and gender without ever sacrificing intellectual rigor.” His followup collection is less cohesive but proves to be equally daring and nearly as experimental as his audacious debut. Gathering his diverse subjects under the umbrella term “white girls,” which he applies equally to Malcolm X, Truman Capote and Flannery O’Connor, Als assembles something of a greatest hits of his own strengths, which are considerable. His longer essays are the most personal; “Tristes Tropiques,” an elegant recollection of friends and lovers in the age of AIDS, opens the book. Naturally, observations on culture rise to the top as well. “White Noise,” about rap icon Eminem, and “Michael,” about the elusive pop star, offer pointed insights into American culture’s obsession with image. Readers who only know Als’ work from his insightful magazine essays may be startled by his diversions from form here. When Als summarized his feelings on Gone with the Wind in the New Yorker in 2011, he was delicate. The essay with the same title here comments on a photography exhibition, asking, “So what can I tell you about a bunch of unfortunate niggers stupid enough to get caught and hanged in America, or am I supposed to say lynched?” Leapfrogging from straightforward journalism to fiction written in other personas, the author demonstrates a practiced combination of cultural perception, keen self-awareness and principled self-assurance. Als’ work is so much more than simply writing about being black or gay or smart. It’s about being human.

THE GUNS AT LAST LIGHT The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945

Atkinson, Rick Henry Holt (896 pp.) $38.00 | May 14, 2013 978-0-8050-6290-8

Atkinson (The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944, 2007, etc.) brings his Liberation Trilogy to a resounding close. The war, of course, ended in Allied victory—though, it often seems even in these closing pages, just barely. Among the challenges were not just a ferocious German war machine that 4

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refused to stop grinding, but an Allied effort often hampered by internal disagreements and the inevitable jockeying for power. One skillful player was British general Bernard Montgomery, whom Atkinson captures with a gesture in an opening set piece: “With a curt swish of his pointer, Montgomery stepped to the great floor map.” That map provided a visual survey of Overlord, the great 1944 multipronged invasion of Normandy, of which the author’s long account is masterful and studded with facts and figures. Many of the key actors—Eisenhower, Patton—will be well-known to American readers, but others will not, not least of them Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the oldest general at D-Day and perhaps the bravest as well. American readers may also not know that British and Canadian troops landed elsewhere in Normandy on that day and paid a fearful price; Atkinson is to be commended for giving equal billing to those Allies. Toward the end, those Western Allies finally worked out some of their big differences, just in time for the final savage campaign of winter 1944–1945, which included the Battle of the Bulge. Atkinson assumes little outside knowledge of his readers, so his story is largely self-contained; as such, with the other volumes in the trilogy, it makes a superb introduction to a complex episode in world history. An outstanding work of popular history, in the spirit of William Manchester and Bruce Catton.

REPORT FROM THE INTERIOR

Auster, Paul Henry Holt (272 pp.) $27.00 | Nov. 19, 2013 978-0-8050-9857-0

The interplay of memory, identity and the creative imagination informs this portrait of the artist as a young man, a memoir that the novelist’s avid readership will find particularly compelling. Even by the standards of the distinctive literary stylist and his formal ingenuity, this is an unusual book. Auster introduces it as something of a companion piece to his previous Winter Journal (2012), as he compares the two: “It was one thing to write about your body, to catalogue the manifold knocks and pleasures experienced by your physical self, but exploring your mind as you remember it from childhood will no doubt be a more difficult task—perhaps an impossible one. Still, you feel compelled to give it a try.” While writing throughout in the second person, inviting readers inside his head, Auster has divided the book into four distinct and very different parts. The first is a childhood psychobiography, to the age of 12, recognizing the distortions and holes in memory while discovering the magic of literature, “the mystifying process by which a person can leap into a mind that is not his own.” The second consists of exhaustively detailed synopses of two movies that he saw in his midteens, The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) and I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), noteworthy for the way such a formative experience “burns itself into your heart forever.” The third compiles college letters to his future (and now former) wife, the

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author/translator Lydia Davis, unearthed when she was compiling her archives—“you have lost contact with that person [he writes of his younger self], and as you listen to him speak on the page, you scarcely recognize him anymore.” The fourth is a scrapbook, not of the author and his family, but of images from the era that remain emblazoned on his consciousness. Auster has long rendered life as something of a puzzle; here are some significant, illuminating pieces.

ON PAPER The Everything of Its Two-Thousand-Year History Basbanes, Nicholas A. Knopf (448 pp.) $35.00 | Oct. 17, 2013 978-0-307-26642-2

Self-proclaimed bibliophile Basbanes (About the Author: Inside the Creative Process, 2010, etc.) proves a delightful and intrepid guide in this capacious history of paper. As the author quickly discovered, paper is more than merely a surface for print; it is an indispensible product with connections to war (paper cartridges changed 17th-century firearms), health (tissues, toilet paper and disposable bandages) and politics (printed documents were central to the Stamp Act, Watergate, and countless other laws and scandals). Just as we are “awash in a world of paper,” Basbanes writes, “we are awash in a world of paper clichés”: “a house of cards,” a “paper thin margin,” “a tissue of lies,” “pulp fiction,” etc. Identity is confirmed by showing one’s “papers,” and we ascertain truth by comparing whatever is “on paper” to reality. Basbanes’ research took him around the world: to China, where papermaking first began nearly 2,000 years ago; Japan, where artisans still practice traditional methods; and across America, including the Crane Paper mill, manufacturers of paper for all American currency, the Kimberly-Clark company, which took their World War I overstock of cotton surgical dressings and invented Kotex, and publishing-stock maker P.H. Glatfelter, which is countering the rise of the e-book by providing paper for postage stamps, Hallmark cards and tea bags. Central to Basbanes’ history are people—artists, crafters, curators, librarians, origami makers, writers and recipients of letters—and surprising revelations. In 14th-century Europe, for example, the invention of the spinning wheel led to an increase in linen production, which led to an increase in rags, which lowered the price of paper, which caused Johannes Gutenberg to see that investing in mechanical printing would be a good idea. Only several hundred years later was paper more cheaply made from wood pulp. As his impressive bibliography and notes section suggest, Basbanes has investigated seemingly every detail of paper’s 2,000-year history. A lively tale told with wit and vigor. (60 illustrations)

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THE BLOOD TELEGRAM Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide

Bass, Gary J. Knopf (528 pp.) $30.00 | Sep. 27, 2013 978-0-307-70020-9

A thoroughgoing, long-overdue excoriation of the actors behind the humanitarian crisis that propelled the creation of Bangladesh. Bass (Politics and International Affairs/Princeton Univ.; Freedom’s Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention, 2008, etc.) largely lets the words of President Richard Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger from White House tapes reveal their perfidious actions on the world stage during the Pakistan-India crisis of 1971-1972. Nixon’s deep distrust of India—which he viewed as an ungovernable cauldron of Soviet-leaning liberals, lefties and hippies—and his longtime support of the military in Pakistan disastrously steered his and Kissinger’s resolve not to stay the hand of Gen. Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan against a dissenting East Pakistan in March 1971. In the terribly divided nation, reeling from a cyclone that had caused a massive loss of life, the democratic elections had trounced Yahya and overwhelmingly elected Mujibur Rahman and his Awami League, who had hinted at autonomy if not succession for the East Bengali entity. Yahya’s ensuing military crackdown instigated a bloodbath against Bengalis and Hindus that was witnessed and carefully documented by the horrified staff at the American embassy in Dacca. Led by ambassador Archer Blood, whose cries of “genocide” were baldly dismissed by Nixon and Kissinger, the embassy sent a collective “dissent cable” to Washington chronicling their alarms. These leaks allowed Sen. Edward Kennedy and others to expose the truth of Nixon’s illegal military supplying to Pakistan. In his tremendously lucid analysis, Bass reveals the cold cunning of all sides in the face of the killing and fleeing of millions of refugees into India, including Indira Gandhi, who turned the humanitarian disaster into political profit. By revisiting these tapes and other primary sources, Bass holds these leaders to a much-needed reckoning. A deeply incisive lesson for today’s leaders and electorate.

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“Engrossing social study from a rara avis: an East Coast progressive who’s also a gun enthusiast.” from gun guys

GUN GUYS A Road Trip

OUR LIVES, OUR FORTUNES, AND OUR SACRED HONOR The Forging of American Independence, 1774-1776

Baum, Dan Knopf (352 pp.) $26.95 | Mar. 7, 2013 978-0-307-59541-6

Engrossing social study from a rara avis: an East Coast progressive who’s also a gun enthusiast. Former New Yorker staff writer Baum (Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans, 2009, etc.) wonders at the vast gap between his social peers, who tend to abhor every aspect of firearms culture, and the “Red State” demographics that embrace it, particularly as a response to the perceived effete social meddling of liberals. He is also curious as to his own lifelong fascination with the forbidden, masculine allure of guns. For this project, he pursued a “gun-guy walkabout” through parts of the country where guns are beloved (the Southwest) or, in some cases, problematic (Detroit, New Orleans). He first obtained a concealed carry permit (noting how easy this process has become in many states), then tried to find pro-gun academics, industry types, gun-store owners, hunters and other firearms enthusiasts to share their views. He heard from many thoughtful individuals on gun culture and the social value of self-defense, though he also documents an undercurrent of embittered paranoia among “gun guys,” which he shrewdly connects to the hard economic times he observes in the working-class regions that skew progun—e.g., Kentucky or Nebraska. Baum summarizes this complex effect of the gun issue on American politics by noting, “It was hard to think of a better organizing tool for the right than the left’s tribal antipathy to guns.” The author develops wellshaded character portraits, including wealthy machine-gun enthusiasts, an African-American self-defense advocate, aimless young suburban men growing up on gun-oriented video games who’ve embraced the now-notorious AR-15, and his own fish-out-of-water adventures among more conservative gun enthusiasts. Baum’s road trip into gun culture taught him about self-reliance, but he admits his core questions about firearms’ easily politicized allure remain slippery. Though many liberals will dislike Baum’s conclusions (and gun rights crusaders may distrust him regardless), he offers a thoughtful corrective to the mutual ideological hysteria surrounding the issue of guns in America. The book should gain further exposure and/or controversy following the tragedy in Newtown, Conn.

Beeman, Richard R. Basic (480 pp.) $29.99 | May 7, 2013 978-0-465-02629-6

To create this lively study of the main players of the two Continental Congresses, Beeman (History/Univ. of Pennsylvania) draws on his wealth of research from his previous, award-winning works, Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (2009) and Patrick Henry (1974). The author concentrates on the fascinating human contrasts among the delegates, from the fiery Bostonians, including the Adamses, to the loyalist New Yorkers, as they brought with them their provincial biases and sincere and honorable hopes for fair, just government, but mostly a desire for reconciliation with the British crown. Indeed, Beeman’s leitmotif throughout his fluid study of the events of the key 22 months is the frank reluctance on the part of the delegates to make that rupture, as Pennsylvania lawyer John Dickinson would eloquently argue in moving speeches opposing independence up until the decisive vote of July 2, 1776. While Virginia’s “son of thunder” Patrick Henry harangued the delegates on the second day of the first Congress with an appeal to their “American” rather than regional identities, the others were not yet ready to renounce the British constitution, hammering out successive appeals to the king, despite the hardening of British sympathies against them. From voting on the banning of British imports and exports to appointing George Washington as commander of the Continental Army to the selection of little-known Thomas Jefferson to the committee to write a declaration of independence to the publication of Thomas Paine’s incendiary Common Sense, Beeman elegantly moves through the deeply compelling process of how these motley characters fashioned government as an agency for the people. A welcome addition to a rich, indispensable field of scholarly study. (illustrations throughout)

SHOUTING WON’T HELP Why I—and 50 Million Other Americans— Can’t Hear You

Katherine Bouton Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (288 pp.) $26.00 Feb. 19, 2013 978-0-374-26304-1

A former New York Times senior editor’s poignant, enlightening memoir of hearing loss. Hearing impairment is a widespread, and widely misunderstood, condition that afflicts nearly 50 million Americans. With 6

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ever-specialized medical technology and increasingly precise diagnostic tools, treatment options are better than ever, but the nature of damage to the inner ear remains opaque. In addition, in a culture dominated by oral communication, a persistent stigma remains attached to going deaf and to its prosthetic aids. Where hearing loss was once associated with the elderly, statistics suggest that an increasing number of young people put themselves at risk for early damage by exposure to overloud music, sports arenas, even subway stations. Bouton, whose own hearing loss has no known cause, details her struggle to accept the disability and to navigate the complex physical and emotional changes that accompany the inability to hear well. Vanity considerations aside—most hearing aids have an exterior element, drawing visibility to an otherwise invisible condition— the decision to wear a hearing aid or to have surgery to install a cochlear implant has financial and psychological ramifications. Most insurance companies don’t cover all costs related to hearing loss, and often such devices don’t work right away or even at all. Vertigo, tinnitus and depression are also common side effects of hearing loss or surgery, and the small adjustments and audio therapy required to get devices to work can take years. By interspersing her story with those of many others—both those suffering with hearing loss and the medical experts working to find a cure—the author provides a relatable, inspiring narrative of taking control, going public and finding comfort and empowerment in connecting with others facing similar difficulties. A well-written, powerful book.

YEAR ZERO A History of 1945

Buruma, Ian Penguin Press (384 pp.) $29.95 | Sep. 30, 2013 978-1-59420-436-4

Insightful meditation on the world’s emergence from the wreckage of World War II. Buruma (Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism/Bard Coll.; Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents, 2010, etc.) offers a vivid portrayal of the first steps toward normalcy in human affairs amid the ruins of Europe and Asia. The end of hostilities left landscapes of rubble and eerie silence and an economic collapse that gave rise to countless black markets. There was widespread hunger and misery. Millions were displaced, including Buruma’s grandfather, who was seized by the Nazis, forced to work as a laborer in Berlin and finally reunited with his family after the war. Many of the displaced were afraid to go home, fearful that their homes were gone or that they would be regarded as strangers. Buruma re-creates the emotions of the time: the joy that lipstick brought to emaciated women in Bergen-Belsen; the wild abandon and eroticism of the liberation; and the desire for vengeance, sometimes officially encouraged, as in Russian road signs that said, “Soldier, you are in Germany. Take revenge on the Hitlerites.” By the end of 1945, after years of danger and |

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chaos, most people yearned for a more traditional order to life. They “hungered for the trappings of the New World, however crude, because the Old World had collapsed in such disgrace, not just physically, but culturally, intellectually, spiritually.” Recounting the occupations of Germany and Japan and life in the Allied nations, Buruma finds that the war was a great leveler, eliminating inequalities in Great Britain and rooting out feudal customs and habits in Japan. Despite much longing for a new world under global government, postwar life was shaped not by moral ideals but by the politics of the Cold War. An authoritative, illuminating history/memoir.

MONTE CASSINO Ten Armies in Hell Caddick-Adams, Peter Oxford Univ. (384 pp.) $29.95 | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-19-997464-1

A superb account of one of the bloodiest battles of World War II. Often stepping back to discuss leaders and histories of the numerous Allied units (British, American, French, Polish, Italian, Indian, Canadian), Caddick-Adams, lecturer in Military Studies at Britain’s Defence Academy (Monty and Rommel: Parallel Lives, 2011), gives equal time to the fewer, if painfully efficient, German defenders. Using interviews, journals, letters and official records from both sides, he delivers a relentless, blow-byblow description of small-unit actions enlivened by more than the usual number of vivid personal accounts. Caddick-Adams does not quarrel with historians who argue that Hitler won the Italian campaign since the Allies, despite winning every major battle, never threatened Germany. Few disagree that the February 22 bombing of the abbey was not only unnecessary, but also positively harmful. The German high command had announced that the monastery would not be occupied; the only deaths inside were 230 Italian civilians seeking refuge. German troops occupied the rubble, now an ideal defense, and repulsed attacks for a further three months. Fortunately for civilization, two Nazi officers had earlier urged and overseen the evacuation of the abbey’s immense library, archives and paintings to safety in the Vatican. There is no shortage of histories of the agonizingly drawn-out debacle at Monte Cassino, but this is certainly one of the best.

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THE UNDIVIDED PAST Humanity Beyond Our Differences

Cannadine, David Knopf (352 pp.) $26.95 | Apr. 12, 2013 978-0-307-26907-2

Historian and editor Cannadine (History/Princeton Univ.; Mellon, 2006, etc.) constructs a stirring critique of history that questions conventional approaches to narrating the human chronicle. The author rejects the Manichaean simplicities of “us vs. them” and “good vs. evil” embodied in traditional histories’ preoccupation with “difference” as well as the alleged uniformity of antagonistic groups. Cannadine investigates the categories of religion, nation, class, gender, race and “civilization” to reveal the persistence of thinking in adversarial absolutes—the malevolent or hapless “other”—and the incalculable damage this mindset has caused. He insists that we indulge in arbitrary, incomplete group “identities” and ignore at our peril the interactions that go on across supposedly impermeable boundaries. Knighted in 2009 for his distinguished service and Chair of the National Portrait Gallery from 2005-2012, the author is no Pollyanna. In assaying the work of such predecessors as Gibbon, Huntington and Toynbee, as well as contemporaries of the caliber of Fernández-Armesto, he acknowledges the strife that has occurred within these often self-contradictory categories but argues convincingly that such tensions are far outweighed by a history of mutual borrowing and cross-fertilization between peoples. Of particular salience are his observations on religion and perception as expressed in a divergent view of the relationship between Christianity and Islam. That we exaggerate animosities and fail to recognize how cooperation, at least as much as conflict, has marked humanity’s experience, may seem a belaboring of the obvious. Yet Cannadine, an accomplished writer, details it in fresh and provocative terms. A generally persuasive, impassioned book-length essay. While his conclusions (and language) sometimes grow repetitive, they nonetheless serve to underscore at every turn an incisive argument buttressed by millennia of evidence.

THE SLEEPWALKERS How Europe Went to War in 1914

Clark, Christopher Harper/HarperCollins (736 pp.) $29.99 | Mar. 19, 2013 978-0-06-114665-7

A massive, wide-ranging chronicle of the events, personalities and failures of the run-up to World War I. Clark (Modern European History/ Univ. of Cambridge; Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947, 2006, etc.) lays out the long and violent history 8

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of Serbian nationalism, the confusion in the dying AustroHungarian empire and the struggle for dominance between the British and Russian empires. While explaining the irredentist mindset of Serbia then, the author also illuminates the causes of the Balkan unrest that erupted again in the 1990s. Surely he read every journal, letter, accounting and government document related to every nation and player in this period; indeed, there are points where some readers may wonder if this is a case of research rapture. Patience will be necessary to wade through the myriad details. However, given the vast amount of available material on World War I and the daunting task of trying to produce a readable account, Clark has succeeded admirably. The most remarkable fact about the crisis that led to this war is that none of those involved had any clue as to the intentions of not only their enemies, but also their allies. In fact, they weren’t absolutely sure who the enemy would be. Consequently, many, including Czar Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm II, tried to head off the conflict right up to the end, each waiting for someone to do something as the world stumbled into war. For readers who seek a quick overview of one of the most convoluted periods in history, look elsewhere. For those who enjoy excellent scholarship joined with logical composition and an easy style of writing, save a (wide) spot on your bookshelf for Clark’s work. (b/w illustrations throughout; 7 maps)

JFK’S LAST HUNDRED DAYS The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President Clarke, Thurston Penguin Press (448 pp.) $29.95 | Aug. 6, 2013 978-1-59420-425-8

Prolific popular historian Clarke (The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days that Inspired America, 2008, etc.) argues that the charismatic president, whose achievements are generally low-rated by scholars, in his final months revealed himself as a great statesman. The book opens on August 7, 1963, when Jackie delivered a premature son whose devastating death brought the couple together. The author spends much time on JFK’s personal life, not avoiding his well-known sexual appetite and often crippling medical problems. On the political front, this period saw the approval of the first nuclear test ban treaty. Kennedy was not so fortunate with his proposals to Congress for a strong civil rights bill and a tax cut to lower the very high rates Americans had been paying since World War II. Both bills stalled: Southern legislators opposed any law advancing civil rights, and Republicans, in those far-off days, considered the tax cut fiscally irresponsible. Their passage required the political skills of JFK’s successor and unhappy vice president, Lyndon Johnson, universally despised by Kennedy aides as “Uncle Cornpone.” Clarke emphasizes that JFK yearned to withdraw American advisers

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“More than just a war story; a harrowing examination of the tolls of the world’s conflicts.” from on the front line

from Vietnam, which seems true, but since most aides and ultimately Kennedy himself decided that a noncommunist South Vietnam was vital to American security, intervention was inevitable once it became clear that South Vietnam’s army couldn’t defeat the Vietcong. Clarke certainly demonstrates that three often painful years in office had taught Kennedy valuable lessons. No one can say what would have happened if he had lived, but no one will deny that he was a spectacularly appealing character, and Clarke delivers a thoroughly delightful portrait. This detailed, mostly worshipful account will not convince everyone, but few will put it down.

ON THE FRONT LINE The Collected Journalism of Marie Colvin

Colvin, Marie HarperCollins 360 (560 pp.) $19.99 paper | Oct. 15, 2013 978-0-00-748796-7

A small but crucial sampling of war reporting by one of the finest journalists of her generation. Marie Colvin (1956–2012) was one hell of a reporter, right up to the point where she was killed by an IED while under intense shelling by the Syrian government. This collection only scratches the surface of nearly 20 years of war reporting for the Sunday Times, but it’s a remarkable portrait of the raw wounds of conflicts that burn on, even in times the Western world considers to be “peace.” The collection is sensibly divided into both chronological and geographical sections, and it spans the globe. If there was a hot spot in the world, Colvin seems to have gotten there, from the war in Libya to the genocides in Kosovo to the disproportionate response of Moscow to the Chechen uprisings. There are unusual interviews with figures like Yasser Arafat and Muammar Gadhafi, but one of Colvin’s many gifts was ferreting out the story of the common people suffering through unimaginable horrors—e.g., the girls raped as the result of systemized terror under Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe; the untrained, illiterate forces of the Afghani military expected to take over for the full force and fury of the American incursion. If journalists are expected to suffer for their stories, Colvin paid the full price for capturing these stories: Her nose was broken by a rock thrown by Palestinian demonstrators while she was posing as a Jewish settler; her eye was punctured by shrapnel from a rocket-propelled grenade in Sri Lanka, an event that led to her iconic eye patch. In her 2001 acceptance speech for a humanitarian award for courage, she pondered whether the stories were worth the damage: “Simply: there’s no way to cover war properly without risk. Covering a war means going into places torn apart by chaos, destruction, death and pain, and trying to bear witness to that.” More than just a war story; a harrowing examination of the tolls of the world’s conflicts.

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WRAPPED IN THE FLAG A Personal History of America’s Radical Right Conner, Claire Beacon (240 pp.) $25.95 | Jul. 2, 2013 978-0-8070-7750-4 978-0-8070-7751-1 e-book

Prompted by the rise of the modernday tea party, Conner writes of her experiences as the child of leaders in the radical right-wing John Birch Society. “My parents are back.” That was the author’s response to the rise of the tea party after the election of Barack Obama in 2008. In this memoir/history, she opens new insights into the conservative political movement, with the echoes of the profoundest aspects of family life providing the links between then and now. Her parents, Stillwell and Laurene Conner, were among the 1958 founders of the Birch Society, an organization that opposed racial integration, welfare programs, the United Nations and other seemingly progressive programs and organizations. Conner’s parents were involved with the organization’s national leadership for more than 30 years. Like her parents, the Birchers went too far with their anti-Semitism and extreme economic and social theories. She details how they were pushed out of the Republican Party and shows how they adopted what the author calls “Plan B,” in which monied Birchers redirected their funds into think tanks and foundations. Among them was Fred Koch, founder and national leader of the Birth Society and father of current tea party backers David and Charles Koch. In 1993, some Birchers, including the author’s mother, even offered mild support for the Oklahoma City bombers for “defending the rest of us from the government.” Conner’s parents employed threats and violence to condition her to represent her parents’ politics to the broader world and accept the consequences of physical retaliation, ostracism and ridicule in return. The author’s personal struggle to free herself from those whose minds “the facts never changed” shapes her memoir and enriches the accumulating literature on the tea party. An invaluable contribution to understanding the mentality of extremist conservatism and its supporters.

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“An intensively focused study of the ill-begotten launch of the Great Game in Afghanistan.” from return of a king

KANSAS CITY LIGHTNING The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker

Crouch, Stanley It Books/HarperCollins (448 pp.) $35.00 | Oct. 1, 2013 978-0-06-200559-5

A veteran cultural critic and jazz historian tells the simultaneous stories of the rise of jazz and the emergence of one of its brightest comets, Charlie Parker (1920–1955). Crouch (Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz, 2006, etc.), whose journalism has appeared in just about every major venue and whose books have earned widespread critical appreciation, is uniquely qualified to guide readers on this tour. He begins in Des Moines, Iowa, where Parker, 21, was touring with the Jay McShann Orchestra. Here, we get an early hint of troubles to come when Crouch notes that Parker’s “disappearing acts were his specialty.” Hard drugs would limit Parker’s ascension and eventually bring him down. But Crouch’s agenda comprises not just the story of the early Parker. He tells the tales of towns (New Orleans, Kansas City, Chicago, New York), of ragtime and jazz legends (Scott Joplin, King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Art Tatum and others of lesser name but considerable significance), and of families and friends. We see Parker’s impecunious struggles to learn his instrument (alto sax), his repeated visits to the pawn shop (morphine was not free), his experiences of having to borrow other players’ instruments, his gift as a musician, his ferocious work ethic (striving to find his own sound) and his transformation into a dweller of the night. We learn, as well, about his youthful love affair that eventually became his first marriage. He became a father and then left his family to pursue his dreams, which no longer included them. Crouch takes us with Parker to Chicago and then to New York City, where he was just about to make it when the story stops. Crouch is a phrasemaker, and the text is chockablock with memorable lines. A friend’s death “was like drinking a cup of blues made of razor blades.” A story rich in musical history and poignant with dramatic irony. (Two 16-page photo inserts)

RETURN OF A KING The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42 Dalrymple, William Knopf (560 pp.) $30.00 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-307-95828-0

An intensively focused study of the ill-begotten launch of the Great Game in Afghanistan. Who would gain control of the portal to India: Britain, France, Russia, the Sikhs or the Afghan tribes themselves? And was there really cause for alarm at imperialist 10

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advances or a “dysfunctional” intelligence gathering by both the British and Russians? In his exciting, exhaustive study, British historian Dalrymple (The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857, 2007, etc.) sheds light on the enormously convoluted rationale for the First Anglo-Afghan War, ostensibly provoked by Britain in order to reinstall the compliant Shah Shuja ul Mulk (chief of the Sadozai clan) to power in Afghanistan over Dost Mohammad Khan (chief of the Barakzais), who supposedly favored the Russians. In truth, the war exposed the greediness and ignorance of all sides: protecting the interests of the East India Company and catering to the competing ambitions of major players like Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh, Polish agent Ivan Vitkevitch, William Hay Macnaghten and Scottish agent Alexander Burnes. The British garrison was soon outnumbered 10-1 by the rebel forces of Akbar Khan, Dost Mohammad’s able, ferocious son; forced to surrender and retreat in ignominy back to India, the British left Shuja to fall to Dost’s assassins in April 1842 and gained virtually nothing save a more defined border. Dalrymple sagely points out that while the Afghans learned a valuable lesson from this early conflict, namely a firm rejection of foreign rule and a sense of nationalist integrity, the Western powers did not and, indeed, still perpetuate a policy of folly and waste. A rich excavation of both British and Afghan sources, with gorgeous colored reproductions of Muslim and romantic renderings of the action and characters.

COLLISION LOW CROSSERS A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football Dawidoff, Nicholas Little, Brown (496 pp.) $29.00 | Nov. 19, 2013 978-0-316-19679-6

The story of the author’s year embedded in the New York Jets football team. Before the 2011 NFL season, the “big, warm-blooded, exuberant” coach of the Jets, Rex Ryan, asked New Yorker and Rolling Stone contributor Dawidoff (The Fly Swatter: Portrait of an Exceptional Character, 2003, etc.) to spend a year with the team. That fact alone says a lot: not only that Ryan trusted the author to make a good job of it—which he absolutely does—but to be so open in what is mostly a closed, secretive society. Unlike most journalists, who are escorted around “like state visitors to Pyongyang,” Dawidoff received a locker and the freedom to roam and eavesdrop. In the past 20 years, writes the author, the game had become “the national passion…something graceful, thrilling, dangerous, and concealed in plain sight.” Though he touches on the bad press that has recently smeared the game— the concussion issue, the bounty hunting, the closed-mindedness about homosexuality—the author was soon in the game’s thrall, both intellectually and emotionally. Dawidoff is a crack writer, saturating the book with the best of a year’s worth of anecdotes and lacing it with the backgrounds of coaches and nonfiction

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players with an intimacy that begs the question how he got all this sharp and often moving material. Typical is the lovely scene where the young Rex is with his twin brother, Rob (a defensive coordinator in the NFL), and his father, Buddy (a legendary former NFL head coach), as Buddy is explaining to the boys some piece of the game’s obscurity, and Rob suddenly realizes: “He’s teaching us the family secrets.” Dawidoff has a sure hand with the nature of passion, the rancor and weeping joy that characterizes every season in the most popular sport in the country. Insightful, immediate sportswriting. Readers will feel every bit of the team’s frustration and elation.

WAVE

Deraniyagala, Sonali Knopf (240 pp.) $24.00 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-307-96269-0 A devastating but ultimately redemptive memoir by a survivor of the 2004 Sri Lankan tsunami, who must come to terms with the deaths of her husband, her young sons and her parents from the natural disaster that somehow spared her. Deraniyagala is an economist, and her matter-of-fact account is all the more powerful for its lack of literary flourish, though the craft and control reflect an exceptional literary command. Every word in these short, declarative sentences appears to have been chosen with great care, as if to sentimentalize the experience or magnify the horror (as if that were possible) would be a betrayal of all she has lost. It’s no surprise when the first and strongest acknowledgment goes to her therapist: “This book would not exist without his guidance and persuasion. With him I was safe, to try and grasp the unfathomable, and to dare to remember.” “The water was pulling me along with a speed I did not recognize, propelling me forward with a power I could not resist,” she writes of what she later learned was “the biggest natural disaster ever,” one that would claim a quarter of a million casualties. “I had to surrender to this chaos…,” she continues. “My mind could not sort anything out.” Eventually, the numbness of her survival gives way to profound guilt (she should have done something, she should never have brought them there), rage, a refusal to sleep (lest she awake to the fantasy that her family was still alive), an attempt to avoid any experience or memories she shared with them and an obsessive pull toward suicide. And then, as miraculously as her rescue, she eventually reached the point where “I want to remember. I want to know.” The more she remembers about their life before the tsunami, and in greater depth and detail, she writes “I am stunned. I want to put a fist through these last six years and grab our life. Claim it back.” Excellent. Reading her account proves almost as cathartic as writing it must have been.

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MORTAL SINS Sex, Crime, and the Era of Catholic Scandal

D’Antonio, Michael Dunne/St. Martin’s (432 pp.) $26.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-312-59489-3 978-1-250-03439-7 e-book

Nearly three decades of scandal, expertly exposed. The explosive child-molestation scandals that have rocked the Roman Catholic Church in recent years began as a handful of tenuous legal cases in the mid1980s. Former Newsday reporter D’Antonio (Forever Blue: The True Story of Walter O’Malley, Baseball’s Most Controversial Owner, and the Dodgers of Brooklyn and Los Angeles, 2009, etc.) traces the history of these scandals from those first few cases in Louisiana and Minnesota to the national and international news sensations they would one day become. The author weaves a captivating tale of legal drama set against the backdrop of an intransigent ecclesiastical hierarchy. The real-life characters of the story range from colorful to tragic; flamboyant lawyers, alcoholic clerics and activist abuse survivors all help make the story a true page-turner. Yet, while entertaining as a work of legal drama, readers are struck on every page by the horror behind the history. D’Antonio presents the terrible facts of underage sexual abuse, though without making his work prurient. He conveys, however, a double tragedy. Molestation and rape are bad enough, but when coupled with an institutional and almost universal disregard for the victim by church officials, the book becomes an ethical commentary on a grand scale. Though D’Antonio sometimes concentrates on the personal lives of his characters in ways that appear like he is filling out a novel (“While driving alone or wheeling a cart through the aisles of the local Cub Supermarket in the middle of the night, Julie found herself overwhelmed by fears and doubts”), these overdramatized word pictures do little to detract from the service D’Antonio has done in compiling this history of scandal. In a readable manner, he has helped document a watershed era in the life of the Roman Catholic Church. Riveting and fascinating—sure to serve future generations well as they look back on this era.

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FACING THE WAVE A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami Ehrlich, Gretel Pantheon (240 pp.) $25.00 | Feb. 12, 2013 978-0-307-90731-8

Lyrical, meandering dispatches and eyewitness accounts from the devastation of the 2011 tsunami in Japan. Deeply engaged in Japanese culture and history since her first trips to Japan in 1968, poet and nature writer Ehrlich (In the Empire of Ice: Encounters in a Changing Landscape, 2010, etc.) made several visits to Japan in the months after the shattering earthquake and tsunami. Moving along the coast in the company of her friend Masumi and her family, who live in Sendai, near the epicenter, Ehrlich tried simply to make sense of the unspeakable horror the Japanese experienced, recording accounts by traumatized survivors and her own poignant on-the-ground observations. The tsunami waves wrecked 400 miles of Japan’s northeastern coast and caused the lethal meltdown of the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, which had long needed repairs, resulting in a national scandal. Exploring the coast where Masumi spent her childhood, wearing protective clothing against radiation, Ehrlich viewed a “wild place of total devastation,” where the sea wall was useless in keeping back the towering waves and entire towns were wiped out. The author records eyewitness blogs, such as by the fisherman who rushed out to sea just after the last big earthquake struck (preceded by several smaller ones) and watched the tsunami devastate his home, before being stuck for days on his boat without food. Ehrlich visited shrines that became evacuation centers and crematoriums during the crisis, and she mixes some Buddhist ideas of perishability with haiku from Matsuo Basho and her own work. Ehrlich renders the enormity of loss in a fashion comprehensible to her American readers. An eloquent attempt to grasp the Japanese experience of the “The Wave,” which was “center and fringe at once, a totality, both destructive and beautiful.”

THE RED MAN’S BONES George Catlin, Artist and Showman

Eisler, Benita Norton (432 pp.) $29.95 | Jul. 22, 2013 978-0-393-06616-6

A welcome new evaluation of a significant American artist honed by the Wild West spirit and hucksterism of the age. Biographer of Byron, Chopin, George Sand and others (Naked in the Marketplace: The Lives of George Sand, 2007, etc.), Eisler now turns her considerable research talents to fleshing out the life and work of Pennsylvania-born 12

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artist George Catlin (1796–1892), whose sympathetic portraits of the Native Americans he sought out and lived among render an incalculable record of (and tribute to) a vanished people. Trained as a lawyer, Catlin fled the tediousness and drudgery of the profession by immersing himself in drawing, specifically miniatures. Largely self-taught, he nonetheless had some formal training at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia in the early 1820s, under Thomas Sully and Charles Willson Peale, and he made his way as a journeyman artist. His portraits of Gov. DeWitt Clinton garnered some attention, but he was always in need of official patronage. Perhaps inspired by Charles Bird King’s portraits of tribal leaders in Washington, Catlin struck out West and attached himself to Gen. William Clark, governor of the Missouri Territory. Portraying the Indians of the Southwestern plains became Catlin’s passion, and during the 1830s, over numerous visits embedded among the tribes, he painted hundreds of careful portraits; he often bought the Indians’ garments and artifacts to display later with the work as proof of his eyewitness. Much of the rest of his restless life was spent roving among London, Paris and Brussels, displaying his traveling Indian Gallery (and making a living from it), toeing that precarious line between artist and impresario. The author thoughtfully explores the complicated bleeding of empathy into exploitation. Eisler’s fine, thorough work begs for a fresh reappraisal of this pioneering artist. (8 pages of color, 8 pages of b/w illustrations)

SEX AND THE CITADEL Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World

El Feki, Shereen Pantheon (368 pp.) $28.95 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-307-37739-5

A daring new study finds the newly liberated Egyptians poised to demand more sexual freedom in the face of religious fundamentalism. The Arab Spring has brought the Egyptians in particular to the brink of a sexual revolution not unlike the movement that struck the West 40 years ago, writes Economist and Al Jazeera English journalist El Feki, who is trained in molecular immunology and serves as vice chair of the U.N.’s Global Commission on HIV and Law. However, Egypt’s new order maintains a liberal minority and a conservative majority (e.g., the Muslim Brotherhood), and the push back against sexual liberation, especially as demanded by women, is daunting and unsure. El Feki, born in England and raised in Canada by an Egyptian father and Welsh mother, embarks on her subject with healthy doses of humor and irony, offering a selected look at erotic classical Arabic writings that flourished famously during the Abbasid period from the 8th to 10th centuries in Baghdad. Arab culture traditionally celebrated sexuality as compatible with elements of the Islamic faith, but what gradually occurred in Egypt and elsewhere in nonfiction

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“Pulitzer Prize–winning medical journalist/investigator Fink submits a sophisticated, detailed recounting of what happened at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina.” from five days at memorial

the Arab world was that sexuality was equated with the “licentiousness” of the imperialists. The response to colonial occupation meant returning to the basics, to Islamic fundamentalism and the Salafi movement, the latter allowed to emerge openly after the recent Arab Spring. With personal stories bolstered by facts and figures, El Feki looks at the tensions between what is halal (permitted under Islamic law) and haram (forbidden) or zina (downright debauchery). She also discusses sex education, abortion, pornography, homosexuality, and even lingerie and cross-dressing. As a daughter of the region, El Feki is also deeply engaged in and hopeful for greater democratization in personal relations. A surprisingly open, extremely timely examination of the sexual coming-of-age for Egyptian youth.

REVOLUTIONARY SUMMER The Birth of American Independence Ellis, Joseph J. Knopf (240 pp.) $26.95 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-0-307-70122-0

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Ellis (First Family: Abigail and John Adams, 2010, etc.) writes book after book on the American Revolutionary period. Practice makes perfect. The author’s latest alternates between 1776 colonial politics during which the Continental Congress, dominated by John Adams, finally put aside efforts at compromise and opted for independence and the fighting where George Washington’s army marched from triumph in the siege of Boston to catastrophe in New York. Ellis delivers few surprises and no cheerleading but much astute commentary. He points out with no small irony that the Continental Congress was at its best in 1776 when thoughtful men debated the benefits of liberty versus the consequences of war with the world’s most powerful nation and came to the right decision. Only in the following years, faced with governing the colonies and supplying the army, did it reveal its incompetence. When British forces withdrew from Boston in March, colonial rebels declared a great victory, but Washington worried. Sieges and fighting behind fortifications (i.e., Bunker Hill) were simple compared with standard 18th-century warfare, which required soldiers to maneuver under fire and remain calm amid scenes of horrific carnage. He suspected that his largely untrained militia army would do badly under these circumstances, and events in New York proved him right. Luckily, British Gen. William Howe, despite vastly superior forces, refused to deliver a knockout blow. He would never get another chance. Kevin Phillips’ 2012 tour de force, 1775, delivered a massive argument for that year as the key to American independence. A traditionalist, Ellis sticks to 1776 and writes an insightful history of its critical, if often painful, events.

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TOMS RIVER A Story of Science and Salvation Fagin, Dan Bantam (560 pp.) $28.00 | Mar. 19, 2013 978-0-553-80653-3 978-0-345-53861-1 e-book

An award-winning science journalist exposes how corporate interests and corrupt politicians almost turned a quiet, suburban New Jersey beach community into a toxic wasteland. Former Newsday reporter Fagin (Journalism/New York Univ.; co-author: Toxic Deception: How the Chemical Industry Manipulates Science, Bends the Law and Endangers Your Health, 1999) reveals the complex motives that blinded residents of Toms River to the consequences of the practices of the town’s major employer, CibaGeigy, a chemical company based in Switzerland that produced dyes from coal tar. Since the early 1950s, the corporation “had produced about three billion pounds of dyes and plastics—along with perhaps forty billion gallons of wastewater and two hundred thousand drums of toxic waste,” which ultimately found its way into their drinking water. In 1986, after mounting pressure from environmentalists resulted in some remediation, Ciba-Geigy announced the plant’s imminent closure. They would be moving their operations to lower-wage areas with less regulation (in the U.S. and overseas to Asia). Despite increased environmental awareness over the years, the union (supported by residents who feared the loss of the high wages paid by the corporation) was complicit in a coverup of the extent of the contamination. While some people relied on backyard wells, the major drinking-water supplier in the town also had a vested interest in the coverup, and tourism was an economic consideration. Eventually, truth prevailed as parents became concerned by the number of children afflicted with cancer, and activists were supported by the local newspaper. A 2001 legal settlement was “one of the largest payouts ever, in a toxic-exposure case.” Fagin weaves fascinating background material on epidemiology, statistical analysis and more into this hard-hitting chronicle. A gripping environmental thriller.

FIVE DAYS AT MEMORIAL Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

Fink, Sheri Crown (448 pp.) $26.00 | Sep. 10, 2013 978-0-307-71896-9

Pulitzer Prize–winning medical journalist/investigator Fink (War Hospital, 2003) submits a sophisticated, detailed recounting of what happened at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina. |

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Under calamitous, lethal circumstances, the staff at Memorial did a remarkable job of saving many lives in the wake of Hurricane Katrina—though others would point out they didn’t have the street smarts of the staff at Charity Hospital, whose creativeness resulted in far fewer deaths. Fink draws those few days in the hospital’s life with a fine, lively pen, providing stunningly framed vignettes of activities in the hospital and sharp pocket profiles of many of the characters. She gives measured consideration to such explosive issues as class and race discrimination in medicine, end-of-life care, medical rationing and euthanasia, and she presents the injection of some patients with a cocktail of drugs to reduce their breathing in such a manner that readers will be able to fully fashion their own opinions. The book is an artful blend of drama and philosophy: When do normal standards no longer apply? what if doing something seems right but doesn’t feel right? In the ensuing investigation of one doctor, who is clearly the fall guy (or woman, as it were), Fink circles all the players, successfully giving much-needed perspective to their views. The obvious villains are the usual suspects: nature, for sending Katrina forth; big business, in the guise of Memorial owner Tenet Healthcare, for its failure to act and subsequent guilty posturing; and government, feds to local, for the bungling incompetence that led to dozens of deaths. The street thugs and looters didn’t help much, either. With apparent effortlessness, Fink tells the Memorial story with cogency and atmosphere.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE

Finkel, David Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux (272 pp.) $27.00 | Oct. 1, 2013 978-0-374-18066-9

Washington Post writer Finkel delivers one of the most morally responsible works of journalism to emerge from the post-9/11 era. To call this moving rendering of the costs of war a continuation of the author’s first book, The Good Soldiers (2009), would be misleading. While Finkel does focus on the men of the 2-16 Infantry Battalion following their actions in Iraq, the breadth and depth of his portraits of the men and women scarred by the 21st century’s conflicts are startling. In a series of interconnected stories, Finkel follows a handful of soldiers and their spouses through the painful, sometimes-fatal process of reintegration into American society. The author gives a cleareyed, frightening portrayal of precisely what it is like to suffer with post-traumatic stress disorder or traumatic brain injury and what it is like to have the specter of suicide whispering into your ear every day. Finkel’s emotional touchstone is Sgt. Adam Schumann, a genuine American hero who returned from Iraq without a physical scratch on him—but whose three tours of duty may have broken him for good. Schumann’s condition, compounded by financial stress, drove a deep wedge between the wounded 14

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soldier and his wife, who has struggled to understand why her husband returned a changed man. Finkel also follows the widow of a soldier Schumann tried to save, an American Samoan vet whose TBI threatens to derail his life, and a suicidal comrade unable to overcome his condition, among others. Fighting on the front lines of this conflict are a compassionate case worker, a U.S. Army general who makes it his last mission to halt the waves of suicides, and the director of a transition center whose war should have ended long ago. The truly astonishing aspect of Finkel’s work is that he remains completely absent from his reportage; he is still embedded. A real war story with a jarring but critical message for the American people. (17 b/w illustrations)

THE SEARCHERS The Making of an American Legend Frankel, Glenn Bloomsbury (416 pp.) $28.00 | Feb. 19, 2013 978-1-60819-105-5

A gracefully presented narrative of the 1956 John Ford film The Searchers, which was based on a 1954 novel that was based on an actual Comanche kidnapping of a white girl in 1836. Pulitzer Prize–winning former Washington Post reporter Frankel (Journalism/Univ. of Texas; Rivonia’s Children: Three Families and the Cost of Conscience in White South Africa, 1999, etc.) focuses on the American Southwest and the relationships between American Indians and whites. The author begins in 1954 with a shocking moment—director Ford, well into his cups, punching Henry Fonda in the nose. And away we go on a remarkable journey from Hollywood to Monument Valley and into the past as Frankel digs into American cultural history, unearthing some gold. He spends many pages telling the story of Cynthia Ann Parker, the kidnapped girl. The Parkers searched hard for her afterward, but it was not until 1860 that she was re-captured in the bloody Battle of Pease River. By then, she was in every way but genetically a Comanche. Her transition back to white society was painful, and after some moments of celebrity, she fell into obscurity. One of her Comanche children, though, who came to call himself Quanah Parker, emerged as one of the principal spokesmen for American Indian causes. Frankel pursues Cynthia Ann’s and Quanah’s stories with gusto then, nearly 200 pages later, shifts his attention to Alan LeMay, author of The Searchers and nearly a score of other novels. Then it’s on to John Ford and the making of the film with John Wayne. An epilogue deals with the amicable reunions of the Parker descendants and relatives, white and Comanche. A thoroughly researched, clearly written account of an obsessive search through the tangled borderland of fact and fiction, legend and myth.

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“Swiftly moving account of a friendship that turned sour, broke a political party in two and involved an insistent, omnipresent press corps. Cantor and Boehner? No: Teddy and Taft.” from the bully pulpit

THE TENDER SOLDIER A True Story of War and Sacrifice Gezari, Vanessa M. Simon & Schuster (336 pp.) $25.00 | Aug. 13, 2013 978-1-4391-7739-6

Having discovered (again) that superior firepower does poorly against guerrillas, America’s military adopted its current counterinsurgency doctrine, an object of almost universal praise. Not all was deserved, writes journalist Gezari (Narrative Nonfiction and War Reporting/ Univ. of Michigan) in this insightful but disturbing account of the Human Terrain System, a program designed to bring social science to the battlefield. Launched in 2006, each HTS team ostensibly consists of a scholar to gather data on an area’s culture, politics, demographics and needs. Other team members integrate this information and pass it on to the local American military unit, allowing it to resolve disputes, identify problems before they turn violent, and avoid causing needless offense. Gezari begins with one team’s disastrous experience. A young woman anthropologist, dedicated and popular, was talking with a young Afghan when he suddenly doused her with gasoline and set her afire. He was captured, and a distraught team member killed him. The team member was convicted of the murder. Attempting to comprehend the offender, the author interviewed his fellow villagers. All denounced the crime, but their explanations were oddly contradictory. Understanding foreign cultures is difficult. Gezari points out that America contains too few scholars familiar with Afghanistan, so many teams are clueless. Members often serve for the wrong reasons, since the civilian contractor earns $250,000-$350,000 per year. The Defense Department remains enthusiastic, but few claim that matters in Afghanistan are going well. Although his subject was Iraq, Peter Van Buren covered the same ground in his hilarious We Meant Well (2011). Gezari eschews humor but delivers a gripping report on another of America’s painful, surprisingly difficult efforts to win hearts and minds.

TO AMERICA WITH LOVE

Gill, A.A. Simon & Schuster (272 pp.) $25.00 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-1-4165-9621-9 An ardent mash note to the vast, vital nation that confounds and beguiles its European cousins in equal measure. Gill (A.A. Gill Is Further Away, 2012, etc.) celebrates America’s natural bounty, its lack of pretention and hidebound tradition, the dizzying diversity of its people and its startling capacity for invention |

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in a series of witty, discursive considerations of the national character, as reflected by such American signifiers as guns, skyscrapers, movies and moonshine. The author provides engrossing accounts of historical events, including the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the Scopes Monkey trial, distinguished by richly drawn portraits of the familiar figures involved and Gill’s erudite but accessible prose style, which flits from arresting profundity to cheeky humor to wrenching pathos. The collection alternates memoir with examinations of American history and institutions; Gill’s tales of his encounters with Appalachian moonshiners and Harlem barbers are warmly funny and rendered with the attention to detail of a fine short story. The author never condescends to his subjects or settles for juicy anecdotes; his brief is an appreciation of America as an expression of the sublime, a transcendent emotional response to the world that goes beyond the studied, safely curated idea of “beauty” as idealized by Old World European culture. Gill finds the sublime in American thought, writing and art, in its love of talk and argument, in its refusal to venerate the past above the promise of the future, in all of its lunatic variety and conflict and ambition. It’s a passionate, richly literary love letter to a place and idea that remains unique in the history of the world. A stirring, funny, thought-provoking appreciation of the place, the idea, the experiment, the United States of America.

THE BULLY PULPIT Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism

Goodwin, Doris Kearns Simon & Schuster (960 pp.) $40.00 | $16.99 e-book | $39.99 CD Nov. 5, 2013 978-1-4165-4786-0 978-1-4516-7379-1 e-book 978-1-4423-6570-4 CD

Swiftly moving account of a friendship that turned sour, broke a political party in two and involved an insistent, omnipresent press corps. Cantor and Boehner? No: Teddy and Taft. Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Goodwin (Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, 2005, etc.) may focus on the great men (and occasionally women) of history, but she is the foremost exponent of a historiographic school that focuses on the armies of aides and enactors that stand behind them. In this instance, one of the principal great men would revel in the title: Theodore Roosevelt wanted nothing more than to be world-renowned, change the world and occasionally shoot a mountain lion. His handpicked successor, William Howard Taft, was something else entirely: He wished to fade into legal scholarship and was very happy in later life to be named to the Supreme Court. The two began as friends of what Taft called “close and sweet intimacy,” and the friendship ended—Goodwin evokes this exquisitely well in her closing pages—with a guarded |

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“A thrilling and suspenseful page-turner that is sure to be loved by the majority of readers, who will be both horrified and fascinated.” from the good nurse

chance encounter in a hotel that slowly thawed but too late. A considerable contributor to the split was TR’s progressivism, his trust-busting and efforts to improve the lot of America’s working people, which Taft was disinclined to emulate. Moreover, Taft did not warm to TR’s great talent, which was to enlist journalists to his cause; problems of objectivity aside, they provided him with the “bully pulpit” of Goodwin’s title. She populates her pages with sometimes-forgotten heroes of investigative reporting— Ida Tarbell, Ray Blake, Lincoln Steffens—just as much as Roosevelt and Taft and their aides. The result is an affecting portrait of how networks based on genuine liking contribute to the effective functioning of government without requiring reporters to be sycophants or politicians to give up too many secrets. It’s no small achievement to have something new to say on Teddy Roosevelt’s presidency, but Goodwin succeeds admirably. A notable, psychologically charged study in leadership.

THE GOOD NURSE A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder Graeber, Charles Twelve (320 pp.) $26.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-446-50529-1

The terrifying, true tale of nurse Charles Cullen, a man who worked with the most vulnerable of patients for 16 years, delivering life or death on a whim. A whodunit where the culprit is identified on page one is as strange as a thriller with no surprise ending, but journalist Graeber presents these facts right from the beginning, never doubting the strength of the story. It works. Even without an uncertain finale, this true-crime tale delivers mystery and intrigue. The author begins with the satisfaction Cullen felt in his work, the good money he made and the doors open to him despite the litany of problems littering his professional and personal record. The author describes how Cullen came to nursing, how he felt a sense of belonging and distinction in his role, and the dysfunction of his personal life. Soon, Cullen was exerting control over his world by taking the lives of patients. Graeber does a particularly good job of showing the mounting evidence against Cullen as his misdeeds were originally discovered, following the nurse from accusation to accusation. The author imbues the story with an intense level of anticipation, with one question constantly in the background: Who will stop this man and when? Graeber describes the administrators who refused to report Cullen in the same way as the whistle-blowers who insisted on involving the police. The author’s cut-and-dried delivery serves to make the many paradoxes more poignant and lend some humor to a dark subject. A thrilling and suspenseful page-turner that is sure to be loved by the majority of readers, who will be both horrified and fascinated.

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GETTYSBURG The Last Invasion Guelzo, Allen C. Knopf (688 pp.) $35.00 | May 15, 2013 978-0-307-59408-2

A stirring account of the “greatest and most violent collision the North American continent [has] ever seen,” just in time for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. Though the battle site was not inevitable, the actual battle was: The giant armies of North and South were destined to lumber into one another in a time when, as Guelzo (Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction, 2012, etc.) cites a Confederate officer as observing, they “knew no more about the topography of the country than they did about Central Africa.” What is certain is that Robert E. Lee’s arrival in Pennsylvania sent “Yankeedom,” to quote another Confederate officer, “in a great fright.” The Union had reason to be concerned, but, as Guelzo documents, their foe was scattered and divided, with rivalries and miscommunication—and perhaps even insubordination—keeping James Longstreet from attacking, J.E.B. Stuart from arriving on the battlefield in time, and the much-disliked George Pickett from enjoying a better fate than being cannon fodder. And what fodder: If there is a leitmotif in Guelzo’s book, it is the image of brains being distributed on the grass and the shirts of fellow soldiers, of limbs disappearing and soldiers on both sides disintegrating in a scene of “muskets, swords, haversacks, human flesh and bones flying and dangling in the air or bouncing above the earth.” The author ably, even vividly, captures the hell of the battlefield while constantly keeping the larger scope of Gettysburg in the reader’s mind: It was, he argues, the one central struggle over one plank of the Civil War, namely the preservation of the Union, that nearly wholly excluded the other one, the abolition of slavery. Robust, memorable reading that will appeal to Civil War buffs, professional historians and general readers alike. (44 maps; 8 pages of photos)

AFTER VISITING FRIENDS A Son’s Story

Hainey, Michael Scribner (320 pp.) $25.00 | Feb. 19, 2013 978-1-4516-7656-3

A young reporter goes in search of his long-lost, deceased father. “There’s lots of stories you haven’t heard,” said the narrator’s mother when he asked about an unfamiliar family anecdote. But GQ deputy editor Hainey wanted to hear them all. When his father died suddenly one spring day in 1970, he left behind two boys, a wife nonfiction

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“Among the plethora of brilliant accounts of this period, this is one of the best.” from catastrophe 1914

and a trail of questions that no one wanted to answer for Hainey. For years, the family danced silently around the subject of his father, until the author decided to track down whatever true story was left of him. It was the obituary that set him off: His father allegedly died “after visiting friends,” but who were they? Who was with him in his final hours? With medical records and a few shaky, secondhand accounts from his father’s former co-workers, a tight-lipped crew of old-time Chicago newspapermen, Hainey hoped to fill the gaps between what he had always been told and what it seemed might actually be true. His personal investigation took him across the country and into strangers’ lives, but the most difficult and hard-won part of the journey was his gradual, intimate understanding of his mother and brother. Hainey’s writing is balletic, nimbly avoiding both sentimentality and sensationalism, making grief and absence into powerful and fully felt forces. His short scenes appear like flashes of memory, prose poems of what once was, and he skillfully weaves a narrative that transcends his own and spans generations. From family history to Chicago lore, Hainey searches the deepest fissures of memory and finds a hidden and entire “world of men, of stories, of knowledge” that wasn’t there before. Part elegy, part mystery and wholly unforgettable.

CATASTROPHE 1914 Europe Goes to War

Hastings, Max Knopf (672 pp.) $35.00 | Sep. 24, 2013 978-0-307-59705-2

Does the world need another book on that dismal year? Absolutely, if it’s by Hastings (Inferno: The World at War, 1939– 1945, 2011, etc.). After many accounts of World War II, the veteran military historian tries his hand, with splendid results. Most readers will be familiar with many of the facts. When Austria mobilized to take revenge on Serbia for its role in the June 1914 murder of Archduke Ferdinand, Russia protested. Austria’s ally, Germany, warned it to keep its hands off. Russia’s response was only mildly threatening, but it wasn’t mild enough for the pugnacious German general staff. Deciding war was inevitable, they convinced a dithering kaiser, and the dominoes fell. Who’s to blame? Hastings loves Barbara Tuchman’s 1962 classic The Guns of August but agrees that her verdict—everything got out of hand; it was no one’s fault—is passé. Hastings shows modest respect for the German school, which blames Germany; historian Sean McMeekin, who emphasizes Russia’s role; and even Niall Ferguson, who believes that Britain should have remained neutral. He concludes that national leaders (mediocrities all, with a few frank dimwits) focused with paranoid intensity on selfish interests, that stupidity trumped malevolence, and that German paranoia won by a nose. World War I historians deplore the slaughter at the Somme and Verdun, but these pale in comparison to the final months of 1914, when modern weapons mowed down armies who still marched |

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in dense masses led by mounted officers with colors flying and bands playing. Readers accustomed to Hastings’ vivid battle descriptions, incisive anecdotes from all participants, and shrewd, often unsettling opinions will not be disappointed. Among the plethora of brilliant accounts of this period, this is one of the best. (21 maps; 40 pages of photos)

THE GREAT DISSENT How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind—and Changed the History of Free Speech in America

Healy, Thomas Metropolitan/Henry Holt (336 pp.) $28.00 | Aug. 20, 2013 978-0-8050-9456-5

The writings of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes are the basis of today’s interpretation of freedom of speech, but it took many great minds to convince him of its value. Seton Hall Law School professor Healy tells the engrossing tale of how it happened. In his debut, the author traces the evolution of Holmes’ opinion away from the view that you may say what you like, but you will be liable for prosecution. Holmes could not accept that the right of free speech was absolute, and he sought to define its limits. Those who influenced him were the best intellects of the time, including Justice Louis Brandeis and future justice Felix Frankfurter. The author deftly follows the progression of Holmes’ changing view without descending into incomprehensible legalese. Justice Learned Hand’s decision in Masses Publishing Co. v. Patton (1917) was the first step in convincing Holmes that unacceptable views could be tolerated, and Harvard instructor Harold Laski, as near a son as possible, was the greatest influence on the justice. Laski, along with Zechariah Chafee and Herbert Croly, were in the vanguard of those who fought against the persecution of dissenters instituted by the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. These two acts produced the cases that would completely change interpretation of the First Amendment. Holmes’ opinions, especially in Schenck (1918), show his growing recognition that only a “clear and present danger” can curtail freedom of speech. It was when he wrote his dissent for Abrams (1919) that he truly outlined the free marketplace for ideas and defended our right under the Constitution to express an opinion. An exceptional account of the development of the Constitution’s most basic right and an illuminating story of remarkable friendships, scholarly communication and the conservative justice who actually changed his mind. (8-page photo insert)

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I DREAMED I WAS A VERY CLEAN TRAMP An Autobiography Hell, Richard Ecco/HarperCollins (288 pp.) $24.99 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-06-219083-3

The life and wild times of a punk avatar. Besides being a rock legend, Hell has long been a journalist and novelist (Godlike, 2005, etc.), and this memoir reveals a skilled writer. Born in Kentucky in 1949 as Richard Meyers, he became a fledgling poet who ditched home and high school for the New York art world, where he trawled through galleries and beds, winding up as the boy toy of the wife of sculptor Claes Oldenburg. He also co-founded the band Television with his contentious pal Tom Verlaine, although he left before the band’s first album, as would also be the case with his brief stint with Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers. He hit his peak instead with his own band, The Voidoids, creating both a classic album (“Blank Generation”) and a fashion style he wore on his torn and safety-pinned sleeve. The Brits noticed. Punk was born. In recalling these days when love came in spurts, Hell is precise, telling a lot without ever seeming to tell too much. He nails the essence of both scenes and people, from rock peers to exploitative record producers. Nodding on heroin “was like the dream of a dream, a dream you could manipulate—in other words, paradise on earth.” Sid Vicious “wasn’t really vicious,” just someone who “saw that there was a crazy opening into fame and money that required only that he relax into full loutish negativity.” He can also be bitter, as when he writes that Thunders’ lyrics “were half-assed in never having an original idea or turn of phrase.” A deft, lyrical chronicle by a punk with perspective.

THE BOOK OF MY LIVES

Hemon, Aleksandar Farrar, Straus and Giroux (224 pp.) $25.00 | Mar. 19, 2013 978-0-374-11573-9

An acclaimed novelist—winner of a MacArthur Foundation genius grant and finalist for the National Book Award (The Lazarus Project, 2008, etc.)—returns with an affecting memoir about his youth in Sarajevo and his escape and adjustment to the West. Hemon begins with the birth of his baby sister. He evokes his boyhood jealousy and confusion with honesty and clarity, recalling how he once nearly murdered the infant. When war in the Balkans erupted (once again) in the 1990s, his family eventually fled. His father went to Canada with his wife and the author’s sister in 1993; Hemon had been eking out a living as a journalist in Sarajevo, a city he loved. He maintains an appealing, 18

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self-deprecating voice throughout these early chapters, readily recognizing his own delusions and youthful arrogance. He got a chance to visit Chicago for a month in 1992 and didn’t return. The second half of the memoir charts his early struggles in the city and his passions for soccer and chess, passions he was able to release once he found like-minded groups of others. Always a voracious reader (and aficionado of American popular culture), Hemon learned English, taught ESL for a while, then began writing in English, as well. He writes forthrightly about the failure of his first marriage: Something so right, he thought, quickly declined into something bad (shouting matches). But later he met and fell in love with his current wife, who, at the time, was editing a collection to which he was contributing. Hemon’s technique is not conventional—this is no linear boyhood-tomanhood narrative. The chapters, in fact, could in many ways stand alone. But their cumulative emotional power—accelerated by a wrenching final section about the grievous illness of his younger daughter—eventually all but overwhelms. Amuses, informs and inspires—then, finally, rips open the heart.

JOHNNY CASH The Life

Hilburn, Robert Little, Brown (608 pp.) $32.00 | $14.99 e-book | Oct. 29, 2013 978-0-316-19475-4 978-0-316-24869-3 e-book

Veteran music writer Hilburn (Cornflakes with John Lennon, 2009) masterfully separates fiction from fact in an exhaustive, but never exhausting, biography of the legendary musician. Even as a child, Johnny Cash (1932–2003) knew he wanted to write songs and perform them in front of large audiences, but he had no realistic plan to accomplish those goals. After high school, he joined the Air Force, a choice that taught him a great deal about life outside Arkansas but did not seem to bring him closer to his musical goals. He met Vivian Liberto while still in the military. They eventually married and had four daughters amid numerous struggles with Cash’s marital infidelities and amphetamine addiction. As for the professional dream, Cash reached fulfillment only due to his gutsy foray into Memphis, where record-company impresario Sam Phillips eventually succumbed to the novice’s entreaties. Hilburn expertly navigates the ups and downs of Cash’s music career before, during and after stardom; the divorce from Vivian and eventual marriage to June Carter; his debilitating addiction to pills; the TV and movie appearances that increased Cash’s cultural presence; the slide into apparent professional has-been status; and the unlikely pairing with music producer Rick Rubin after the fall that not only revived Cash’s fame, but took his singing in amazing new directions. Hilburn packs his mostly chronological narrative with cameos by famous artists who admired Cash, including Carl Perkins, Waylon Jennings, fiction

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“Meticulous history illuminated and animated by personal passion, carried aloft by volant prose.” from falling upwards

FALLING UPWARDS How We Took to the Air

Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and even some heavy-metal and rap musicians. As the longtime music critic for the Los Angeles Times, Hilburn followed Cash’s career vigorously and interviewed him multiple times before his death. The personal knowledge aided by extensive archival research and always compelling, accessible writing make this an instant-classic music biography with something to offer all generations of listeners. (16 pages of b/w photos)

SURFACES AND ESSENCES Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking

Hofstadter, Douglas R.; Sander, Emmanuel Basic (464 pp.) $35.00 | May 1, 2013 978-0-465-01847-5

How do we know what we know? How do we know at all? With an enjoyable blend of hard science and good storytelling, Hofstadter (I Am a Strange Loop, 2007, etc.) and French psychologist Sander tackle these most elusive of philosophical matters. The authors write that “each concept in our mind owes its existence to a long succession of analogies made unconsciously over many years, initially giving birth to the concept and continuing to enrich it over the course of our lifetime.” The word “band,” for instance, can mean many things, from an invisible set of wavelengths to a wedding ring to the Beatles; each of those designations forms by analogy to the others, a process made more complex by virtue of the fact that words, even the most ordinary of them, “don’t have just two or three but an unlimited number of meanings.” Given all that, it is hardly surprising that one man’s meat is another’s poison—and therein lies the complement to analogy formation, “the very lifeblood of cognition,” namely classification or categorization, with the ancillary process of abstraction (whence, for instance, the category “nonsquare rectangle,” containing eight subcategories of rhombuses, parallelograms and so forth). Hofstadter’s works are never easy reading, and this one is no different, chockablock full of words such as “zeugmaticity” and “factorization” and with plenty of math to daunt the less than numerate. Yet it’s worth sticking with his long argument, full of up-to-date cognitive science and, at the end, a beguiling look at what the theory of relativity owes to analogy. Certainly not for all readers, but first-rate popular science: difficult but rewarding. (10 b/w illustrations)

Holmes, Richard Pantheon (416 pp.) $35.00 | Oct. 29, 2013 978-0-307-37966-5

The biographer of two great Romantics (Shelley and Coleridge) relates yet another romantic tale—the story of the human passion to fly up, up and away in

a beautiful balloon. Holmes (The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science, 2009, etc.) begins with a memory—a flying dream from childhood—mentions Daedalus and Icarus, some balloons in literature, films and popular culture, and then lifts off into another of his delightfully soaring histories. He notes that the French were the first to use balloons for military purposes (reconnaissance), then tells us about some of the most notable balloon pioneers, including André-Jacques Garnerin, who also pioneered parachutes. Holmes focuses on the accomplishments (and failures) of a number of other principals, including Charles Green (many of his flights lifted off from Vauxhall Gardens), Henry Mayhew, Eugène Godard, John Wise, James Glaisher, Camille Flammarion, Gaston Tissandier and Salomon Andrée, whose attempt to reach the North Pole in 1897 ended in death for all aboard his vessel. Holmes reminds us of ballooning in the fictions of Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, Mark Twain (whose Tom Sawyer Abroad reunited the Huck-Jim-Tom trio for a flight across the Atlantic) and others. He tells, as well, about spectacular failures—crashes, fatal and otherwise. His two most gripping segments are the airlift from Paris during the FrancoPrussian War (1870-1871)—dozens of flights took mail and other dispatches out of the city during the siege—and the assault on the North Pole. One great irony regarding the latter: The aeronauts, on the ground after the balloon could no longer fly, shot and ate polar bears; later, the bears ate them. Meticulous history illuminated and animated by personal passion, carried aloft by volant prose. (24 pages of color illustrations; b/w illustrations throughout)

JAPAN 1941 Countdown to Infamy Hotta, Eri Knopf (352 pp.) $27.95 | Oct. 29, 2013 978-0-307-59401-3

An Asian specialist examines the reasons behind the riskiest military venture in Japan’s history. Why did Japan attack Pearl Harbor and begin a war it had virtually no chance of winning? In this focused, informed and persuasive book, Hotta (Pan-Asianism and Japan’s War, 1931-45, 2007) explains the |

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“A humorous, cerebral and daringly written memoir.” from the joker

cultural forces at work and the political, economic, diplomatic and military issues that occupied the government in the years, and especially the months, preceding December 7, 1941. Without in any way excusing or justifying the officials who made the momentous decision to begin an entirely “preventable and unwinnable” war, she sympathetically tells the story of leaders maneuvered into a strategic box, albeit one largely of their own making, from which war appeared the only escape. Among Hotta’s many sensitive portraits: the young Emperor Hirohito; Prime Minister Tojo (not the bloodthirsty dictator of American propaganda) and the fatally indecisive Prince Konoe who preceded him; Adm. Yamamoto, architect of the Pearl Harbor attack; Matsuoka, the longtime foreign minister; and Nomura, ambassador to the United States. Lending depth to her narrative, the author includes sketches of lesser figures like the novelist Kafu, author of an incisive diary about public events, and the brilliant and eccentric Kuroshima, Yamamoto’s premier strategist. Already weary from a long war with China, with rice rationed and the public kept largely clueless about the government’s machinations, the nation’s leaders paused. Nevertheless, with the cultural imperative of consensus masking intraservice rivalries and deep divisions among the military and political classes, with the racism and imperialism of Western powers painfully rankling, with the desire for national greatness fueling a reckless expansionism, Japan gambled on a war where success depended almost entirely on forces outside its control. The impressively credentialed Hotta effortlessly returns us to the moment just before the dice were so disastrously rolled. From a perspective little known to Americans, a masterful account of how and why World War II began. (8 pages of photos; map)

FRESH OFF THE BOAT A Memoir Huang, Eddie Spiegel & Grau (288 pp.) $26.00 | Feb. 5, 2013 978-0-679-64488-0

Up-and-coming celebrity chef Huang serves up a raw memoir recounting his life as an angry young man chafing under generations of stifling Chinese tradition and all-encompassing American “whiteness.” Three things inform the multitalented restaurateur’s identity: food, basketball and hip-hop. Although not necessarily in that order, each is infused in virtually every sentence, many of which are laugh-out-loud funny. All three provided the socially conscious author with the succor he needed to make it as an Asian “OutKast” growing up in the Deep South. The son of a former Taiwanese gangster father and a money-obsessed mother, Huang spent his formative years posting up with his style-obsessed buddies and generally bucking authority and the status quo. The author renders his portraits of his many colorful friends and family as vividly and spectacularly as his recipe for beef noodle soup. Huang may have an opinion on everything from religion to RZA, 20

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but his deeply contemplative nature deflects any accusations of self-righteousness. His history of violence is more problematic, however. Physical violence both on the streets and inside the home punctuated the author’s younger years, and while the latter is thoughtfully unpacked and explored, the former is too often glorified. It could have all easily gone quite differently for Huang. At one point, he was arrested after driving a car into a crowd of threatening rivals and was packed off to Taiwan in order to escape punishment. However, he used the opportunity to reconcile his Asian heritage and focus his unrelenting energy on the things he really wanted out of life. The inspiring result became his trendsetting East Village eatery, Baohaus. A unique voice with a provocative point of view.

THE JOKER A Memoir

Hudgins, Andrew Simon & Schuster (352 pp.) $25.00 | Jun. 11, 2013 978-1-4767-1271-0

An acclaimed poet proves his versatility in his gut-busting memoir on jokes. In his debut memoir, Hudgins (English/Ohio State Univ.; American Rendering, 2010, etc.) admits his Achilles’ heel for clowning. “Since junior high, I’ve been a joker, a punster, a laugher,” he writes, “someone who will say almost anything for a laugh.” In his memoir, he also proves that he will write anything for a laugh as well. No terrain proves too taboo for Hudgins, who dispenses racial jokes, misogynistic jokes and jokes in which Jesus and dead babies make appearances in the punch lines. Yet his often-bawdy material probes depths far beneath the jokes themselves, providing opportunities to examine his life through a humorous lens. Hudgins recounts his evolution from grade school clown to college-age clown to married (and later divorced) clown, but he’s at his best when moving beyond himself and providing the historical context for his punch lines. While tightrope walking along the perilous subject of racial jokes, Hudgins’ true contribution comes from his commentary on growing up in the segregated South. His discussion on jokes as a regional defense mechanism—one that exposes the fears and biases of the time—prompts new thinking on a subject often overlooked: i.e., the attempt to shroud America’s past lunacy in laughter. “Jokes are often—some would say always—intricately wound up with power,” he writes, a claim all the more powerful given his Southern upbringing. As Hudgins proves, jokes provide various other functions as well, including a test of the teller’s ability to read his audience. As the author has learned, humor is no universal language, though thankfully, he possesses the skills to prompt readers to examine their own complex relationships with chuckles, guffaws and groans. A humorous, cerebral and daringly written memoir.

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THE WOLF AND THE WATCHMAN A Father, a Son, and the CIA Johnson, Scott C. Norton (320 pp.) $26.95 | May 20, 2013 978-0-393-23980-5

A former Newsweek foreign correspondent reviews his often perplexing experiences as the son of a CIA operative. Now a freelance journalist, Johnson begins in 1973, his birth year, with a story about a snake charmer in India, where his father was stationed. The snake charmer proves an apt metaphor for the mysterious elder Johnson, a sophisticated persuader whose ability to charm was his deadliest arrow as he sought to flip other agents and foreign nationals. The author does not obey a strict chronology. After 10 chapters that deliver us to 2001, Johnson returns to Mexico City in 1968, wondering if or how his father was involved in the deadly violence that occurred there just before the Olympics. Rendering the question even more wrenching is his realization that Johnson père could have been involved in the arrest of the father of a woman Johnson fils was dating. About halfway through, the narrative arrives near the present with a summary of the author’s sometimes-harrowing experiences covering the war in Iraq; he survived an IED explosion while riding in a Marine vehicle and had other brushes with death. We also hear about Sarajevo in 2004 and, in later chapters, about visits with his uneasily retired father in Spokane. They took some road trips, and en route, we learn about some of the missions and adventures of Johnson père, though he says he resents interrogations. Nonetheless, the author kept pushing him to impart as much family and professional history as possible, trying to understand a man with such a deadly past who nonetheless both professes and demonstrates a profound love for his son. Gripping, emotional depictions of the conflicts that rage in the interior and exterior worlds of a spy—and of a journalist.

A DREADFUL DECEIT The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama’s America Jones, Jacqueline Basic (384 pp.) $29.99 | Dec. 10, 2013 978-0-465-03670-7

A powerful exploration of an enduring myth that has haunted America over the centuries, from one of our best chroniclers of America’s struggle with racial inequality. Jones (History and Ideas/Univ. of Texas; Saving Savannah: The City and the Civil War, 2008, etc.) claims that race is a construct that has little meaning in biology even if it has had tremendous and deleterious force in historical reality. Instead |

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of a sweeping overview, the author focuses on six biographical sketches that illustrate the pernicious force of the myth of race that has nonetheless manifested in the realities of racism from the Colonial era onward. Thus, a Dutch master’s killing of one of his slaves reveals the increasing tensions in a globalizing world. A fugitive slave in South Carolina embraces the teaching of religion in a Revolutionary era in which men spoke of ideals of freedom while protecting the institution of slavery. A free black businesswoman in post-Revolutionary Rhode Island navigates the treacherous waters of freedom in a world still deeply committed to perpetuating her subservience. A lightskinned black man in the Union Army becomes a loyal Republican in the postwar era and experiences the frustrations and disappointments of white racial solidarity. A Tuskegee Institute graduate founds his own vocational institution for blacks in Jim Crow Mississippi and manages to survive and sometimes thrive in arguably the most oppressive state in an oppressive region. And a black writer and union advocate in Detroit utilizes his relationships in organized labor to bridge racial divides. A graceful writer and natural storyteller, Jones draws meaning from these six tableaux, maintaining the thread of her argument without hammering away at it. She brings the story up to the present by revealing the ways in which the election of Barack Obama has hardly served to mask the ways in which the racial myth has done real harm. From the “dreadful deceit” of race comes a masterful book about its history. (20 b/w illustrations)

HOTHOUSE The Art of Survival and the Survival of Art at America’s Most Celebrated Publishing House, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux Kachka, Boris Simon & Schuster (400 pp.) $27.00 | Aug. 6, 2013 978-1-4516-9189-4

A thorough study of the gold standard in American literary publishing, complete with sex, sour editors and the occasional stumble into financial success. Farrar, Straus and Giroux has corralled some of the most prominent names in literature since it was founded in 1945, from Isaac Bashevis Singer to Susan Sontag to Philip Roth to Jeffrey Eugenides. As New York contributing editor Kachka makes clear in this generally lively history, little of its success came easy: If weak-selling books weren’t the problem, personality clashes within the office were. The core of the story is Roger Straus, who championed some of the publisher’s biggest names throughout the years, including Tom Wolfe, whose fiction and nonfiction defined a generation of writing, though his delayed manuscripts put the company under financial strain. (His 1979 classic on the space program, The Right Stuff, appeared in FSG’s catalog for years.) Some intramural tussles among editors read like insider baseball, but Kachka’s recollections of FSG’s |

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“Some will quarrel with aspects of Katznelson’s analysis, few with his widely allusive, elegant prose.” from fear itself

struggle with independence (it sold to the German firm Holtzbrinck in 1994) and the modern era of big-money agents give a smart and informative portrait of the mechanisms of modern publishing. Roger Straus (who died in 2004) was a complicated man fit for this tale: He bedded plenty of women, was notoriously stingy, and engaged in an extended push and pull with his son, Roger Straus III, who’d spend time in and out of the company. Kachka extends the story into the present day, where, under the leadership of Jonathan Galassi, novelists like Eugenides and Jonathan Franzen preserve the publisher’s high-art sensibility while struggling to make ends meet. But Kachka wants to remind us that it’s always been thus: FSG was forever saved from failure by the big hit that cannily merged literary and commercial. A smart, savvy portrait of arguably the country’s most important publisher. (16-page insert of color photos)

THE BIG TRUCK THAT WENT BY How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster

Katz, Jonathan M. Palgrave Macmillan (320 pp.) $26.00 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-0-230-34187-6

A top-notch account of Haiti’s recent history, including the January 2010 earthquake, from the only American reporter stationed in the country at the time. Katz broke the story of how the deadly cholera outbreak, which spread in the months after the earthquake, was brought to the region by infected Nepalese U.N. peacekeepers and spread by inadequate sanitation. In his debut, the author chronicles his many investigations during his years living in and writing about Haiti. Unlike coverage by other writers on the island’s recent history, Katz’s recounting of the earthquake disaster, and the international mobilization that followed, is part of an ongoing story. This account complements those of others who have written of their direct experiences with the aftermath of the earthquake, but Katz’s position on the ground when the disaster struck makes this book unique—“it allowed me to understand both sides of the divide, between those who seek to improve how aid is given, and those who have been trying to improve their own lives for so long.” His contacts and local knowledge gave him special insight into the way the relief operation developed. Katz shows in detail how well-meaning actor Sean Penn (who lacked expertise) fed media hype about flooding dangers and diphtheria scares, which got in the way of efforts by qualified experts such as epidemiologist Paul Farmer. The author reports how promised aid funds didn’t arrive and NGO relief funds were misspent, while Haitians, presumed to be corrupt, were shut out of involvement in relief efforts. He also examines the involvement of the Duvalier clan. An eye-opening, trailblazing exposé. 22

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

FEAR ITSELF The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time Katznelson, Ira Liveright/Norton (512 pp.) $29.95 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-87140-450-3

A wholly new approach to the New Deal takes history we thought we knew and makes it even richer and more complex. In this deeply erudite, beautifully written history, Katznelson (Political Science and History/Columbia Univ.; When Affirmative Action was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America, 2005, etc.) adopts an expansive view of the New Deal, extending it to the end of the Truman administration. He reminds us that, while anxieties and apprehensions attend every age, FDR assumed office at a time when a profound, abiding fear predominated: about the very survival of liberal democracy in the face of economic meltdown and competition from fascist and communist dictatorships abroad. The dread persisted through a brutal world war, the dawn of the Atomic Age and the beginning of the Cold War. By the time of Eisenhower’s inauguration, a vastly different state had emerged, and its architecture would remain largely undisturbed by the first Republican president in 20 years. Katznelson distinguishes his history in two other important ways. First, in keeping with his theme about the survival of representative democracy, he places special emphasis on the role of Congress in helping to forge the policies and programs that came to define the era. Second, he is cold-eyed about the dicey compromises the New Deal made domestically with the legislature’s dominant force, the Jim Crow South, and internationally by associations with totalitarian governments. An especially fine chapter illustrates the nature of these disturbing alliances by resuscitating the now almost forgotten stories of Italy’s intrepid aviator Italo Balbo, the Soviet Union’s Nuremberg judge Iona Nikitchenko and Mississippi’s racist senator Theodore Bilbo. Although he sees the New Deal as “a rejuvenating triumph,” the author unflinchingly assesses its many dubious, albeit necessary concessions. Some will quarrel with aspects of Katznelson’s analysis, few with his widely allusive, elegant prose. (24 illustrations)

PUKKA’S PROMISE The Quest for LongerLived Dogs

Kerasote, Ted Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (464 pp.) $28.00 | Feb. 5, 2013 978-0-547-23626-1

An engaging, comprehensive study of man’s best friend. In 2008, Kerasote told the tale of his relationship with his beloved Merle (Merle’s Door, 2008, etc.), the stray dog who basically walked out of the desert and became the author’s stalwart companion. nonfiction

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After Merle succumbed to a brain tumor, Kerasote mourned his loss by investigating the factors that influence a dog’s longevity, undertaking a quest to find and raise the healthiest pup possible. “Why has nature decreed that our friendly dogs are already ancient in their teens,” asks the author, “while giving the unhuggable tortoise more than a century of life and some whales two hundred years to swim through the polar seas?” Kerasote attempts to answer that question, combining his close personal observations of canine behavior and health with extensive veterinary input and field research. With his trademark attention to detail and masterful descriptive abilities, Kerasote delves into the crucial factors affecting a dog’s life—breeding, diet, environment, spaying and neutering, living conditions—as he chronicles his hunt for and acquisition of Pukka (pronounced PUCK-ah and Hindi for “first-class”), the good-natured golden Labrador retriever puppy born in Minnesota, whom the author took back home to live with him in Jackson Hole, Wyo. Kerasote covers every aspect of young Pukka’s life, from the genetics and character of his parents, to the car restraints fashioned for their road trip home, to the best food to feed him. Kerasote also graphically probes issues in the U.S. animal shelter system, noting that in a country with upwards of 60 million dogs, 3.4 million dogs and cats are euthanized annually, a vast number compared to Europe and other developed nations. The book is packed with considered, sometimes controversial, reflections alongside accompanying illustrations and helpful notes. At once encyclopedic and intimate—a tour de force in canine appreciation. (b/w images throughout)

GOOD PROSE The Art of Nonfiction Kidder, Tracy; Todd, Richard Random House (224 pp.) $26.00 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-1-4000-6975-0 978-0-679-60472-3 e-book

Legendary literary journalist Kidder (Strength in What Remains, 2009, etc.) and his longtime editor trade war stories and advice for the ambitious nonfiction writer. “Let’s face it, this fellow can’t write,” an Atlantic editor told Todd about Kidder, who had been constantly revising his first feature in 1973. The authors tell this story upfront as an inspirational anecdote for young writers: Great writing is less often the product of flashes of genius than it is dogged persistence as a researcher and rewriter. The book is largely an entertaining handbook on matters of reporting (do lots of it, much more than you think you need) and style (simpler is better), but Kidder and Todd are not prescriptive the way Strunk & White and its inheritors are, and they allow greater leeway for writers. Throughout, they implore writers to shrug off the shackles of “journalese” and blog-y posturing and strive for creative, essayistic approaches. They’re also forgiving, to a degree, of the imperfect memories that |

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propel many memoirs. Outright fabrications (see James Frey) are out of line for them, but they appreciate that no memoirs “that strive to dramatize moments in the past can be wholly faithful to knowable fact.” After the practical matters are settled, the two indulge in “Being Edited and Editor,” a lengthy chapter in which they recall their contentious relationship tussling over paragraphs. Even here, though, the memories are studded with practical tips and memorable aphorisms—“Something is always wrong with a draft,” in particular, should hang over every writer’s desk. The authors also offer fine recommendations for further reading, from Frank Conroy’s Stop-Time (1967) to Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers (2012). Other writing guides have more nuts-and-bolts advice, but few combine the verve and plainspokenness of this book, which exemplifies its title.

THE BROTHERS John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War Kinzer, Stephen Henry Holt (352 pp.) $30.00 | Oct. 1, 2013 978-0-8050-9497-8

Longtime foreign correspondent Kinzer (International Relations/Boston Univ.; Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America’s Future, 2010, etc.) portrays the dark side of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration through the activities of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen, the director of the CIA. The author reveals the pair’s responsibility for the wave of assassinations, coups and irregular wars during Eisenhower’s administrations as the outcome of three generations of their family’s involvement in America’s increasingly active foreign policy, and he documents the way the brothers created the political shape of the Cold War in the 1950s, with John Foster providing the arrogant and pompous public face for the covert operations organized by brother Allen. Kinzer also shows how Eisenhower’s knowledge of the costs of open war between states led him to support their covert operations to “strike back…to fight, but in a different way.” The author discusses John Foster’s assimilation of the undeclared war against Soviet communism into a Manichaean framework of the eternal struggle of good vs. evil. He also examines how, during the 1930s, he was seen by some as “the chief agent for the banking circles which rescued Hitler from the financial depths.” Later, Allen recruited Nazi leaders to help shape postwar Europe against the Soviets during the war’s final stages. For Kinzer, the brothers epitomized the presumption that America has the right to “guide the course of history” because it is “more moral and farther-seeing than other countries.” In addition to providing illuminating biographical information, the author clearly presents the Dulles family’s contributions to the development of a legal and political structure for American corporations’ international politics. |

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

THE WORLD IS MOVING AROUND ME A Memoir of the Haiti Earthquake

A well-documented and shocking reappraisal of two of the shapers of the American century.

LOST GIRLS An Unsolved American Mystery

Laferrière, Dany Translated by Homel, David Arsenal Pulp Press (192 pp.) $15.95 paper | Jan. 15, 2013 978-1-55152-498-6

Kolker, Robert Harper/HarperCollins (416 pp.) $25.99 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-0-06-218363-7 In his debut, New York magazine contributor Kolker delves into the disappearances and murders of five women, all working as escorts in the New York met-

ropolitan area. More than 100 years ago, London prostitutes were targeted by Jack the Ripper, a serial killer whose identity remains an enigma. In our brave new world of Craigslist advertisements, cellphones and escort services, one group of lost girls— Shannan, Maureen, Melissa, Megan and Amber—faced similar threats from the anonymous client(s) who eventually killed them. The author unflinchingly probes the 21st-century innovations that facilitated these crimes, which launched a media blitz that shook the integrity of a secluded Long Island community called Oak Beach. What sets his investigation apart from many true-crime tomes, however, is the attention he pays to the girls’ back stories and to the efforts of their families and friends to bring the killer to justice. We know from the title that the crimes are still unsolved, leaving Kolker free to present the bewildering array of theories held by law enforcement, neighbors, online communities and even potential suspects. Nor does the author shy away from the dysfunction that permeated all five girls’ lives: foster homes, absent parents, drug and alcohol abuse, teen pregnancies and domineering boyfriends all play prominent roles in this narrative. Fortunately, he includes both a timeline and a list of characters for reference, as the deluge of names, dates and details can prove intimidating. Kolker also does a fine job of describing the girls’ lives without patronizing their decisions or unnecessarily inserting himself into the proceedings. Most commendably, he points out inconsistencies and dubious motives on the part of some of his interviewees; one mother, who had little to do with her daughter while she was alive, reinvented herself as a crusader for justice. Still, “[t]he issue of blame itself, in the end, may be a trap,” Kolker concludes. An important examination of the socioeconomic and cultural forces that can shape a woman’s entry into prostitution. (10 maps)

Keen observation, incisive analysis and passionate engagement mark this author’s account of the 2010 earthquake that devastated his native Haiti. Through vignettes that range from a paragraph to a couple of pages, novelist Laferrière (I Am a Japanese Writer, 2011, etc.) delivers a knockout punch through prose favoring matter-of-fact understatement over sentimental histrionics. A literary festival brought him back from French-speaking Canada, where he emigrated to establish himself as a writer, to the homeland where his mother and much of his family still lives. He ordered dinner at a restaurant and then heard what sounded like a machine gun, a train or an explosion. It intensified: “The earth started shaking like a sheet of paper whipped by the wind. The low roar of buildings falling to their knees. They didn’t explode; they imploded, trapping people inside their bellies.” The author is no journalist, and he engages in none of what would conventionally be called reporting. Instead, he describes what he saw, how it felt and what it meant. For those who survived, the aftershocks continued: natural, personal, political, cultural. Laferrière is particularly sharp on the ambiguous motives and ambivalent effects of humanitarian charity and celebrities who helped keep the world’s spotlight on Haiti (and, of course, themselves), until attention turned to the next world calamity. The framing is particularly strong, beginning with vivid detail of the experience itself, culminating in a multileveled meditation on what it means to be Haitian, to be a survivor, to be a writer, to be alive. “We say January 12 here the way they say September 11 in other places,” he writes of the cataclysm most vividly experienced at street level, which is where this memoir operates. Nonfiction with the resonance of literary fiction and the impact of real tragedy.

EXPLODING THE PHONE The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell Lapsley, Phil Grove (416 pp.) $25.00 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-8021-2061-8

A rollicking history of the telephone system and the hackers who exploited its flaws. Before the mid-20th century, long-distance phone calls were the domain of the now-extinct telephone operator. Beginning in 24

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“A Jewish writer explores his heritage in a speculative family history that mirrors the triumphs and tragedies of the 20th century.” from the family

the 1950s, AT&T introduced new equipment that allowed customers to place long-distance calls directly. These new switching machines communicated by sending tones back and forth at a specific pitch: 2,600 Hz, “or seventh octave E for the musically inclined.” In 1955, David Condon happened to stumble upon a Davy Crockett whistle at his local Woolworth’s which made just such a tone. Although the term would not be coined until years later, when Condon trilled his Crockett whistle into the handset, he became the first phone phreak—“someone obsessed with understanding, exploring, and playing with the telephone network.” In his debut, technology consultant Lapsley lays out an incredible clandestine history of these first hackers, who not only tricked the phone system into letting them make calls for free, but would show others how to do the same. They eventually built small devices called “blue boxes” so anyone with one of these boxes could cheat the phone company. Lapsley deftly escorts readers through the development of the modern telephone system (and how it was exploited), covering intricate details of phone technology with prose that is both attentive to detail yet easy to understand for general readers. Perhaps more importantly, the author weaves together a brilliant tapestry of richly detailed stories—the people and events he describes virtually come to life on the page. Taken as a whole, the book becomes nothing short of a love letter to the phone phreaks who “saw joy and opportunity in the otherwise mundane.” A first-rate chronicle of an unexamined subculture.

THE FAMILY Three Journeys into the Heart of the Twentieth Century

Laskin, David Viking (400 pp.) $32.00 | Oct. 15, 2013 978-0-670-02547-3

A Jewish writer explores his heritage in a speculative family history that mirrors the triumphs and tragedies of the

20th century. Laskin (The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War, 2010, etc.) stays firmly within his characteristic style of anecdotal guesswork in chronicling the fates of three branches of his family tree. While his journalistic consistency may be a bit dubious, the author knows how to zero in on a good story. Starting with a rumor that Joseph Stalin’s enforcer Lazar Kaganovich might be a distant relation, Laskin dives deeply into the lives and times of his relatives, dating back to the late 19th century in Volozhin, Russia. It’s after the family’s move to Belarus that the narrative gets really interesting. One branch, largely led by Maidenform Bra founder Ida Rosenthal, landed in New York and Americanized everything about themselves, abandoning names, homes and traditions. “Others step off the boat, fill their lungs with the raw unfamiliar air, and get to work. They never look back because they never have a moment to spare or an urge to regret,” writes the author. Another couple, Chaim and Sonia, became hard-core |

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Zionist pioneers in the wilds of Palestine. Another entire branch was lost to the Holocaust, a richly imagined tragedy but one that Laskin has largely plucked from history books. Were this fiction, it would read much like the novels of Leon Uris and other spinners of historical sagas, as Laskin ties his relatives to events ranging from the Russian Revolution of 1917 to Black Friday to the establishment of Israel. The telling of the tales and the recollection of history eventually breaks the author’s assumptions that his family was all about business. “Now I see how wrong I was,” Laskin writes. “History made and broke my family in the 20th century.” An ambitious, experimental look at exodus, acclimatization and culture with a cast as diverse as any family photo album.

BOOK OF AGES The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin Lepore, Jill Knopf (464 pp.) $27.95 | Oct. 1, 2013 978-0-307-95834-1

New Yorker writer Lepore (History/ Harvard Univ.; The Story of America, 2012) masterfully formulates the story of Benjamin Franklin’s youngest sister, who will be virtually unknown to many readers, using only a few of her letters and a small archive of births and deaths. Jane Franklin Mecom (1712–1794) did not come into her own until she was widowed in 1765; at the time, widows possessed greater rights than married women. The first existing letter in her own hand was written when she was 45 years old. Of course, it helps that her letters were to her brother, one of the most significant figures of the time period. “He became a printer, a philosopher, and a statesman,” writes the author. “She became a wife, a mother, and a widow…[who] strained to form the letters of her name.” Benjamin’s references to her missives helped Lepore gain at least a partial picture of a little-educated woman who nonetheless showed a great mind capable of deep opinions. She was also very lucky in that her brother looked after her needs, eventually giving her a house of her own and providing her with books. Women were taught to read but not to write, so spelling and punctuation are random. Since the letters quoted in this book are unedited, the narrative pace occasionally slows, but the author’s reasons become clear once she shows the result of some dastardly editing by Jared Sparks, who was famed for amassing some of the most important documents of the period relating to Franklin and George Washington. An appendix shows how Sparks’ heavy-handed pencil drastically changed the meanings of many of the letters. Jane Franklin was an amazing woman who raised her children and grandchildren while still having the time to read and think for herself. We can only see into her mind because her correspondent was famous and because a vastly talented biographer reassembled her for us. (29 illustrations)

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

“A vivid, gut-wrenching, beautifully written, memorable book.” from a house in the sky

A HOUSE IN THE SKY A Memoir

HAMMARSKJÖLD A Life

Lindhout, Amanda; Corbett, Sara Scribner (384 pp.) $27.00 | Sep. 10, 2013 978-1-4516-4560-6

Lipsey, Roger Univ. of Michigan Press (752 pp.) $35.00 | Mar. 18, 2013 978-0-472-11890-8

With the assistance of New York Times Magazine writer Corbett, Lindhout, who was held hostage in Somalia for more than a year, chronicles her harrowing ordeal and how she found the moral

strength to survive. In 2008, Lindhout, after working as a cocktail waitress to earn travel money, was working as a freelance journalist. In an attempt to jump-start her fledgling career, she planned to spend 10 days in Mogadishu, a “chaotic, anarchic, staggeringly violent city.” She hoped to look beyond the “terror and strife [that] hogged the international headlines” and find “something more hopeful and humane running alongside it.” Although a novice journalist, she was an experienced, self-reliant backpacker who had traveled in Afghanistan and Pakistan. She hired a company to provide security for her and her companion, the Australian photographer Nigel Brennan, but they proved unequal to the task. Their car was waylaid by a gunman, and the group was taken captive and held for ransom. Her abductors demanded $2 million, a sum neither family could raise privately or from their governments. Negotiations played out over 15 months before an agreement for a much smaller sum was reached. The first months of their captivity, until they attempted an escape, were difficult but bearable. Subsequently, they were separated, chained, starved and beaten, and Lindhout was repeatedly raped. Survival was a minute-by-minute struggle not to succumb to despair and attempt suicide. A decision to dedicate her life to humanitarian work should she survive gave meaning to her suffering. As she learned about the lives of her abusers, she struggled to understand their brutality in the context of their ignorance and the violence they had experienced in their short lives. Her guards were young Muslim extremists, but their motive was financial. Theirs was a get-rich scheme that backfired. “Hostage taking is a business, a speculative one,” Lindhout writes, “fed by people like me—the wandering targets, the fish found out of water, the comparatively rich moving against a backdrop of poor.” A vivid, gut-wrenching, beautifully written, memorable book.

A monumental life, spiritual and intellectual more than purely biographical, of the great Swedish diplomat and author. Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961), writes Lipsey (Angelic Mistakes: The Art of Thomas Merton, 2006, etc.), was “formidable in his time, somewhat forgotten now.” The second secretary general of the United Nations, he was also an author of note whose book Markings sold widely across the world—and, the author is careful to record, some 185,000 copies in its first six months in the United States. Lipsey makes a convincing case for why Hammarskjöld should not be “somewhat forgotten”: His spiritual yearnings and conviction that the U.N. could serve as a vehicle for true Christian compassion may seem a touch arcane now, but his activist stance and equal conviction that all humans are indeed created equal lend the office and institution a certain nobility. Lipsey argues that, more than mere inspiration, Hammarskjöld, once a diplomat with an economic portfolio, brought useful specific ideas to the business of international human rights, among them the importance of sanctuary and his capacity for “lightning-like” assessment of unfolding crises. He died a halfcentury ago in one such crisis, in the Congo, where an ugly civil war was raging; Lipsey devotes a considerable number of pages to this conflict as a kind of exemplar of all the things the U.N. is meant to ameliorate. Another episode he covers thoroughly is of current interest again more than 50 years later, namely the flight of the Dalai Lama and the Chinese invasion of Tibet, which the U.N. could not satisfactorily resolve. A good and indispensable man, Hammarsjköld “understood and respected the need for heroes.” In this lucid, well-written biography, he certainly emerges as one. (20 b/w halftones)

HITLER’S FURIES German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields

Lower, Wendy Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (272 pp.) $26.00 | Oct. 1, 2013 978-0-547-86338-2

A grim, original study of the nurses, teachers, secretaries and wives who made up a good half of Hitler’s murderers. Doing “women’s work” included participating in the entire Nazi edifice, from filling the government’s genocide offices to running the concentration camps, Holocaust Memorial Museum historical consultant Lower (History/Claremont McKenna Coll.) proves ably in this fascinating 26

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history. With a third of the female German population engaged in the Nazi Party, and increasing as the war went on, the author estimates that at least 500,000 of them were sent east from 1939 onward to help administer the newly occupied territories in Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and the Baltics. They were also enlisted to run Heinrich Himmler’s Race and Resettlement Office, work in military support positions, and serve as teachers and nurses in the field hospitals and on train platforms. As key “agents of the Nazi empire-building, tasked with the constructive work in the German civilizing process,” why were so few brought to a reckoning after the war? Sifting through testimonies, letters, memoirs and interviews and pursuing the stories of a dozen key players, the author exposes a historical blind spot in this perverse neglect of women’s role in history. She finds that, similar to American women being allowed new freedoms during the war years, young German women often seized the chance to flee stifling domestic situations and join up or were actively conscripted and fully indoctrinated into anti-Semitic, genocidal policies. Many were trained in the eastern territories, and some of their select tasks included euthanizing the disabled, “resettling” abducted children and plundering Jewish property. The women’s newfound sense of power next to men proved deadly, writes Lower. That their agency in these and other crucial tasks was largely ignored remains a haunting irony of history. A virtuosic feat of scholarship, signaling a need for even more research.

A WILD JUSTICE The Death and Resurrection of Capital Punishment in America Mandery, Evan J. Norton (496 pp.) $29.95 | Aug. 19, 2013 978-0-393-23958-4

When the Supreme Court declined to accept the appeal of a 1963 rape case, Justice Arthur Goldberg published an unusual dissent questioning the constitutionality of the death penalty. From this small beginning, Mandery (John Jay College of Criminal Justice; Q: A Novel, 2011, etc.) skillfully traces the building momentum within the country and the court to question the legality of a punishment the Founding Fathers took for granted. Indeed, by 1972, in Furman v. Georgia, the court struck down death penalty statutes so similar to those in 40 other states that executions nationwide came to a halt. Disagreement among Furman’s 5-4 majority—was the death penalty “cruel and unusual” punishment under the Eighth Amendment, or was its arbitrary application a violation under the 14th?—and a forceful dissent hinted at a blueprint for states to rewrite their capital-sentencing schemes. By 1976, 35 had done so. In Gregg v. Georgia and its companion cases, the court approved the revised statutes, opening the door to 1,300 state-sponsored executions since. Relying on interviews with law clerks and attorneys, information from economists, criminologists and |

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social scientists, arguments from political and legal scholars, a thorough knowledge of all applicable cases and sure-handed storytelling, Mandery focuses on the strategies of the Legal Defense Fund, the remarkable attorneys who led the charge for abolition, to cover virtually every dimension of the capital punishment debate. The author is especially strong on the individual backgrounds, personalities and judicial philosophies of the justices, the shifting alliances among them and the frustrating contingencies upon which momentous decisions sometimes turn. Even those weary of this topic will be riveted by his insider information about towering figures, lawyers and judges. Outstanding in every respect. (8 pages of photos)

DREADFUL The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns Margolick, David Other Press (320 pp.) $30.00 | Jun. 4, 2013 978-1-59051-571-6

A revealing biography of the brilliant, arrogant author of The Gallery (1947), a celebrated World War II novel. John Horne Burns (1916–1953) grew up in a wealthy New England family and attended Harvard, where he began a lifetime of drinking that ended in lonely days as a regular at a hotel bar in Italy, where he died an embittered drunk at age 36. He attended and taught at Loomis, a prep school outside Hartford, Conn. As a student there many years later, Vanity Fair contributor Margolick (Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock, 2011, etc.) became fascinated by the forgotten author whose Lucifer with a Book (1949), a vicious novel about Loomis, was forbidden reading at the school. Years later, Margolick encountered The Gallery, about U.S. soldiers in occupied Naples in 1944–1945, “perhaps America’s first great gay novel.” Even Margolick’s warning that Burns was a difficult man to like does not fully prepare readers for this story of an obnoxious, hypercritical, mean-spirited loner. For all his negativity, however, Burns was able to write his life-embracing The Gallery, a compassionate view of characters passing through a vast arcade, including gays in uniform. Always arrogant, Burns had nonetheless become more open-minded and decent as a result of his wartime experiences that inform the novel. Sensitive, well-researched and drawing nicely on the novelist’s vivid letters, the book covers Burns’ abnormally close relationship with his heiress mother; his years as a student and, later, disgruntled teacher at Loomis; his wartime postings in North Africa and his beloved Italy; and his career as an author, from the ecstatic acclaim for his war novel, to the poor reviews of later works, to his rivalry with Gore Vidal, who called Burns “a gifted man who wrote a book far in excess of his gift.” Not a fun read, but a wonderfully crafted portrait of a tormented homosexual writer.

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“A well-known editor’s funny and thoughtful memoir of wrong turns, both in and out of publishing.” from my mistake

LASTING CITY The Anatomy of Nostalgia

JULY 1914 Countdown to War McMeekin, Sean Basic (480 pp.) $29.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-465-03145-0

McCourt, James Liveright/Norton (352 pp.) $26.95 | Oct. 21, 2013 978-0-87140-458-9

A creatively executed memoir rekindling the epoch of an eccentric native New Yorker. The “lasting city” in openly gay novelist McCourt’s (Now Voyagers, 2007, etc.) creative chronicle is, of course, Manhattan. The author supplies autobiographical details through vacillating memories, both fond and painful, and weaves them together in an artful tapestry of fever-dreamed conversations, nostalgic poignancy and rich Gotham history. His mother’s death in 2003 seems to be the catalyst here. Awash in grief, McCourt, now in his early 70s, writes of leaving her deathbed to desperately scurry into the city to share his heartache with strangers like an aging Broadway showgirl/diner waitress and an Indian cabbie, who both seemed to restore his faith in humanity. Further recollections detail McCourt’s troublesome Irish-Catholic family and upbringing, which commingle beautifully with memories of his precocious adolescence as a burgeoning homosexual in the 1950s. Undeterred by the era’s often violent consequences for indulging in same-sex carnalities, the author reveled in clandestine trysts on Fire Island or wandered Central Park’s Ramble, “by night the haunt of the sexually intrepid male homosexual horndog on the scent.” McCourt’s drifting, serpentine narrative unfurls a lush and prideful profile, painstakingly contemplated and clearly written from the heart. The writer tells the stories of his gay youth, his family’s melodrama and his own sweet maturation with an intoxicating amalgam of poetry, quotation, fantasy, and the kind of sweeping, colorful language that creates a kaleidoscope of precious memories. In the opening chapter, his outspoken mother, mere weeks before succumbing to the stroke that would cause her death, urges her son to “tell everything.” From that instruction springs forth McCourt’s shimmering opus of a unique, regretless and effervescent lifetime in the existential city of dreams. Vibrantly, blissfully sublime.

McMeekin (History/Koç Univ.; The Russian Origins of the First World War, 2011, etc.) treads familiar ground but delivers a thoroughly rewarding account that spares no nation regarding the causes of World War I, although Germany receives more than its share of blame. Historians love to argue about who started World War I. Blaming Germany fell out of fashion soon after the Armistice succeeded, replaced by an interpretation that blamed everyone, exemplified by Barbara Tuchman’s classic 1962 Guns of August. Within a decade, German scholars led another reversal back to their own nation’s responsibility. Russia, huge and backward but rapidly modernizing, was the key. German military leaders led by Helmuth von Moltke, chief of the General Staff, believed Russia would attack Germany as soon as it felt confident of victory and that only a preventive war could save the nation. Austrian Archduke Ferdinand’s murder by a Serbian terrorist proved a godsend. Austria yearned to crush Serbia, the pugnacious Balkan nation stirring up the Slav minority in Austria-Hungary’s rickety empire. Von Moltke decided it was time to set matters right since Austria’s cooperation was guaranteed. Russia’s refusal to stop mobilizing in support of Serbia allowed him to warn that it was about to attack and that Germany had to strike first. It did so by invading Belgium on August 4, the act that made war inevitable. Tuchman remains irresistible, and David Fromkin’s Europe’s Last Summer (2004) is the best modern history, but McMeekin delivers a gripping, almost day-by-day chronicle of the increasingly frantic maneuvers of European civilian leaders who mostly didn’t want war and military leaders who had less objection.

MY MISTAKE A Memoir

Menaker, Daniel Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (256 pp.) $24.00 | Nov. 19, 2013 978-0-547-79423-5

A well-known editor’s funny and thoughtful memoir of wrong turns, both in and out of publishing. As Menaker (A Good Talk: The Story and Skill of Conversation, 2010, etc.) sums up his life, he can’t get past his mistakes—the big ones he’ll never stop paying for and the small ones that changed his life. As a young man, he goaded his older brother during a game of touch football, leading to his brother’s fatal injury and leaving 28

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himself with a lifetime of guilt. He smoked, quit and got lung cancer years later. He began working for the New Yorker, where it was easy to sweat the small stuff under the famously idiosyncratic editorship of William Shawn. Urged to find another job, he stayed for 26 years, skating on thin ice even as he climbed the editorial chain. There were rules of decorum (“You don’t say ‘Hi’ to Mr. Shawn—you say ‘Hello’ ”) and regular surprises on what would or would not pass the Shawn smell test. When Menaker suggested ending a story with a mild pun, Shawn told him it “would destroy the magazine.” “What you want to write is an article,” Shawn admonished him at one point, “and the New Yorker doesn’t publish…articles.” On the plus side, Menaker learned high-level editing, not just from Shawn, but from the contrasting examples of magazine stalwarts Roger Angell (rough and tumble) and William Maxwell (kind and gentle). After the Tina Brown coup, Menaker moved on to Random House, where he eventually became editor-in-chief, wrestling to stay afloat and to stay alive. Menaker doesn’t just recount experiences; he digs away at them with wit and astute reflection, looking for the pattern of a life that defies easy profit-and-loss lessons.

SOUL FOOD The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time

Miller, Adrian Univ. of North Carolina (344 pp.) $30.00 | Aug. 15, 2013 978-1-4696-0762-7

Delving deep into the culinary (and social) history of one of America’s oldest cuisines: soul food. During the 1960s and ’70s, soul food came out of the kitchen and into the spotlight, brought to the fore by African-Americans’ burgeoning racial pride. Today, however, it comes not only with a side of cultural baggage, but also an unhealthy dietary image—a plate of fried meat or fish with vegetables boiled nearly to death, followed by sweet desserts and even sweeter drinks. Although many other aspects of African-American culture have become globally accepted, “soul food has become a toxic cultural asset inside the black community and a cuisine stigmatized from the outside.” In his debut, Miller offers “a very public makeover” for soul food. Rather than take a broad overview of soul food as a cuisine, each chapter dives deep into the background of one specific dish, covering both the oldest food traditions (e.g., fried chicken, greens and corn bread) and some more recent additions (red Kool-Aid and macaroni and cheese). Miller’s historical trails are occasionally a bit speculative, such as his efforts to put Kool-Aid in a line of red beverages stretching back to drinks made with kola nuts in western parts of Africa. Overall, though, the author’s pages are lively, with few lapses into overly dry detail. Nearly every chapter concludes with two recipes for the food being discussed, usually a traditional recipe and a newer, healthier version. For instance, |

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the chapter on desserts ends with the banana pudding made by Miller’s own mother, rich with egg yolks and whole milk, followed by a peach crisp made with little sugar and whole wheat flour. Offering both recipes is just part of soul food’s “heritage of experimentation,” and Miller encourages professional chefs and home cooks alike to “name and embrace the new culinary form without jettisoning the old.” An engaging, tradition-rich look at an often overlooked American cuisine—certainly to be of interest to foodies from all walks of life. (16 halftones; 4 maps; 22 recipes; 11 sidebars)

DALLAS 1963

Minutaglio, Bill; Davis, Stephen L. Twelve (336 pp.) $28.00 | $14.99 e-book | Oct. 8, 2013 978-1-4555-2209-5 978-1-4555-2211-8 e-book In a chronological, episodic narrative that grows somewhat tedious yet chilling, Minutaglio (City on Fire: The Explosion That Devastated a Texas Town and Ignited a Historic Legal Battle, 2004, etc.) and Davis (J. Frank Dobie, 2009, etc.) unearth the various fringe elements rampant in Dallas in the three years (from January 1960 to November 1963) preceding John F. Kennedy’s assassination. These anti-communist and racist groups were essentially sanctioned by officials and created a dangerous climate for the president and first lady during their visit on November 22, 1963. Indeed, Kennedy had been warned not to come, especially after the violent reception of U.N. ambassador Adlai Stevenson by Dallas crowds several weeks before. “Super-patriots” like Gen. Edwin A. Walker, formerly enlisted by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in helping integrate Little Rock Central High School, had made an about-face and grown stridently pro-segregationist, distributing Wanted for Treason posters at the time of JFK’s visit; billionaire oilman H.L. Hunt was bankrolling right-wing groups; Frank McGehee was organizing a National Indignation Convention; and publisher Ted Dealey, whose paper the Dallas Morning News routinely attacked the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, ran an incendiary full-page advertisement from Bernard Weissman’s American Fact-Finding Mission on the day Kennedy arrived in Dallas. In this xenophobic, anti-liberal, anti–East Coast atmosphere, Lee Harvey Oswald purchased a mail-order rifle, which he tried out first by shooting at Gen. Walker through a window of his home. Minutaglio and Davis alternate their doomsday scenario with chronicles of the upbeat attempts at integrating and liberalizing Dallas—e.g., international marketing efforts by showman Stanley Marcus (of Neiman Marcus) and New Hope Baptist Church pastor H. Rhett James’ engineering of Martin Luther King Jr.’s visit to the city. Despite the calendar slog, the authors make a compelling, tacit parallel to today’s running threats by extremist groups.

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“A darkly enlightening tale—thoroughly researched, gracefully written—about Enlightenment thought, male arrogance and the magic of successful matrimony.” from how to create the perfect wife

ROBERT OPPENHEIMER His Life and Mind

Monk, Ray Random House (848 pp.) $37.50 | May 14, 2013 978-0-385-50407-2

A highly detailed examination of the life and times of Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967), the man who ushered in the Atomic Age and played a leading role in putting American science on the map. Monk (Philosophy/Southampton Univ.; Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness, 1921–1970, 2001, etc.) does full justice to Oppenheimer’s irreplaceable contribution to the development of nuclear energy during and after World War II. The author also addresses his less well-known contributions to nuclear physics, including “a method that is used even now for understanding the physical processes that occur in the interiors of stars.” Born to an affluent Jewish family, Oppenheimer had a privileged upbringing (private schools, Harvard University and extensive study abroad), yet he faced a rising tide of anti-Semitism even in America. Among many examples, Monk quotes a reference by George Birkhoff, Harvard’s most eminent mathematician, supporting his application: “He is Jewish but I should consider him a very fine type of man.” In 1927, Oppenheimer co-authored a paper on quantum chemistry with the leading quantum physicist, Max Born, but in Europe, he faced anti-American prejudice among scientists such as Paul Dirac. Monk explains that experiences such as these prompted Oppenheimer to accept a joint teaching position in California, at Berkeley and Caltech, where he devoted himself to establishing “a world center of theoretical physics in the U.S.” The Spanish Civil War drew Oppenheimer into left-wing politics (and surveillance by the FBI), but he also had a distinguished career during WWII as head of the Manhattan Project and after, when he played a key role in shaping American nuclear policy. In 1954, renewal of his security clearance was denied, a miscarriage of justice that President John F. Kennedy reversed by awarding him the prestigious Fermi Prize. A top-notch biography of Oppenheimer to sit alongside Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin’s American Prometheus (2006).

HOW TO CREATE THE PERFECT WIFE Britain’s Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate

Moore, Wendy Basic (368 pp.) $28.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-465-06574-5

The award-winning author of The Knife Man (2005) returns with a true-life, truly bizarre tale set in Georgian England. 30

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Thomas Day (1748–1789) had numerous virtues: He supported the American Revolution, opposed slavery, believed in living meanly to support those in need, abhorred social conventions, and wrote best-selling poetry and children’s books. But as Moore shows us in this often shocking tale, Day was, in contemporary parlance, a creep—a man who took into his keeping two young girls whom he raised in a sort of sick competition to see which one would become his bride. Such behavior today, of course, would land him in prison for a lengthy sojourn, and Moore struggles valiantly to balance her disdain for Day’s soaring arrogance and male entitlement (and cruelty) with her wonder and scholarly disinterest. Day wasn’t a physically prepossessing fellow, but his considerable fortune and earnest manner caused many to overlook his eccentricities. Greatly influenced by Rousseau, Day cast about for a young woman who would meet his exacting spousal standards. Seeing none, he went to a foundling hospital, where he lied to obtain the services of two pre-pubescent girls, whom he named Sabrina and Lucretia. He tutored them, toughened them up with harsh physical training and raised them to be ideal partners for him (his intellectual equals, but also his servants). Day eventually sent Lucretia packing and invested all in Sabrina. It didn’t work out. Both eventually married other partners (and were more or less happy), and Sabrina ended up closely allied with the family of writer Fanny Burney. Her odd story found its way into writings by Burney, Trollope, Henry James and others. A darkly enlightening tale—thoroughly researched, gracefully written—about Enlightenment thought, male arrogance and the magic of successful matrimony.

ANIMAL WISE The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures Morell, Virginia Crown (352 pp.) $26.00 | Feb. 26, 2013 978-0-307-46144-5

Animals not only have minds, but personalities and emotions. They make plans, calculate, cheat and even teach, writes veteran science writer Morell (Ancestral Passions: The Leakey Family and the Quest for Humankind’s Beginnings, 1997) in this delightful exploration of how animals think. Until 50 years ago, most scientists—but not Darwin— believed that blind instinct governed animal behavior; thinking was unnecessary and therefore absent. Morell documents her interviews with scientists across the world whose studies have reduced this to a minority opinion. Readers anticipating the traditional high-IQ dog/monkey/elephant examples will receive a jolt in the first chapter, which reveals that ants are no slouches in the brain department. Members of a complex society, they solve problems with a flexibility that would be impossible if ant neurons were simple and hard-wired. No less impressive are fish, birds and rats, which the author examines in subsequent nonfiction

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chapters. Fish feel pain. Birds sing because their parents teach them. Parrots not only imitate human sounds, they know what they are saying and can identify numbers, shapes, colors and even differences between them. Rats engaged in play make sounds that reveal that they are enjoying themselves. Entering familiar territory, Morell also looks at elephants and dolphins, which have long memories and sophisticated personal relationships that include genuine affection. While chimps perform their impressive feats, dogs occupy the final chapter since many experts believe that a dog’s obsession with reading and responding to our cues make it the best model for understanding the human mind. Although human cognition remains uniquely profound, evolution guarantees that it has a long history, and Morell makes a fascinating, convincing case that even primitive animals give some thought to their actions.

SALT SUGAR FAT How the Food Giants Hooked Us

Moss, Michael Random House (480 pp.) $28.00 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-1-4000-6980-4

A revelatory look at America’s increasing consumption of unhealthy products and at how the biggest food manufacturers ignore health risks, and employ savvy advertising campaigns, to keep us hooked on the ingredients that ensure big profit. In an era where morbid numbers of people are living with diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure, New York Times Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Moss (Palace Coup, 1989) discovers through ardent research—much of it interviews with current and former executives of Kraft, PepsiCo and other massive conglomerates—that there is shockingly little regulation of the processes behind the design and sale of foods purposely laden with dangerous levels of salt, sugar and fat. As the average American works longer hours and spends more time outside of the home, the demand for easy-to-cook and tasty meals has skyrocketed. In response, food giants provide an enormous slate of processed food options, almost all of which require immense amounts of salt, fat and/or sugar to cover the taste of poor-quality ingredients. Pulling no punches, the author points out that the recent trend of “healthy” items is no loss for these food manufacturers, who capitalize on creating new lines of spinoff products labeled “low-salt” or “sugar-free,” when in fact those products require a significant increase in one of the other triad of flavors to remain palatable. Many products are laden with these ingredients in ways that would surprise the consumer: A single cookie, for example, might require several servings’ worth of undetectable salt to retain its irresistible crunch, while it also contains up to five teaspoons of sugar. Moss breaks down the chemical science behind the molecular appeal of these foods, as well as behind the advertising strategies that are so successful |

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in getting consumers to buy not only the “healthier” versions of popular foods, but the originals, as well. If this trend is to be reversed, he argues, it might take a social revolution of empowered consumers, a goal within reach if accurate information is available and pressure is put on these companies to dramatically alter the contents of its processed foods. A shocking, galvanizing manifesto against the corporations manipulating nutrition to fatten their bottom line— one of the most important books of the year.

I HATE TO LEAVE THIS BEAUTIFUL PLACE

Norman, Howard Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (208 pp.) $26.00 | Jul. 9, 2013 978-0-547-38542-6 Five stellar personal essays by Norman (Creative Writing/Univ. of Maryland; What Is Left the Daughter, 2010, etc.) that shed light on his melancholy, tragedystruck fiction and larger human failures. Norman’s novels tend to circle around a tight range of themes: gloomy Canadian backdrops, coincidence, death and a love for wildlife (particularly birds) that gives his work a quirky, musical vocabulary. These essays suggest the mood of the author isn’t very distinct from that of his fiction, and sometimes the connections are explicit: One piece is about an affair in his 20s that ended when his lover died in a plane crash, a story echoed in his 2002 novel, The Haunting of L. Norman’s fictional tensions between fathers and sons also have a real-life analogue in this book’s opening essay, about his teenage summer working in a bookmobile as his estranged father attempts to worm back into his life. The author treats these incidents with poise and intellect (references to novelists and poets abound) but also with some glints of humor. In one essay, his criminal brother keeps calling for help crossing into Canada, and their phone exchanges are both comically absurd and exasperating for the author. The best piece is the title essay, about a John Lennon cover band in the Canadian tundra and the spate of bad weather, spirit folklore and music that consumed the community after Lennon’s death. Its most harrowing is the closing piece, in which a poet housesitting at Norman’s home in 2003 killed her 2-year-old son and herself. Written evidence of the woman’s cracked psyche keeps stalking Norman in the house, and his chronicle of shaking off its effects pays tribute to the (sometimes-malicious) power of words and the wilderness’ power as a balm for heartbreak. A bracing, no-nonsense memoir, infused with fresh takes on love, death and human nature.

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“A gorgeously rich tapestry of an amazing life and culture.” from a fort of nine towers

THOSE ANGRY DAYS Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

Olson, Lynne Random House (576 pp.) $30.00 | Mar. 26, 2013 978-1-4000-6974-3 978-0-679-60471-6 e-book

A fully fleshed-out portrait of the battle between the interventionists and isolationists in the 18 months leading up to Pearl Harbor. Former Baltimore Sun White House correspondent Olson (Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour, 2010, etc.) looks closely at both sides of the U.S. debate about whether to support Britain against the onslaught of Nazi Germany or remain aloof from the European conflict, epitomized by the two prominent personalities of the respective camps, President Franklin Roosevelt and Charles Lindbergh. The author clarifies “those angry days,” so-called by Arthur Schlesinger, and the deep, searing divisions within the country: from FDR, his hands tied to aid Britain materially by Senate Midwestern leaders like Burton Wheeler and Gerald Nye, who deeply resented the growing power of the presidency; to pro-German, frankly racist Lindbergh, whose trips to Germany and radio broadcasts helped sharpen the public outcry, gave fodder to prescient journalists like Dorothy Thompson and alienated his own long-suffering wife, Anne Morrow. Once viewed as America’s great hero for his solo transAtlantic flight, Lindbergh spiraled into controversy with his public argument against aiding the English, his rationalization of German aggression and espousal of racial purity. Ostracized by the Europeans, who had not long before sheltered him and his wife after the kidnapping of his son, and excoriated by the press and the East Coast moneyed establishment, Lindbergh took up with the reactionary American First campaign and was increasingly regarded as traitorous. Roosevelt, in turn, warned the country about the “perils of complacency” in his State of the Union speech of 1940 as events in Europe heated up, and he was not averse to stoking fears of “Fifth column” infiltration and restricting civil liberties in garnering support for his policies. Throughout, Olson adroitly sifts through the many conflicting currents. A vivid, colorful evocation of a charged era. (b/w photos)

A FORT OF NINE TOWERS An Afghan Childhood

Omar, Qais Akbar Farrar, Straus and Giroux (416 pp.) $27.00 | Apr. 16, 2013 978-0-374-15764-7

A carpet designer and businessman’s profoundly moving account of a childhood and adolescence lived amid the Afghan civil war. When Omar was growing up in the early 1990s, his native city of Kabul was “like a huge garden.” Life was full and happy, and his only concern was besting his cousin Wakeel at kite flying. But then rival Mujahedeen factions began fighting each other, transforming the once-Edenic city into a bloody wasteland that reminded Omar of “an American horror movie.” The family sought refuge in Qala-e-Noborja, a fort on the outskirts of Kabul that a friend of Omar’s father had transformed into a lush, green compound. As rockets and gunfire exploded around them, the family planned for their return home. Omar and his father attempted to go back to the family house, only to find it occupied by sadistic soldiers who imprisoned and tortured the pair before freeing them. As the ring of terror tightened around the fort, the family fled Kabul. Their dangerous journey took them through central and northern Afghanistan, where they camped in caves located inside a giant statue of the Buddha and joined nomad relatives on their overland treks. Along the way, Omar met, and fell in love with, an older deaf-mute Turkmen girl who taught him how to weave carpets. These skills would eventually help him support his starving, demoralized family and secretly provide work to young Kabuli women who suffered under the misogynist regime of the Taliban. As lyrical as it is haunting, this mesmerizing, not-to-be-missed debut memoir is also a loving evocation of a misunderstood land and people. A gorgeously rich tapestry of an amazing life and culture.

THE UNWINDING An Inner History of the New America

Packer, George Farrar, Straus and Giroux (464 pp.) $27.00 | May 21, 2013 978-0-374-10241-8

New Yorker writer Packer (Interesting Times: Writing from a Turbulent Decade, 2009, etc.) ranges across the country to chronicle the time when “the coil that held Americans together in its secure and sometimes stifling grip first gave way.” “I am the empire at the end of the decadence.” Thus said the French poet Mallarmé. Packer describes the decline of America from a very specific time: If you were born half a century ago, around 1960, then, he writes, “you watched structures that had been in place before your birth collapse like pillars of salt across 32

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the vast visible landscape.” While forces are picking away at the pillars that still stand (Social Security, public education, privacy, etc.), and while only money seems to matter, the author offers the tiniest comfort in the thought that America has declined and fallen before. Still, this decline seems steeper than those others, save for the Civil War. Among his subjects are the city of Tampa, Fla., which once “was going to be America’s Next Great City” but is mired in stagnation and desperation, and a struggling, no-longer-aspirational factory worker named Tammy, one of whose co-workers sagely observes, “Most people wouldn’t survive in a factory. Mitt Romney would die in a week.” Against these depressed landscapes and people, Packer juxtaposes a few who are doing a bit better: Raymond Chandler, “a drinker” whose lapidary stories of blue-collar America have become classics; Oprah Winfrey, empire builder; and Colin Powell, empire builder of another kind. Packer’s repetitive structure—a chapter on Tammy followed by one on Tampa followed by other pieces—hammers home the point that all is not well in America and not likely to get better soon, the promise of “acres of diamonds in Greenville [N.C.,]” notwithstanding. Exemplary journalism that defines a sobering, even depressing matter. A foundational document in the literature of the end of America—the end, that is, for the moment.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT And Why It Still Matters Pagden, Anthony Random House (528 pp.) $32.00 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-1-4000-6068-9 978-0-679-64531-3 e-book

Pagden (Political Science and History/UCLA; Worlds at War: The 2,500-Year Struggle Between East and West, 2008, etc.) demonstrates the breadth and depth of his knowledge and his impeccable research of the period we refer to as the Enlightenment. Lest readers are daunted in trying to follow the deep thoughts of the great writers of the 18th century, the author gently explains each outlook, theory and proposal. This was the century of philosophy, but it was also the century when the science of man—i.e., social sciences—came into being. It was Gottfried Leibniz’s “best of all possible worlds.” Seeking to define men and their relationships with nature, and especially with each other, led to this scientific revolution; it was an intellectual process, a philosophical project and a social movement. The figures of the period were a combination of skeptics, epicureans and stoics seeking to build a cosmopolitan world of diverse people with common interests. Pagden impressively illustrates the significant discussions that took place as these scientists, historians and other intellectuals tried to fathom man’s nature and subject dogma to reason. Many readers will wonder at what they would give to be present at Baron d’Holbach’s Paris dinner table with Hume, Diderot, Rousseau, D’Alembert and even |

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Ben Franklin as they discussed religion and a nature-centered universe. These storied men of letters dutifully studied the ages of man in his journey from the beginnings of agriculture to the right of property and division of lands. Pagden serves as a knowledgeable and enthusiastic guide through this “particular intellectual and cultural movement.” A book that should be on every thinking person’s shelf— the perfect primer for anyone interested in the development of Western civilization. (8-page photo insert)

THE TELLING ROOM A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the World’s Greatest Piece of Cheese Paterniti, Michael Dial Press (368 pp.) $27.00 | Jul. 30, 2013 978-0-385-33700-7

A beguiling, multifaceted narrative larded with delightful culinary, historical, political, psychological and literary layers, set in the kingdom of Castile with a piece of cheese in the starring role. Paterniti (Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein’s Brain, 2000) gracefully unravels how tradition, culture and a sense of place affect the human heart, while simultaneously wrestling with the joys and boundaries of storytelling and journalism. During a 1991 proofreading stint at a deli, following his graduation from the University of Michigan’s creative writing program, the author read a paragraph describing a “sublime” cheese from Castile. “There was something about all of it, not just the perfection of Ari’s prose,” writes Paterniti, “but the story he told—the rustic cheesemaker, the ancient family recipe, the old-fashioned process by which the cheese was born, even the idiosyncratic tin in which it was packaged—that I couldn’t stop thinking about.” Years later, the author, determined to find the storied cheesemaker and learn his tale, set off for Spain on what became a 10-year odyssey. Paterniti rapidly fell under the spell of the loquacious cheesemaker, Ambrosio, and the tiny village of Guzmán, situated in the “vast, empty highlands of the Central plateau of Spain.” At the center of the narrative is the saga of betrayal of Ambrosio and his artisanal cheese by his boyhood friend, Julian. Paterniti’s quest for the true story surrounding the creation and demise of Ambrosio’s cheese rambles in delightful directions. The author probes subjects as diverse as the first human encounter with cheese; an investigation into the origin of Pringles; geology; and Spanish “legends, farces and folktales.” Enriched by Paterniti’s singular art of storytelling, this is a deeply satisfying voyage across a remarkable landscape into the mysteries and joys of the human heart.

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BUNKER HILL A City, a Siege, a Revolution

Philbrick, Nathaniel Viking (400 pp.) $32.95 | Apr. 30, 2013 978-0-670-02544-2

National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Philbrick (Why Read Moby-Dick, 2011, etc.) will be a candidate for another award with this ingenious, bottom-up look at Boston from the time of the December 1773 Tea Party to the iconic June 1775 battle. Independence Day rhetoric extols our forefathers’ battle for freedom against tyranny and unfair taxation, but the author points out that American colonists were the freest, mostprosperous and least-taxed subjects of the British Empire and perhaps the world. A century and a half of London’s salutary neglect had resulted in 13 nearly independent colonies. Trouble began in the 1760s when Parliament attempted to tax them to help pay for the ruinously expensive victory in the French and Indian War. Unexpected opposition handled with spectacular clumsiness by Britain guaranteed trouble. Among Massachusetts’ resistance leaders, most readers know John Hancock and Samuel Adams, but Philbrick concentrates on Joseph Warren, a charismatic young physician, unjustly neglected today since he died at Bunker Hill. His opposite number, British Gen. Thomas Gage, behaved with remarkable restraint. Despite warnings that it would take massive reinforcements to keep the peace, superiors in London goaded him into action, resulting in the disastrous April 1775 expedition to Lexington and Concord. They also sent a more pugnacious general, William Howe, who decided to expel colonial militias, now besieging Boston, by an uphill frontal attack on their entrenched lines, a foolish tactic. British forces succeeded but suffered massive casualties. It was the first and bloodiest engagement of the eight years of fighting that followed. A rewarding approach to a well-worn subject, rich in anecdotes, opinion, bloodshed and Byzantine political maneuvering.

USEFUL ENEMIES John Demjanjuk and America’s Open-Door Policy for Nazi War Criminals Rashke, Richard Delphinium (640 pp.) $29.95 | Jan. 1, 2013 978-1-8832-8551-7

After World War II, why did the United States admit many high-level exNazis for a variety of purposes (the space program, anti-Soviet espionage) but relentlessly pursue prison guard John Demjanjuk? 34

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Rashke (Trust Me, 2001, etc.) follows the bizarre, jagged trajectory of the various trials of Demjanjuk, a retired autoworker from Cleveland whose tangled experiences in the war sent him from courtrooms and jails in Ohio to Tel Aviv to Munich, sites where he was variously accused of being the heinous Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka (a charge ultimately dropped) to serving as a guard at the Sobibor death camp, a charge of which he was ultimately convicted when he was 90 and dying. But Rashke, whose research is prodigious, has a much busier agenda than just the Demjanjuk case. He also describes the numerous other cases of ex-Nazis brought to America, many quietly under the aegis of the FBI, the State Department or the CIA, war criminals (in many cases) who escaped prosecution because of their usefulness in the U.S. Some were high profile (rocket scientist Werner von Braun at NASA); others flew totally below the radar until Soviet and American archives opened decades later. Throughout, Rashke raises moral questions (is it conscionable to employ ex-Nazis?) and draws distinctions (what’s the difference between working for and working with an occupying force?). His accounts of Demjanjuk’s various legal proceedings are swift but also enriched by much relevant quoted testimony. The author also explores the profound passions of all involved— from the families of those whose relatives suffered and died in the camps to the Demjanjuk family and their Ukrainian-American neighbors who never believed the accusations. A richly researched, gripping narrative about war, suffering, survival, corruption, injustice and morality. (16-page b/w insert)

THE LAST OF THE DOUGHBOYS The Forgotten Generation and Their Forgotten World War

Rubin, Richard Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (528 pp.) $28.00 | May 21, 2013 978-0-547-55443-3

Before the Greatest Generation, there was the Forgotten Generation of World War I, the remaining members of which are depicted in this gloriously colorful swan song. It’s stunning to think that the last veteran of the American Expeditionary Forces of World War I, Frank Buckles, died in 2011 at the age of 110, but more amazing perhaps is the fact that there were “dozens” of aged veterans still around by 2003, when New York journalist Rubin (Confederacy of Silence: A True Tale of the New Old South, 2002, etc.) took on the task of tracking them down and interviewing them. The French did a better job of recording and honoring them, mainly since they were truly grateful for the Americans’ stepping in and driving back the Germans after four years of mostly brutal stalemate, while back in the U.S., the veterans didn’t have a GI Bill or much recourse. From the numerous interviews Rubin conducted with these extraordinary people during the last 10 years, he conveys a vivid nonfiction

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“Unique, devastating, indelible.” from the great war

glimpse of an entire society gradually brought into the conflict, from the 1917 book, Arthur Guy Empey’s Over the Top, which first brought the experience of fighting in the trenches home to Americans, to the Tin Pan Alley hits that sold the war to the people, to the lost regionalisms spoken by the centenarians who shared their stories in a lucid, forthright manner. Most were farm boys and laborers who signed up in the initial excitement of spring 1917 (“I was just looking for—for a life,” one mused), admitting they had nothing against the Germans, especially considering most were sons of immigrants or immigrants themselves. Rubin’s subjects tell of meeting Gen. John Pershing, getting gassed, manning the machine guns, and being continually horrified and, above all, lucky to get out alive. A wonderfully engaging study executed with a lot of heart.

THE GREAT WAR July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme Sacco, Joe; Hochschild, Adam Illus. by Sacco, Joe Norton (54 pp.) $35.00 | Oct. 28, 2013 978-0-393-08880-9

An illumination of a crucial battle within “the war to end all wars” redefines the power and possibilities of graphic narratives. Sacco (Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, 2012, etc.) has long focused his artistry on conflict, but this is a radical formalistic departure. First, it is wordless—no dialogue, no narrative. Second, it is pageless—a 24-foot-long panorama, which opens like an accordion. Third, it is chronological, to be viewed (read?) from left to right, as the optimistic illusions of the British soldiers advancing on Germans turns into a tragic, bloody massacre. On this first day of the Battle of the Somme—July 1, 1916—almost half the 120,000 British troops who had somehow expected an easy victory were dead or wounded by nightfall. It was, writes historian Hochschild (To End All Wars, 2011) in the booklet that accompanies the art, “the day of greatest bloodshed in the history of their country’s military, before or since.” The booklet also includes an author’s note, in which Sacco explains his decision to focus on this one day and the inspiration of both the accordion panorama and the medieval tapestry. He also writes of a challenge that ultimately adds to the richness of the art: “Making this illustration wordless made it impossible to provide context or add explanations. I had no means of indicting the high command or lauding the sacrifice of the soldiers. It was a relief not to do these things. All I could do was show what happened between the general and the grave, and hope that even after a hundred years the bad taste has not been washed from our mouths.” The work comprises 24 plates, with three on each of the yard-long panels of the accordion foldout, as the faceless soldiers fall to their bloody, anonymous deaths. Unique, devastating, indelible.

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COMMAND AND CONTROL Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

Schlosser, Eric Penguin Press (640 pp.) $36.00 | Sep. 17, 2013 978-1-59420-227-8

The chilling, concise history of America’s precarious nuclear arsenal. Investigative journalist Schlosser’s (Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market, 2003, etc.) vivid and unsettling treatise spreads across a 70-year span of the development and control of nuclear weaponry. At the core of the author’s scrutiny is the suspensefully narrated back story of the Arkansas-based Titan II military missile silo. A disastrous mishap in 1980 involving an accidentally punctured fuel tank caused a near-detonation and collapse of the missile, killing a young repairman and sparking an investigation into the hazardous nature of all military nuclear armaments. Schlosser frames this incident around four decades of the Cold War, the Eisenhower and Truman administrations, the Cuban missile crisis, the bravery of servicemen like Gen. Curtis LeMay, and the eerily accurate predictions and statistical determinations of nuclear strategist Fred Iklé. Testimony from a massive list of scientists and engineers further elucidates what Schlosser considers to be the nation’s perpetual military defense conundrum: “the need for a nuclear weapon to be safe and the need for it to be reliable.” Throughout, he chillingly extrapolates the long-standing history of nuclear near-misses with the engagement of a fiction writer. He also examines the heavily endorsed anti-nuclear foreign policies proselytized by politicians and probes the operational processes of nuclear missiles and warheads, though the specter of decimation at the hands of a weapon of mass destruction looms over each chapter. With this cautionary text, Schlosser, who pinged processed food and the underground economy onto America’s cultural radar, succeeds in increasing awareness for more stringent precautions and less of the casual mismanagement of nuclear weapons. Furthermore, he respectfully memorializes those Cold War heroes (and countless others, like nuclear weapon safety lobbyist Bob Peurifoy) who’ve prevented nuclear holocausts from being written into the annals of American history. An exhaustive, unnerving examination of the illusory safety of atomic arms.

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THE UNIVERSE WITHIN Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People

Shubin, Neil Pantheon (240 pp.) $25.95 | Jan. 15, 2013 978-0307378439

In a follow-up to Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body (2008), Shubin (Biological Sciences/Univ. of Chicago) delivers an equally engrossing history of life’s connections to everything else. The author begins with the most common element in the human body, hydrogen, which also makes up 90 percent of the universe. All hydrogen existed along with helium and a trace of lithium when everything began 13.7 billion years ago. Heavier elements were made later inside stars, some of which end their lives violently. Cosmic dust that condensed to form the sun 5 billion years ago also made the planets. Microorganisms appeared soon after the Earth cooled enough to support liquid water—so soon that many scientists believe that life is not a rare accident, but inevitable under the right circumstances. Shubin recounts the subsequent 4 billion years of changes in both life and its surroundings. Oxygen, absent at first, slowly accumulated as photosynthetic plants multiplied. The Earth’s rocky crust shifted, eroded and cracked, leaking volcanic gases from the interior. Continents formed and split, expanding and shrinking the oceans; the resulting mountains, shifting ocean currents and migrating landmasses carried life across the planet, forcing it to adapt to the changing environment or nearly wiping it out. The sun is 30 percent hotter than when life began; in another billion years, it will make the Earth too warm to support life. An intelligent, eloquent account of our relations with the inanimate universe.

THE FARAWAY NEARBY

Solnit, Rebecca Viking (272 pp.) $25.95 | Jun. 13, 2013 978-0-670-02596-1 Solnit (A Paradise Built in Hell, 2010, etc.) considers the nature and purposes of storytelling in a series of elegantly nested meditations. The author begins with 100 pounds of apricots, picked from a tree outside the home her Alzheimer’s-stricken mother can no longer safely inhabit. Canning this abundance of perishable fruit to preserve it, Solnit begins to think about the ways in which the stories we tell arrest time; her musings on decay and death gain greater urgency when she learns that she has a potentially cancerous condition that requires surgery. In “Mirrors,” she recalls that telling stories 36

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was a vehicle for her mother’s deeply conflicted views about the past; their relationship was fraught, and Solnit escaped from constant criticisms and resentments into the solace of books. Yet “books are solitudes in which we meet,” she insists, repeatedly using the word “empathy” to characterize the essential quality needed to create stories that express our common humanity. Solnit co-opts Georgia O’Keeffe’s wonderfully evocative phrase “the faraway nearby” to specify the delicate balance between distance and closeness that enables this process of reaching out through storytelling. She employs a series of chapter titles that serve as both metaphors and precise physical descriptions—“Ice,” “Flight,” “Breath” and “Wound”—to propel her narrative into the central “Knot.” In it, she is operated on, “then sewn shut with thread and knots,” prompting her to expatiate on Greek mythology’s ancient image of human life as a thread winding through a labyrinth. “Unwound” begins the process of re-using previous chapter titles to give them new meanings as Solnit recuperates in Iceland, and the text moves toward a final consideration of those apricots as “a catalyst that made the chaos of that era come together as a story of sorts.” A provocative, moving mélange of personal confession and intellectual inquiry—another sui generis work from one of our most stimulating essayists.

THE BATTLE OF BRETTON WOODS John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order Steil, Benn Princeton Univ. (456 pp.) $29.95 | Feb. 24, 2013 978-0-691-14909-7

The director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations revisits the 1944 conference that created “the new global monetary architecture” for the postwar world. As the American Army entered Rome and the Russians drove the Nazis out of Minsk, delegates from 44 Allied nations gathered in Bretton Woods, N.H., to hammer out the ground rules for international economic equilibrium following the defeat of the Axis powers. The American delegation, led by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau and his right-hand man for international affairs, Harry Dexter White, pressed for a “New Deal for a new world,” looking to strengthen government control of monetary policy and central banking and to install the dollar as the “world’s sole surrogate for gold.” The war-shattered British, mindful of their historic prerogatives, opposed the White plan, but their only leverage lay in the intellectual brilliance of John Maynard Keynes, the 20th century’s most influential economist, and the possibility that they might simply walk away and, thereby, cripple any agreement. Steil (co-author, Money, Markets, and Sovereignty, 2009, etc.) sets the stage for this contest between the cuttingly eloquent Keynes and the acerbic, technocratic White— neither man tailored for diplomacy—with especially deft potted nonfiction

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“Exemplary work of history by Pulitzer and Bancroft winner Taylor, who continues his deep-searching studies of American society on either side of the Revolution.” from the internal enemy

biographies of each and a look at the infighting between the U.S. State and Treasury departments in the lead-up to the conference. For general readers, the author masterfully translates the arcana of competing theories of monetary policy, and a final chapter explains how, while some of the institutions created by Bretton Woods endure—the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund—many of the conference’s assumptions were swiftly overtaken by the Marshall Plan. Throughout Steil’s sharp discussion runs the intriguing subplot of White’s career-long, secret relationship with Soviet intelligence. A vivid, highly informed portrayal of the personalities, politics and policies dominating “the most important international gathering since the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.”

THE VILLAGE 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village Strausbaugh, John Ecco/HarperCollins (640 pp.) $29.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-06-207819-3 978-0-06-207820-9 e-book

The author of Sissy Nation: How America Became a Nation of Wimps and Stoopits (2008) and other cultural criticisms and histories returns with a long, loving and thoroughly researched look at what he calls “a zone of rogues and outcasts from the start.” Strausbaugh begins his chronological Village tour in the 17th century, when the Indians, Dutch and English were contesting for Manhattan. But once might prevailed, the area— which was indeed once a separate village—evolved initially in the post-Revolutionary era as something fairly upscale: summer retreats for the wealthy. Later, Paine and Poe were there, as was Walt Whitman, who took Emerson for a drink at Pfaff ’s. As the decades proceeded, the author necessarily focuses on key individuals, events and places. The many African-Americans who once lived there emigrated to Harlem; the 1911 Triangle fire propelled social change; liberals and radicals arrived, including Lincoln Steffens and Emma Goldman. Writers and artists proliferated, and soon it was a hotbed for small theater productions. Susan Glaspell and Eugene O’Neill mounted early shows there; later came Albee and Shepard. Publications and publishers came, too—The Little Review, Village Voice, Evergreen Review, Grove Press. Strausbaugh charts the music history of the area, from jazz to folk (Bob Dylan will not like his portrait here) to rock. Early and/or sordid death is a theme—from Phil Ochs and Dave Van Ronk to Lenny Bruce. The author spends a lot of time on the emergence of the Village as a battleground for the LGBT communities—from actual clashes (Stonewall) to the desperation of AIDS. He seems saddened by the gentrification of the Village—at the impossible prices and rents that exclude the creative and contentious bohemians of yesteryear. |

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Fine social history humanized with a sort of paradiselost wistfulness. (Two 16-page b/w photo inserts)

THE INTERNAL ENEMY Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832

Taylor, Alan Norton (624 pp.) $35.00 | Sep. 9, 2013 978-0-393-07371-3

Exemplary work of history by Pulitzer and Bancroft winner Taylor (History/ Univ. of Virginia; Colonial America: A Very Short Introduction, 2012, etc.), who continues his deep-searching studies of American society on either side of the Revolution. The world the slaves made was one of fear and loathing—on the part of the masters, that is, who indeed waited in a “cocoon of dread” for the day when their “internal enemy” would finally pounce. That day first came with a series of events that form the heart of the book: namely, the arrival of the War of 1812 in Virginia, a conflict that itself was a source of conflict, inasmuch as most Virginians were sooner inclined to fight New Englanders than Englanders. When the British arrived, though, they recruited male slaves to join their army and navy as free men, and they relied on them for their “intimate, nocturnal knowledge of the byways and waterways of Virginia.” The keyword is “nocturnal,” for the conflict between master and slave was so great, Taylor asserts, that they contested ownership of the night, when slaves would travel more or less freely to attend dances and other social events, sleeping it off during the day, even as the masters demanded ever more work from them precisely in order to tire them enough to keep them from going abroad at night. One of the great ironies of Jefferson’s ideal of white liberty, notes Taylor, was that as it expanded the middle class and with it the number of Tidewater slaveholders, it also broadened support for slavery itself. One of the ironies of the war, which would eventually produce just the uprising of the internal enemy the Virginians dreaded, was that, so inept was the federal response, it advanced the cause of states’ rights, which would lead to the broader Civil War two decades after Nat Turner’s revolt. Full of implication, an expertly woven narrative that forces a new look at “the peculiar institution” in a particular time and place.

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“A thoughtful, incisive analysis of hip-hop—and pop music in general—from one of its foremost contemporary architects.” from mo’ meta blues

DUKE A Life of Duke Ellington

Teachout, Terry Gotham Books (496 pp.) $30.00 | Oct. 21, 2013 978-1-59240-749-1

With this exhaustive, engaging study of the greatest jazz composer of his era, Wall Street Journal drama critic Teachout solidifies his place as one of America’s great music biographers. Many have cited jazz as America’s only true indigenous art form, so it is at once surprising and disheartening that major publishers are seemingly hesitant to champion books that tackle the subject—especially considering that when an author is allowed the freedom to dive into the life and music of a jazz titan, the results are often brilliant, something that Teachout demonstrated with his justifiably revered Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong (2010). After Armstrong, chronologically speaking, bandleader/composer/arranger/ pianist Duke Ellington was jazz’s next game changer. Aside from his undeniably astounding ear, Ellington, like Armstrong, was a personality, one of the rare jazzmen who was able to combine heady music with showbiz panache without diminishing his art. With his vibrant prose and ability to get into his protagonist’s head and heart, Teachout captures this essence and charisma in a manner worthy of Ellington’s complex yet listenable classic “The Queen’s Suite.” One of Ellington’s most notable nonmusical qualities was his loyalty, and the author gives some of his longtime sidemen and compatriots—e.g., composer Billy Strayhorn and saxophonists Johnny Hodges and Paul Gonsalves—their due. Finally, as was the case in Pops, Teachout’s musical analysis is spot-on, at once complex and accessible. It will be appreciated equally by those who have 100 Ellington albums and those whose awareness of the Duke is limited to his best-known tunes like “Take The ‘A’ Train” and “Satin Doll.” Hopefully, the brilliance of Teachout’s treatment will compel the industry to let authors take a crack at the lives of, say, Ornette Coleman, Count Basie and Charles Mingus. Like most Ellington albums, Teachout’s in-depth, wellresearched, loving study of this American treasure is an instant classic.

THE LAST TRAIN TO ZONA VERDE My Ultimate African Safari

Theroux, Paul Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (368 pp.) $27.00 | May 7, 2013 978-0-618-83933-9 The acclaimed travel writer and novelist chronicles his journey through Africa as tourist, adventure-seeker, thinker and hopeful critic. 38

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Theroux (The Lower River, 2012, etc.) is the purest kind of travel writer; he offers no tips, no hotels gems or restaurant recommendations, and very few grand, clichéd this-is-what-my-journeytaught-me-about-myself moments. Instead, the author dissects a place and its inhabitants, luxuriating in its history and confronting its present reality. In what he terms his “ultimate African safari,” Theroux manages to incorporate—rather than avoid—the general viewpoints of literature about the continent. He revels in the simple, historical life of the bush but acknowledges its basis in fantasy. He decries the chronic ailments of governments and citizens and still appreciates the vast expanses of beauty, but without the wide-eyed wonder of so many travelers. In this intensely personal book, Theroux honestly confronts racism, stigma, privilege and expectations. He describes both the privilege and the perversity of slum tours and points out Western complicity in what he calls the voyeurism of poverty, which turns poverty itself into a profitable endeavor. After years of travel writing Theroux willingly questions the very relevance of the endeavor. If the narrative occasionally feels repetitive, it is due to the fact that the author is stressing an important point—though his constant ranting about rap music does start to sound like an old man griping. Still, even his age is significant, and Theroux continually demonstrates the wonder and enthusiasm that has led him on so many adventures during his long career. “Show me something new, something different, something changed, something wonderful, something weird!” he writes. “There has to be revelation in spending long periods of time in travel, otherwise it is more waste.” Reading this enlightening book won’t only open a window into Theroux’s mind, it will also impart a deeper understanding of Africa and travel in general.

MO’ META BLUES The World According to Questlove

Thompson, Ahmir and Greenman, Ben Grand Central Publishing (288 pp.) $26.00 | Jun. 18, 2013 978-1-4555-0135-9

A thoughtful, incisive analysis of hip-hop—and pop music in general— from one of its foremost contemporary architects. It’s no surprise that this isn’t your standard musical memoir. As drummer and aural conceptualist for the Roots, producer for other artists, Jimmy Fallon bandleader and provocative cultural critic, Thompson, aka Questlove, has pushed the boundaries of convention wherever his creative energies have taken him. Here, he enlists New Yorker editor and novelist Greenman (The Slippage, 2013, etc.), not as a ghostwriter but as a collaborator and occasional interrogator, interweaving the subject/author’s voice with that of Rich Nichols, the Roots’ career strategist and co-manager from the start, in a book that mixes chronological memoir with critical issues not easily resolved—e.g., “What’s black culture? What’s hip-hop? What are the responsibilities of a society and the people in it?” It conjures the life of Questlove from boyhood nonfiction

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“A modern rejoinder to Black Like Me, Beloved and other stories of struggle and redemption—beautifully written, if sometimes too sad to bear.” from men we reaped

prodigy to die-hard fan to seminal creative force, through midlife crisis and subsequent renewal, and it captures the revolutionary boyhood excitement of hearing “Rapper’s Delight” shift the axis of the musical world and the giddy weirdness of being invited by Prince to a private, after-hours roller-skating party. The author also discusses being a huge KISS fan, a worshipper of the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson, “a serious music-press nerd, the kind of kid who collected back issues of Rolling Stone and memorized all the record ratings” and how he and the Roots have faced the charges of being “not black enough.” The result is a book with as much warmth, heart and humor as introspective intelligence. Fanatics and newcomers to the music will both find plenty of revelation here.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MARK TWAIN, VOLUME 2 The Complete and Authoritative Edition

Twain, Mark Griffin, Benjamin; Smith, Elinor—Eds. Univ. of California (736 pp.) $45.00 | Oct. 1, 2013 978-0-520-27278-1

In which the great American author, aided by his scholarly editors, continues to spin out a great yarn covering his long life. In the year of his birth, writes Twain, John Marshall, the noted jurist and chief justice of the Supreme Court, died. A collection was taken up among lawyers to erect a statue to him, but then “a prodigious new event of some kind or other suddenly absorbed the whole nation and drove the matter of the monument out of everybody’s mind.” The money sat in a bank account for half a century collecting interest, and suddenly, in 1883 or so, it was rediscovered and used to build the memorial that now stands in the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C. The statue is a material fact, but it is Twain’s storytelling that makes it come alive. Having written despairingly of the human race, and especially of its more murderous representatives, such as Belgium’s King Leopold, he takes the rare fact of honest politicians and fiduciaries as a tonic: “It takes the bitter taste out of my mouth to recall that beautiful incident.” Twain emerges as an unflinching social critic with a long list of targets, including the robber barons of his day and imperialist militarists like Leonard Wood. Yet, in this most personal of works, Twain also reserves plenty of spite for miscreant publishers: “Webster kept back a book of mine, ‘A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur,’ as long as he could, and finally published it so surreptitiously that it took two or three years to find out that there was any such book.” Twain is, as ever, a sharply honed and contrarian wit, as quick to lampoon himself as anyone else. He is also capable of Whitmanesque flights: “I am,” he declares, “the entire human race compacted together”—for better and for worse. Twain admirers will find this volume indispensable and will eagerly await the third volume. (b/w photos) |

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MEN WE REAPED A Memoir

Ward, Jesmyn Bloomsbury (256 pp.) $26.00 | Sep. 17, 2013 978-1-60819-521-3

An assured yet scarifying memoir by young, supremely gifted novelist Ward (Salvage the Bones, 2011, etc.). Like the author’s novels, this study of life on the margins—of society, of dry land against the bayou, of law—takes place in the stunning tropical heat of southern Mississippi. Her parents had tried to leave there and make new lives in the freedom, vast horizon and open sky of California: “There were no vistas in Mississippi, only dense thickets of trees all around.” But they had returned, and in the end, the homecoming broke them apart. Ward observes that the small town of her youth was no New Orleans; there was not much to do there, nor many ennobling prospects. So what do people do in such circumstances? They drink, take drugs, reckon with “the dashed dreams of being a pilot or a doctor,” they sink into despair, they die—all things of which Ward writes, achingly, painting portraits of characters such as a young daredevil of a man who proclaimed to anyone who would listen, “I ain’t long for this world,” and another who shrank into bony nothingness as crack cocaine whittled him away. With more gumption than many, Ward battled not only the indifferent odds of rural poverty, but also the endless racism of her classmates in the school she attended on scholarship, where the only other person of color, a Chinese girl, called blacks “scoobies”: “ ‘Like Scooby Doo?’ I said. ‘Like dogs?’ ” Yes, like dogs, and by Ward’s account, it’s a wonder that anyone should have escaped the swamp to make their way in that larger, more spacious world beyond it. A modern rejoinder to Black Like Me, Beloved and other stories of struggle and redemption—beautifully written, if sometimes too sad to bear.

FOSSE

Wasson, Sam Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (736 pp.) $32.00 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-0-547-55329-0 The lushly researched life of celebrated dancer, choreographer and director (stage, films, TV) Bob Fosse (1927–1987). Film critic and biographer Wasson (Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman, 2010, etc.) has amassed a mountain of data about Fosse but has sculpted it into something moving and memorable. With chapters whose titles remind us of his approaching death (“Fifteen Years,” “Five Years,” “One Hour and Fifty-Three Minutes”), the |

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author both increases the dramatic irony of the dancer’s days and reminds us continually of life’s evanescence. After a swift chapter about Fosse’s boyhood—for a long time, he concealed his dancing passion and skills)—Wasson guides us through his incredibly productive career (in a single year, 1973, he won a Tony, an Oscar and an Emmy), providing engaging detail about his major productions—Sweet Charity, Pippin, Cabaret, Chicago, All That Jazz and others. Wasson shows us Fosse’s enormous empathy for his dancers, his ferocious work ethic, his reliance on uppers and cigarettes, and his constitutional inability to remain faithful to a single woman. His hotel room during productions was, well, a chorus line. A few resisted him (he never seemed to bear a grudge), and former wife, fellow choreographer and gifted dancer Gwen Verdon remained in his orbit to the absolute end—she was with him when he collapsed on the street. We see, too, his close friendships (Paddy Chayefsky, E.L. Doctorow), his rivalries (Michael Bennett) and his friendly rivals (Jerome Robbins). The author also reveals a deeply insecure artist who wanted to be a writer and was always certain his productions would fail—and, in the late cases of Big Deal and Star 80, he was certainly correct. Graceful prose creates a richly detailed and poignant portrait, simultaneously inspiring and depressing. (Two 8-page photo inserts)

LOUDER THAN HELL The Definitive Oral History of Metal

Wiederhorn, Jon; Turman, Katherine It Books/HarperCollins (736 pp.) $32.50 | May 14, 2013 978-0-06-195828-1 An indispensable oral history of an often misunderstood musical genre. The most important lesson this mammoth tome teaches us is that metal means far more than one might believe. It isn’t just Black Sabbath, Slayer, Guns N’ Roses and teased hair, write Revolver senior writer Wiederhorn and Nights with Alice Cooper producer Turman. Rather, it’s an umbrella under which falls numerous subgenres, including thrash, death and black, oftentimes incorporating and/or encompassing punk, rap, and good, old-fashioned rock ’n’ roll. This is why a style of music that hasn’t completely crossed over to the mainstream more than merits this lengthy, in-depth study. The success of an oral history is primarily dependent on the quality and quantity of interview subjects, and here, the authors lined up a veritable murderer’s row of talking heads: Jimmy Page, Henry Rollins, Gene Simmons, Slash, Courtney Love, Kurt Loder, Sharon Osbourne and Dee Snider are among the dozens of high-profile musicians and industry insiders who offer up commentary. The authors also spoke with members of wellknown cult bands like Slipknot, Minor Threat and Bad Brains, as well as Type O Negative, Disturbed, W.A.S.P. and Cannibal Corpse. The majority of the interviewees are forthcoming and 40

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compelling, which makes for great reading for both hard-core headbangers and general music fans. The anecdotes run the gamut from debaucherous (lots of sex, drugs and violence) to heartbreaking, but there’s plenty of factual meat to satisfy readers in search of the history behind the music and the facts behind the myths. The subtitle doesn’t lie: This hugely impressive achievement is, without question, definitive. Even if your metal collection consists of a couple of Kiss cassettes and an AC/DC CD, you’ll find this a killer read. (Three 16-page color inserts)

EBONY AND IVY Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities

Wilder, Craig Steven Bloomsbury (432 pp.) $30.00 | Sep. 17, 2013 978-1-59691-681-4

An eye-opening examination of how America’s colonial-era colleges were rooted in slave economies and “stood beside church and state as the third pillar of a civilization built on bondage.” Wilder (History/MIT; In the Company of Black Men: The African Influence on African American Culture in New York City, 2002, etc.) establishes the interrelationship between slavecultivated plantations and the academic institutions that lived off the rents gathered through endowments, leases, mortgage debts and other instruments of feudal-style bondage. At first, land holdings were acquired through conquest of native populations, followed by successive phases of clearance and resettlement. “The Indians-for-African trade reduced the risk of enslaved Indians fleeing to their own lands or inciting conflicts,” writes Wilder, “and brought a population of African slaves who lacked knowledge of the local geography and languages but possessed important agricultural skills, particularly in rice production.” The slave trade developed in complexity as it grew in scale. Universities and colleges not only required their own endowments of land as sources of income and supplies, but also served to educate the leaders and administrators of the colonial settlements, who often became apologists for slavery. Wilder provides an excellent exploration of the role of the College of New Jersey and the Rev. John Witherspoon in the education of the leaders (James Madison and Patrick Henry, among many others) and their successors (John Marshall and James Monroe), who formulated the Indian Removal Act of 1830. His detailed elaboration of how Northern colleges spread the slave system into colonies like South Carolina and Georgia is equally thorough, and he also documents how race science took root in American academia. A groundbreaking history that will no doubt contribute to a reappraisal of some deep-rooted founding myths. (b/w illustrations)

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“A devastating history-cum-exposé of the Church of Scientology.” from going clear

FAREWELL, FRED VOODOO A Letter from Haiti

Wilentz, Amy Simon & Schuster (352 pp.) $27.00 | Jan. 8, 2013 978-1-4516-4397-8 A veteran journalist captures the functioning chaos of Haiti. New Yorker writer Wilentz has been covering shattering events in Haiti since the Duvalier dynasty fell in 1986, culminating in her book The Rainy Season. Now based in Los Angeles, the author again felt the fatal pull of the country after the recent natural-disaster devastation and returned repeatedly in order to record the uneven progress in reconstruction and humanitarian aid as well as interview many of the so-called (in politically incorrect parlance) Fred Voodoos, or Everymen on the street, for a reality check. Describing herself as “a naïve person, and a romantic,” she has grown enormously wary of the good intentions heaped on the country from one crisis to another and is frequently cynical after many years of her “Haitian education.” Since its very inception as the first (and last) slave revolution in history, Haiti has been victimized, plunged into poverty, denuded of resources and patronized by rich white neighbors bent on a “salvation fantasy” that has never lifted the country out of poverty. After the hurricane, suddenly whites appeared everywhere to help out. While Wilentz does chronicle some extremely good work being done—by the indefatigable infectious-disease specialist Dr. Megan Coffee and by actor Sean Penn in setting up a workable refugee camp—much of what the journalist witnessed remained a familiar profound malaise and dysfunction. Seeking out her old acquaintances and former protégés of President Aristide, the author found drugged-out zombies, many living in permanent refugee camps without proper sanitation and little or no literacy. She learned that nothing is as it seems in Haiti. Like voodoo ceremonies, society runs on “artifice and duplicity,” and its government (a kleptocracy) has been organized “to be porous and incompetent, to allow for corruption.” An extraordinarily frank cultural study/memoir that eschews platitudes of both tragedy and hope.

ECSTATIC NATION Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877

Wineapple, Brenda Harper/HarperCollins (736 pp.) $35.00 | Aug. 6, 2013 978-0-06-123457-6

A sweeping look at the Civil War in the context of its social, cultural and intellectual climate. Wineapple (Modern Literary and Historical Studies/Union Coll.; White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 2008) begins with a |

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bang: the death of John Quincy Adams on the House floor, after decades of fighting to end slavery. From there, she takes up the narrative of some 50 years of turbulent American history, full of grand schemes, bitter conflicts, brilliant characters and unforgettable stories. Among the plotlines are the effort by Southern slaveholders to find new territories to expand into, so as to preserve the balance between slave and free states in the Senate; the abolitionists’ appeal to higher laws; the rise of transcendentalism, spiritualism and other quasi-religious philosophies; and the settlement of the West. It would be hard for a master novelist to top the cast of characters, who run the gamut from politicians to writers, soldiers, ministers, nurses, journalists and outright frauds. Wineapple covers the grand sweep of history, from the run-up to secession and the war itself to the Reconstruction era and its ultimate betrayal. Secondary plots abound, from plans to annex Cuba to the Indian Wars. Throw in all the quips, slogans, insults and grand sentiments of an age when educated men and women prided themselves on their eloquence, and you’ve got the recipe for a wonderful saga. Wineapple gives all the major players a turn in the spotlight and, in the case of the true giants of the era, Abraham Lincoln especially, their full due. The author effectively draws in all the currents of the time, from popular culture and polemical journalism to the grand literary monuments. Best of all, she brings it together in a compelling narrative that will enlighten readers new to the material and thoroughly entertain those familiar with it. History on the grand scale, orchestrated by a virtuoso.

GOING CLEAR Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief

Wright, Lawrence Knopf (432 pp.) $28.95 | Jan. 17, 2013 978-0-307-70066-7

A devastating history-cum-exposé of the Church of Scientology. Wright has written about religion on several occasions (Saints and Sinners, 1993; Remembering Satan, 1994) and received a Pulitzer Prize for his book on terrorism (The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, 2006)—all of which clearly served as excellent training for this book. It begins, of course, with the life of L. Ron Hubbard, a manic-depressive, wannabe naval hero, sci-fi writer and selfstyled shaman who “believed that the secrets of existence were accidentally revealed to him” after receiving a gas anesthetic in the dentist’s chair. After that experience, the visions kept arriving, leading to his 1950 self-help best-seller, Dianetics, which laid the groundwork for a “religion” where “thetans” (souls) are stymied by “engrams,” self-destructive suggestive impulses lodged in the brain (not a few of which were inflicted on mankind following an intergalactic war that took place 75 million years ago). Through personal, deeply revelatory counseling sessions known as auditing, adherents deal with these obstacles, and for wealthy celebrities, Scientology (and its many Hollywood connections) |

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

“Blending cultural history with biography, memoir and travelogue, Wall’s carefully balanced book is, in itself, a successful tightrope traverse.” from the ordinary acrobat

has supposedly cleared the path to success. It has also destroyed many others, usually less well-heeled people from within, who raise questions or try to leave, or outside forces (journalists, the IRS, family members) investigating the church’s multiple personal or financial abuses. Wright exposes the church’s many sins: covert espionage, psychological torment, threatened blackmail using confidential information from auditing sessions and constant physical assaults on members by tyrannical current leader David Miscavage. The author is also interested in something deeper: If it’s all a con, why is everyone involved (especially the late Hubbard) so deeply invested in its beliefs? Wright doesn’t go out of his way to exaggerate the excesses of Scientology; each page delivers startling facts that need no elaboration. A patient, wholly compelling investigation into a paranoid “religion” and the faithful held in its sweaty grip.

THE ORDINARY ACROBAT A Journey into the Wondrous World of the Circus, Past and Present

Wall, Duncan Knopf (336 pp.) $26.95 | Feb. 26, 2013 978-0-307-27172-3

A Fulbright fellow immerses himself in the remarkable history of circuses. For generations, people have run away to the circus; in 2003, Wall followed suit. In his debut memoir, the author recounts the unique circumstances that led him down this unexpected path. After receiving a fellowship to study “contemporary circus,” Wall enrolled in the National School for the Circus Arts in France, where he soon learned the stark differences between the American circus and the European model. Historically, European circuses were known for their intimate performances, while American circuses placed their focus elsewhere. “In the big American circuses,” Wall writes, “all this familiarity and precision was gone, sacrificed for other pleasures: spectacle, pageantry, sensory stimulation….” Simply put: American circuses were more interested in turning a profit than a perfect backflip. Wall sought to train alongside the world’s best circus performers. His immersion into the ranks of acrobats, jugglers and clowns provides a behind-the-scenes look into a world spectators know little about. While readers likely have some familiarity with the traditional circus performance, they will be surprised to learn the level of dedication required for performers to hone their skills. This proves particularly true in Europe, where performers are considered artists and masters of their craft. Upon his entrance into the National School, Wall was soon humbled to learn that he was no master. At the start of the semester, even a somersault proved too complex. “It was, after all, why I had come,” he writes: “to get a glimpse of the incalculable amount of effort, embarrassment, and pain behind the seemingly effortless skills.” Blending cultural history with biography, memoir and travelogue, Wall’s carefully balanced book is, in itself, a successful tightrope traverse. 42

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

nonfiction

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vicar ious experiences

you ’ ll never forget

SEX AND THE CITADEL: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World

Shereen El Feki Pantheon

A daring new study finds the newly liberated Egyptians poised to demand more sexual freedom in the face of religious fundamentalism.

WAVE

Sonali Deraniyagala Knopf A devastating but ultimately redemptive memoir by a survivor of the 2004 Sri Lankan tsunami, who must come to terms with the deaths of her husband, her young sons and her parents from the natural disaster that somehow spared her.

THE BOOK OF MY LIVES

Aleksandar Hemon Farrar, Straus and Giroux

JAPAN 1941: A Countdown to Infamy Eri Hotta Knopf

FACING THE WAVE: A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami

An Asian specialist examines the reasons behind the riskiest military venture in Japan’s history.

Gretel Ehrlich Pantheon

Lyrical, meandering dispatches and eyewitness accounts from the devastation of the 2011 tsunami in Japan.

FRESH OFF THE BOAT: A Memoir Eddie Huang Spiegel & Grau

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best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

vicar ious experiences (cont.)

A FORT OF NINE TOWERS: An Afghan Childhood

THE LAST TRAIN TO ZONA VERDE: My Ultimate African Safari

A carpet designer and businessmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s profoundly moving account of a childhood and adolescence lived amid the Afghan civil war.

The acclaimed travel writer and novelist chronicles his journey through Africa as tourist, adventure-seeker, thinker and hopeful critic.

THE TELLING ROOM: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge, and the Worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Greatest Piece of Cheese

FAREWEWELL, FRED VOODOO: A Letter from Haiti

Qais Akbar Omar Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Paul Theroux Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Amy Wilentz Simon & Schuster

Michael Paterniti Dial Press

A beguiling, multifaceted narrative larded with culinary, historical, political, psychological and literary layers, set in the kingdom of Castile with a piece of cheese in the starring role.

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

A veteran journalist captures the functioning chaos of Haiti.

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teen In a year dominated—again—by the paint-by-numbers dystopian/ post-apocalyptic romance, it was easy to be discouraged about books for teens. But underneath the formula-fiction dross is a vein of solid gold: risky, probing fiction and nonfiction that encourage readers to look at literature and life in new ways. A gay teen comes of age in a Southern fundamentalist family. A shunned albino boy in Tanzania finds meaning and belonging. A British girl is caught up in the end of the Raj. A refreshingly unusual love triangle forms in a cyberpunk Brazil. An African Romeo and an Indian Juliet fall in love in a colorand light-filled Verona. A legend of the civil rights movement offers teens a graphic-novel memoir. These stories and more form the core of our Best Teen Books of 2013: 50 funny, heartbreaking, thought-provoking, exciting, inspiring reads. What could be better? —Vicky Smith

MARCH Book One

Lewis, John; Aydin, Andrew Illus. by Powell, Nate Top Shelf Productions (128 pp.) $14.95 paper Aug. 13, 2013 978-1-60309-300-2

BEING HENRY DAVID

Armistead, Cal Whitman (312 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-8075-0615-8

When Hank wakes up in Penn Station, the only clue to his identity is the book he’s clutching, Walden, so he adopts Henry David Thoreau’s name and iconic work to guide him on his journey to self-discovery. After a stabbing ends his brief stint as a homeless teen, Hank flees to Walden Pond, where he meets Thomas, a gentle park docent, and bonds with a girl, gifted singer Hailey. His festering knife wound forces him to confide in Thomas and accept help, but Hank’s pleasant discoveries (he’s good-looking, a runner and a musician) are overshadowed by returning memories that evoke dread and shame. What’s driven him, Hank realizes, is desperation to escape his past, not to recover it. Accepting and moving on is hard for Hailey, too; she is afraid to enter a band competition since her last experience ended badly. Thomas, who’s made peace with his own closet skeletons, mentors Hank but can’t spare him the tough choice: whether to keep running or face the music. Hank earns sympathy and respect from readers, but Armistead doesn’t let him off easy. Rescue is not an option, but Thoreau’s spare words, focusing on what truly matters, lighten the darkness. This compelling, suspenseful debut, a tough-love riff on guilt, forgiveness and redemption, asks hard questions to which there are no easy answers. (Fiction. 13 & up)

CHASING SHADOWS

Avasthi, Swati Illus. by Phillips, Craig Knopf (320 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | $20.99 PLB Sep. 24, 2013 978-0-375-86342-4 978-0-375-89527-2 e-book 978-0-375-96341-4 PLB Two friends alternate narration and struggle with grief and trauma after a violent murder. Freerunners who fearlessly climb and jump through the city as an urban obstacle course, Holly, Savitri and Corey are nearly inseparable—Holly and Corey twins, Savitri and Corey |

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best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

“Every now and then, a novel comes along with such an original voice that readers slow down to savor the poetic prose. This is such a story.” from all the truth that’s in me

dating, Holly and Savitri best friends. But then a gunman murders Corey and gravely wounds Holly. Comatose Holly dreams that a snake man, Kortha, claims Corey for the Shadowlands. Phillips’ masterful dream illustrations, marked by fluid, bold lines and strong angles that create impeccable clarity and movement, provide intermittent graphic-novel segments. The strategically deployed illustrated sections pack major narrative and emotional punches. Upon waking from her coma, Holly can’t let go of her dreams. She latches onto her favorite comic-book character, a vengeance-bound superhero named Leopardess. Meanwhile, Savitri struggles to support the ever more distant and erratic Holly at the cost of dealing with her own needs. The two desperately try to make meaning of Corey’s death and find his killer. The girls are sympathetic in different ways, and their development as characters is natural, logical and seamless. Avasthi deftly weaves story elements and narrative techniques— two narrators, the graphic portions and even a flawlessly executed second-person passage—to create a rich portrait of friendship and the depths of reality-shattering grief. Haunting, mesmerizing and intense. (Graphic fiction hybrid. 13 & up)

ALL THE TRUTH THAT’S IN ME

Berry, Julie Viking (288 pp.) $17.99 | Sep. 26, 2013 978-0-670-78615-2

Eighteen-year-old Judith Finch gradually reveals the horror of her two-year disappearance in a stunning historical murder mystery and romance. One summer four years ago, Judith Finch and her friend Lottie Pratt disappeared. After two years, only Judith returned. Lottie’s naked body was found in the river, and Judith stumbled back on her own, her appearance shocking the town—not just because she had returned, but that her tongue had been cut out, and she can’t tell anyone what happened to her. Illiterate, maimed, cursed, doomed to be an outsider but always and forever in love with Lucas Whiting, Judith finds a way to tell her story, saying, “I don’t believe in miracles, but if the need is great, a girl might make her own miracle,” and as her story unfolds, all the truth that’s in her is revealed. Set in what seems to be early-18th-century North America, the story is told through the voice inside Judith’s head—simple and poetic, full of hurt and yearning, and almost always directed toward Lucas in a haunting, mute second person. Every now and then, a novel comes along with such an original voice that readers slow down to savor the poetic prose. This is such a story. A tale of uncommon elegance, power and originality. (Historical thriller. 12 & up)

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

THE SIN-EATER’S CONFESSION

Bick, Ilsa J. Carolrhoda Lab (296 pp.) $17.95 | $12.95 e-book | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-7613-5687-5 978-1-4677-0948-4 e-book Stationed in Afghanistan, medic Ben spends a long day drafting a detailed confession about the tragedy that threw his life off course two years earlier. When the tiny town of Merit, Wis., loses its football hero to a drunk-driving accident, his family needs help on their dairy farm. High school senior Ben steps up to help. His mother hopes it’ll give him fodder for his Yale admissions essay; Ben, unsure he wants to follow the path she’s laid out for him, just likes helping the stern Mr. and Mrs. Lange and their 15-year-old son, Jimmy. When Jimmy wins a national photography contest with sensual photographs of his own father and Ben (both taken without permission), rumors that the baby-faced Jimmy is gay jump into overdrive—and start circulating about Ben, who then distances himself from Jimmy. When Ben witnesses a horrific crime and does nothing, his life spins out of control; he begins to doubt himself, his senses, his motives…even his connection to reality. Bick’s compelling tale manages to be a blistering confessional and a page-turning whodunit (or maybe what-reallyhappened) all in one. Ben’s thoughts on sexuality, the dangers of rumor, individual freedom and personal responsibility, among other topics, will resonate with teens, who won’t mind the lack of a tidy end. Readers won’t be able to look away even if they find they don’t much like—or trust—Ben. (Fiction. 14 & up)

THE COLDEST GIRL IN COLDTOWN

Black, Holly Little, Brown (432 pp.) $18.99 | $9.99 e-book | Sep. 17, 2013 978-0-316-21310-3 978-0-316-21311-0 e-book This eagerly anticipated novel (based on Black’s short story of the same name) bears little relation to the sparkleinfused vampire tales of the last decade. Ten years ago, a vampire “started romanticizing himself ” and went on a rampage, turning people until new vampires were everywhere. As much as possible, they are contained in walled Coldtowns, along with humans who idolize them—or were trapped when the walls went up. Outside, people avoid going out after dark, watch endless feeds from Coldtown parties and idolize vampire hunters. When nihilistic Tana, whose emptiness seems to stem from events surrounding her mother’s infection with vampirism, wakes up in a blood bath to find her ex-boyfriend infected and a terrifying but teen

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best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

gorgeous vampire chained beside him, she is determined to make things right. What follows is a journey that takes her into Coldtown and out of the grief that has plagued her for years, with plenty of sharply observed characters and situations that feel absurdly, horribly believable. There’s dry humor and even a relationship (to call it a romance would be too easy; this is something entirely more complex). Perhaps most unexpectedly, there is no happy ending, just a thread of hope in humanity. You may be ready to put a stake in vampire lit, but read this first: It’s dark and dangerous, bloody and brilliant. (Horror. 14 & up)

SORROW’S KNOT

Bow, Erin Levine/Scholastic (352 pp.) $17.99 | $17.99 e-book | Nov. 1, 2013 978-0-545-16666-9 978-0-545-57800-4 e-book Grief beats at the heart of adolescence in this fantasy version of North America. For the free women of the forest, death is a complex, dangerous thing: The dead are bound, and some rise again as White Hands, whose touch brings madness and transformation. Bow’s lyrical writing, which beats like the storyteller’s drum Cricket and, later, Orca wield, tells a story both specific and timeless. The conflict between tradition and change, the tensions between mothers and daughters, and the journey west (itself both physical and metaphorical) all play a role. Within the grand thematic scope is a simpler story, reminiscent of the timeless hero’s journey: Otter, the binder’s daughter, untrained and called upon to face great threats, must use the tools of tradition and forbidden knowledge (a secret story echoes throughout the novel) to remake the world. Add to that epic scope two love stories, a genuine portrait of friendship, a nuanced exploration of loss and letting go, and a fine tracery of humor as well as plenty of tears, and you have a winner. A lovely gem, dark and quiet as the dead but glimmering with life as well. Not to be missed. (Fantasy. 13 & up)

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

A MOMENT COMES

Bradbury, Jennifer Atheneum (288 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 25, 2013 978-1-4169-7876-3

India, 1947: As Britain prepares to divide the country before leaving, three lives unexpectedly intersect. The partition of India and Pakistan, based on a border drawn by British civil servants, rarely appears in Western literature, much less fiction for teens. Bradbury pens a careful, respectful—but fictionalized—account of the final days before the line between the countries was announced, recounting it in the voices of three teens. Impulsive, spoiled English Margaret may not be entirely likable, but her love for the strange country she finds herself in is wholly believable and makes her the perfect stand-in for the reader; through Margaret, India in this specific time comes to life, and hard questions about British culpability are asked. Much of Margaret’s complex relationship with India plays out through her growing friendship with Sikh Anupreet, who has been caught in the violence between Sikhs and Muslims already, and Muslim Tariq, who hopes Margaret’s father will be his ticket to Oxford since “[e]veryone listens to the men who have the right education from the right places.” Through Tariq’s and Anu’s voices additional complexities and context are provided. Bradbury’s research (detailed in an author’s note) infuses but never overwhelms the narrative; the lack of solid resolution for the characters suits a book about a violent and confusing time. Historical fiction that brings its history to bloody, poignant life: rare and notable. (glossary) (Historical fiction. 14 & up)

DELILAH DIRK AND THE TURKISH LIEUTENANT

Cliff, Tony Illus. by Cliff, Tony First Second/Roaring Brook (176 pp.) $15.99 paper | Aug. 27, 2013 978-1-59643-813-2 In Cliff ’s swashbuckling print debut, a tea-loving Turkish janissary must choose his future path after his quiet life is turned upside down by an encounter with a brash adventuress. Selim’s modest career as a soldier in early-19th-century Constantinople comes to an ignominious end after the agha finds fault with his interrogation of their new English-speaking prisoner. Not only does Delilah Dirk escape soon after her interview with Selim, she also helps him avoid execution, leading everyone to assume they are in cahoots. Left with no other options, he flees with Dirk on her flying boat, but it doesn’t take long for Dirk to create more trouble. Eisner-nominated as a webcomic, the graphic novel is glorious in print. The rich, saturated colors and dashing linework teen

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“Although readers won’t see disabilities they recognize, Edwards successfully shows that being physically unable to partake in society’s core structure equals disability.” from earth girl

pop off the page, and the author wisely lets his characters’ dynamic body language and expressive faces mostly speak for themselves during the action sequences. Dirk’s fearlessness and verve are both appealing and exhausting: Readers will sympathize with Selim’s quandary when he is reluctant to end a peaceful interlude in a friendly village and Dirk is eager to move on. Fast-paced and unabashed fun, this romp will leave readers longing for additional installments. (Graphic adventure. 14 & up)

EARTH GIRL

Edwards, Janet Pyr/Prometheus Books (276 pp.) $17.95 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-1-61614-765-5 A disabled teen archaeologist works in fascinating, hazardous conditions on a far-future Earth. It’s 2789. Humanity lives on numerous planets. Transportation, including between star systems, merely requires stepping into a portal—even schoolchildren do a “mass offworld kiddie commute” daily. But off-world atmospheres are fatal for the rare babies born Handicapped, who are portalled to Earth within minutes and must stay forever. Parents tend to disappear, unwilling to live on Earth just to raise a “throwback.” Earth provides those on its Handicapped wards full care, education and career choice, but Jarra’s bitter that “exos” (non-Handicapped norms) consider her an “ape,” “the garbage of the universe.” Enrolling in a Pre-history course that’s taught on Earth but administered by an off-world university, Jarra plans to quench her thirst for history while teaching some exos a lesson. Terrific nitty-gritty details limn her team’s excavations of a high-risk dig site that was once Manhattan. Although readers won’t see disabilities they recognize, Edwards successfully shows that being physically unable to partake in society’s core structure equals disability. Jarra slides temporarily—implausibly—from matter-of-fact first-person narrator to a character in denial of her reality, but more important are perilous rescues, Jarra’s skills, a solar superstorm that closes portals and endangers hundreds of Military, and some humorous romance with sparkling chemistry. Action, rich archaeological detail and respectfully levelheaded disability portrayal, refreshingly free from symbolism and magical cures, make this stand out. (Science fiction. 11-16)

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THE OUTCAST ORACLE

Egan, Laury A. Humanist Press (205 pp.) $13.95 paper | $7.99 e-book | Oct. 1, 2013 978-0-931779-36-7 978-0-931779-37-4 e-book In this brilliantly written novel, a girl who lives with her con-artist grandfather after her parents have gone wandering hopes to lead a more honest life but must scheme to get by when he dies suddenly. Charlie looks much older than her 14 years when she dresses up and puts on makeup, enough to fool a social worker who comes to call. Charlie and Grandpa run a moonshine business and the Glory Alleluia Chapel to make ends meet, and Grandpa has started a small pyramid scheme that helps Charlie stay afloat after he dies. Between that and insurance fraud, he’s buried money all over his large wooded property. Hoping to avoid an orphanage, Charlie hides Grandpa’s body and stashes the cash. A 30-ish cowboy type, Blake, turns up after an affair with Charlie’s absent mother; he clearly knows about the buried money and uses that knowledge as leverage. As much a grifter as Grandpa ever was, he builds up the family religion business by passing off Charlie as a miracle worker. Can Charlie escape him too and pursue her own dreams of becoming a writer? Egan tells the story in Charlie’s first-person countrified style, but with True Grit–style lofty grammar and sentence structure, in keeping with Charlie’s abundant talent. It’s this highly literary, easily accessible writing that lifts this story to the very top of the heap. Simply delicious fun from start to finish. (Fiction. 12 & up)

FIREBORN

Forward, Toby Bloomsbury (432 pp.) $16.99 | Dec. 3, 2013 978-1-59990-889-2 Series: Dragonborn, 1 Prequel to Dragonborn (2012), this haunting fable interweaves stories about magic with the magic of stories. When even the simplest spells turn feral, wizard apprentice Cabbage and his master, Flaxfield, search for the origin of this deadly “wild magic.” Their hunt leads to Bee, an apprentice whose immense potential has been secretly leeched for years by her abusive master, distorting the natural order of magic. When he steals her wizard name, the explosive blowback looses a terrible evil, and it’s up to the pair of apprentices to seal it. Despite the cataclysmic stakes, this is no standard epic adventure, all quests and derring-do. There are dread abominations and ghastly slaughters (all the more nightmarish for their elliptical portrayal), but nothing is more monstrous than human selfishness, cowardice and vanity. Against these, no heroic exploit stands more valiant and glorious than the small acts of kindness, loyalty and |

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

“The deliberately ambiguous conclusion will leave engrossed readers weighing Calvin’s options and making their own hard decisionsfor him.” from nowhere to run

trust that take place within a quiet library, a humble inn and a wounded spirit. Lyrical prose of lapidary precision and restraint etches a character-driven narrative of intimate enchantments, evoking terrible beauty from blazing infernos, subtle whimsy from nonsensical banter, bone-chilling horror from slithering beetles, and soul-piercing wonder from a simple “Yes.” Although it stands fully on its own, knowledge of the companion novel will enrich appreciation of this tale, and the revelations here will cast new light upon the former; readers of both will long for the story’s resolution. Terrifying, moving, inspiring and enthralling. (Fantasy. 12 & up)

NOWHERE TO RUN

Griffin, Claire J. Namelos (111 pp.) $18.95 | Mar. 1, 2013 978-1-60898-144-1

From the first taut page, it’s clear that this isn’t going to be a happy story. Calvin, a senior and track star at a Washington, D.C., public high school, has gone to confront Norris, a thug who’s trying to extort protection money from Calvin’s mom. Confident that he can outrun Norris, he hasn’t given the potential outcome enough thought, a mistake Calvin often makes. He’s only saved from violence when his best friend, Deej, comes to his rescue. The deal Deej makes with Norris will come back to haunt Calvin: Norris now “owns” the runner’s knees. The threat is implicit—if Calvin doesn’t cooperate, Norris will destroy his running career. Calvin is aided by his strongly supportive mother and his longtime employer, Albert, both of whom provide powerful, much-needed guidance. He also gains strength from his quietly depicted developing relationship with Junior, a fine student from a supportive family. But as Deej makes increasingly bad decisions, it seems likely Calvin, ever loyal and too often a pawn, will be dragged down with him. The deliberately ambiguous conclusion will leave engrossed readers weighing Calvin’s options and making their own hard decisions for him. Dialogue, situations, relationships and issues all ring pitch perfectly but ever so discouragingly true. This brief debut packs a serious punch and will leave readers stunned with Calvin’s grim options. (Fiction. 12 & up)

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

WILL & WHIT

Gulledge, Laura Lee Illus. by Gulledge, Laura Lee Amulet/Abrams (192 pp.) $12.95 paper | May 7, 2013 978-1-4197-0546-5 After the untimely death of her parents, an artistic girl living with her aunt must face her fears. Willhemena Huckstep—Will for short—is planning on spending a perfectly quiet summer working at her aunt’s antiques shop, making lamps and spending time with her friends. Two fateful events quickly steer her plans off course: a chance meeting with a group of teens who are putting together an eclectic carnival and a savage summer storm named Whitney that will plunge her town into a prolonged blackout in its wake. Offbeat Will is scared of the dark (her lamp-making skills came from her grandfather, who taught her how to make her first night light). In confronting the darkness, both literal and figurative, though, Will finds herself stronger and happier than she could have imagined. Peppered with pop-culture references from Doctor Who to The Hunger Games and supported by Gulledge’s stylish black-and-white illustrations, this sophomore offering shines as bright as the lamps Will surrounds herself with. Will is an intensely likable character, as are her funky group of friends. With its emphasis on a world wonderfully unplugged, maybe this will jar some readers’ memories about how excellent and exciting a life without Facebook and Twitter can be. Quirky, clever and insightful; a must-read for fans of Raina Telgemeier. (Graphic fiction. 12 & up)

RAPTURE PRACTICE

Hartzler, Aaron Little, Brown (400 pp.) $17.99 | Apr. 9, 2013 978-0-316-09465-8

An eye-opening, autobiographical account of growing up waiting for the rapture. Since birth, Hartzler has been taught that any day, Jesus could scoop his family off to heaven. To prepare, his mom leads his youth group in a song called “Countdown,” in which they sing “BLASTOFF!” at the tops of their lungs and jump as if they’re being taken into the sky. Religion shapes every aspect of Hartzler’s life, but love is also at the heart of his work. That’s what’s at stake when he starts making left turns in both his activities and his belief system in high school. He sneaks to movies his parents would never approve of, illicitly listens to popular music, and plans wild, drunken parties. He has his first kiss, and eventually he begins to think that he might like boys (but that’s not the main point). His story emphasizes discovery more than rebellion, and the teen

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narrative is carefully constructed to show and not judge the beliefs of his family and their community. That said, he’s constantly under close surveillance, and readers will wince in sympathy as they experience his punishments for what they might deem trivial actions. Hartzler’s laugh-out-loud stylings range from the subtle to the ridiculous (his grandmother on wearing lipstick: “I need just a touch, so folks won’t think we’re Pentecostal”). A hilarious first-of-its-kind story that will surely inspire more. (Memoir. 14 & up)

ROMEO AND JULIET

Hinds, Gareth--Adapt. Illus. by Hinds, Gareth Candlewick (144 pp.) $21.99 | $12.99 paper | Sep. 10, 2013 978-0-7636-5948-6 978-0-7636-6807-5 paper Shakespeare’s tragic lovers receive star treatment in this spellbinding graphicnovel production. Hinds as director, set designer and writer has expertly abridged the original text while embellishing it with modern sensibilities. His edition retains the flavor and poetry of the 1597 play and its memorable and oft-quoted dialogue. It is in the watercolor and digitally illustrated panels that he truly presents a stunning visual reading. Juliet and the Capulets are from India. Romeo and the Montagues are from Africa. Thus, the political rivalries of Verona become contemporary and more meaningful to 21st-century readers. The Capulets are dressed in reds and the Montagues in blue—all against the finely rendered lines of Verona’s buildings and Friar Laurence’s monastery. Beautiful shades of blue infuse the night sky as the two lovers swear their eternal devotion. The panels vary in size to control the pace of the plot. Sword fights pulse with energy and occasional karate thrusts for added drama. The most moving image—a double-page spread without words—is depicted from above in shades of gold and brown stained red with blood as Romeo and Juliet lie dead and immortalized in each other’s arms. As thrilling and riveting as any staging. (author’s note) (Graphic drama. 12 & up)

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teen

THE COUNTERFEIT FAMILY TREE OF VEE CRAWFORD-WONG

Holland, L. Tam Simon & Schuster (368 pp.) $17.99 | Jul. 23, 2013 978-1-4424-1264-4 A school assignment to research his family tree sends Vee (named for the letter) on a journey of discovery, real and metaphorical, hilarious and moving, that’s as much about the future as the past. Future anthropologist and basketballer-wannabe Vee knows he’s an underachiever, thanks. Unlike his best friend Madison (Miao-ling at home), Vee doesn’t conform to the Asian-nerd stereotype. (He blames his heritage: Chinese immigrant dad and tall, blonde Texan mom.) They’re great parents, but their families are a taboo topic. Life’s not all bad—managing the girls’ basketball team has a lot going for it, like gorgeous but inaccessible senior Adele. Still, frustrations mount. Obsessed with digging up his roots and stonewalled by his parents, Vee enlists Madison’s help. She can’t help it if she looks like his father’s child more than Vee does and speaks Mandarin at home. (In Vee’s family, English is the common language.) Like the rounded characters, the plot avoids cliché and oversimplification. Life is a balancing act, Vee finds, in this book that belongs on every multicultural reading list. Knowing where we come from matters, but assigning too much power to ancestry can be more limiting than illuminating. While characters with mixed heritages are increasingly visible in teen literature, their experience in a rapidly shifting cultural landscape is seldom explored in depth. This first-rate debut does exactly that. (Fiction. 12 & up)

THE SUMMER PRINCE

Johnson, Alaya Dawn Levine/Scholastic (304 pp.) $17.99 | $17.99 e-book | Mar. 1, 2013 978-0-545-41779-2 978-0-545-52077-5 e-book An art project, a rebellion and a sacrifice make up this nuanced, original cyberpunk adventure. June, 17, remembers the last sacrifice of the Summer King, nine years before. In a future Brazil, after climate change, wars, natural disasters and plague have devastated the world, Palmares Três is a peaceful and just city, technologically supported with holos, nanohooks and bots. Beneath the city’s glittering facade, however, there’s another reality. Youth is stifled while the governing Aunties keep Palmares Três static in a classstratified society centuries behind the rest of the developed world. June and best friend Gil, both relatively privileged |

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

artists, happily spend their spring dancing, creating public art and voting for the newest Summer King to be sacrificed for the city’s prosperity after a year. When gorgeous, darkskinned Enki is elected, both June and Gil fall for him—but it’s Gil he takes as a lover, and June he takes as an artistic collaborator. Their love triangle, in a city with no genderbased limitations on romantic or sexual partnerships, is multifaceted, not the usual heroine-chooses-between-two-boys dynamic. As the trio dances—often literally—around one another, June must negotiate between the extremes of stasis and post-humanism, learn to see beyond herself, discover the meaning of integrity, and maybe even save her rotten-at-thecore and best-beloved city. Luminous. (Science fiction. 14-18)

LITTLE RED LIES

Johnston, Julie Tundra (272 pp.) $19.95 | $10.99 e-book | Sep. 10, 2013 978-1-77049-313-1 978-1-77049-314-8 e-book Rachel, after donning an inappropriately bright lipstick called “Little Red Lies,” welcomes her beloved elder brother, James, back from World War II. Unfortunately, lies aren’t confined to the lipstick. James, deeply altered by the war, glosses over his disturbing experiences to his family, although letters he continues to write to Rachel—but has never sent—contain the truth of the brutality. Tragically, once safely home, he develops leukemia, a lethal illness in 1947. Rachel lies to him to convince him to visit a faith healer, whom she then recognizes as a fraud. Then she lies to her parents (and herself) about the intentions of a handsome but predatory teacher who’s playing up to her as well as other girls. After her mom conceives an unplanned baby, it’s concealed from both Rachel and James. When they discover, embarrassingly late, the cause of her weight gain, James feels convinced the baby is intended as a replacement for him. The seeming surfeit of subplots is believably explained and sensitively written, succeeding largely due to Rachel’s spunky though almost pathetically naïve first-person voice, which rings fully true. At one point, the whole town believes James has the clap, largely because Rachel overheard then repeated a conversation she didn’t understand. Filled with bumbling characters who achingly love each other, this coming-of-age tale rises above a crowded field to take readers on a moving journey of discovery. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

VORTEX

Kincaid, S.J. Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins (400 pp.) $17.99 | $9.99 e-book | Jul. 1, 2013 978-0-06-209302-8 978-0-06-209304-2 e-book Series: Insignia, 2 Kincaid’s sequel to Insignia (2012) moves beyond derivative fun to real depth. Ever-rebellious Tom Raines has advanced with his pals Vik and Wyatt to Middle Company at the Pentagonal Spire. They’ve reached the level where they need to cultivate corporate sponsors in order to join the elite virtual warriors who conduct the ongoing space-based war between the RussoChinese and Indo-American alliances for control of the moon. Tom may be preternaturally great at virtual-war skillz, but he is horrible at sucking up and almost immediately alienates every single multinational corporate head he needs to impress. Meanwhile, Tom continues to pursue his odd but intense secret relationship with crack Russo-Chinese combatant Medusa and begins to suspect that Yuri, their Russian friend at the Spire, whom Wyatt “unscrambled” in the first book, may not be as innocent as they had thought. Kincaid lays a lot down, twining her increasingly complex plot and characterizations with Tom’s growing awareness of the poisonous “military-industrial-media complex.” As Eisenhower feared, it has made war a way of life that enriches a very few and impoverishes the many—one corporate head has bought Yosemite as his own private playground, one of many unsubtle but all-too-plausible symbols Tom contemplates. Action fans, fear not: For all the deep thinking Tom and readers undertake, pace, adventure and fun are not compromised one whit. A surprisingly and satisfyingly rich middle volume in a trilogy that exceeds popcorn expectations. (Science fiction. 13-16)

REALITY BOY

King, A.S. Little, Brown (368 pp.) $18.00 | Oct. 22, 2013 978-0-316-22270-9 “Everybody’s so full of shit,” declares the epigraph of this heart-pounding and heartbreaking novel, setting the tone of the narrative: cynical, disappointed and slyly funny. Gerald “the Crapper” Faust has not yet outlived the notoriety he achieved at age 5 by defecating on the kitchen table during their stint on Network Nanny, a “reality” television show that edited out most of the truth about his dysfunctional family life. Gerald has struggled to manage his anger in the 12 years since with the help of a few compassionate adults at school and work, but at its root, his rage remains teen

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“LaFevers weaves the ‘crazed, tangled web’ of Sybella’s life (including her tortured past) with force, suspense and subtle tenderness.” from dark triumph

unmitigated. In suspenseful flashbacks, Gerald details the damage wrought by his oldest sister, Tasha, a spoiled sociopathic despot. When he meets Hannah, a troubled beauty who sees him as he is instead of as he was, he cannot resist the possibility of genuine connection, despite the dangers. King deftly depicts the angst of first love in all its awkward, confusing glory. Even when she trots out the archetypical road-trip-as-journey-toself-discovery, King writes with an honesty that allows Hannah and Gerald to call each other on their bullshit and ultimately arrive at an intimacy that feels neither forced nor false. This is no fairy-tale romance, but a compulsively readable portrait of two imperfect teens learning to trust each other and themselves. (Fiction. 14 & up)

DARK TRIUMPH

LaFevers, Robin Houghton Mifflin (400 pp.) $17.99 | Apr. 2, 2013 978-0-547-62838-7 Series: His Fair Assassin, 2 An assassin with a will of steel fights her way through deadly palace deceptions, sickening sexual servitude and baffling assignments from her convent, becoming a major player in Brittany’s 15th-century resistance of French occupation. Readers last glimpsed Sybella through Ismae’s eyes (Grave Mercy, 2012), serving in the entourage of d’Albret, a bloodthirsty Breton noble. Unknown to Ismae, Sybella is d’Albret’s daughter, raised in a household in which her kindest brother demanded sex from her and their father murdered wife after wife. Now Sybella’s a trained assassin, serving Mortain, the god of Death. In a castle that d’Albret stole from Brittany’s steadfast 13-year-old duchess, Sybella waits to see a marque on d’Albret’s body so she can kill him with Mortain’s grace. Living there requires a soul-breaking dance of flirtation and survival, and she is never safe. Is Mortain her real father, and has he rejected her? When an unexpected assignment arrives—a rescue, shockingly, not an assassination—it requires all of Sybella’s physical and emotional strength and stealth, plus the use of her sterling assassin skills in active battle. LaFevers weaves the “crazed, tangled web” of Sybella’s life (including her tortured past) with force, suspense and subtle tenderness. The prose’s beauty inspires immediate re-reads of many a sentence, but its forward momentum is irresistible. An intricate, masterful page-turner about politics, treachery, religion, love and healing. (map, list of characters, author’s note) (Historical fantasy. 14 & up)

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THRICE TOLD TALES Three Mice Full of Writing Advice

Lewis, Catherine Illus. by Swarte, Joost Atheneum (144 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 27, 2013 978-1-4169-5784-3

From allegory to verisimilitude, the three blind mice demonstrate a wealth of literary terms. Named Pee Wee, Oscar and Mary, the famous mice start with their basic “Story” and ring the changes on it using a variety of literary tools. “Vocabulary and Syntax” renders the first line of the familiar nursery rhyme four different ways: “Trinity of myopic vermin / Eyeless murine trio / Triumvirate of sightless rodents / Three blind mice.” Under “Style,” readers encounter “Hemingway Mouse”: “Three mice. Woman with knife. No tails.” “Oxymoron” is exemplified by “It was a dull knife that caused their soundless wails.” Lewis covers every imaginable possibility, including “F—k,” a section on the use of expletives, and “Sex in the Story.” Clever line drawings by Swarte enliven every page, and Lewis’ own comments add graceful explanation. Under “Repetition,” for example, she writes, “The pleasure of repetition from the acoustic to the unconscious is ubiquitous.” Treatment of each topic is brief, though artful, but an exhaustive glossary—intelligent, witty, thoughtfully referential and written in a voice as distinctive as William Strunk’s—provides further elucidation and heft (it also doubles as an index). A sparkling celebration of the craft of writing that easily rises to the level of belles lettres itself. (Nonfiction. 12 & up)

MARCH Book One

Lewis, John; Aydin, Andrew Illus. by Powell, Nate Top Shelf Productions (128 pp.) $14.95 paper | Aug. 13, 2013 978-1-60309-300-2 Eisner winner Powell’s dramatic blackand-white graphic art ratchets up the intensity in this autobiographical opener by a major figure in the civil rights movement. In this first of a projected trilogy, Lewis, one of the original Freedom Riders and currently in his 13th term as a U.S. Representative, recalls his early years—from raising (and preaching to) chickens on an Alabama farm to meeting Martin Luther King Jr. and joining lunch-counter sit-ins in Nashville in 1960. The account flashes back and forth between a conversation with two young visitors in Lewis’ congressional office just prior to Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration and events five or more decades ago. His education in nonviolence forms the central theme, and both in his frank, self-effacing accounts of rising |

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

“The writing, though realistically laced with the F-word and references to smoking and drinking, has a curiously appealing distance from the ordinary but doesn’t abandon it altogether.” from september girls

tides of protest being met with increasingly violent responses and in Powell’s dark, cinematically angled and sequenced panels, the heroism of those who sat and marched and bore the abuse comes through with vivid, inspiring clarity. The volume closes with the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (which Lewis went on to chair), and its publication is scheduled to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, at which Lewis preceded Dr. King on the podium: “Of everyone who spoke at the march, I’m the only one who’s still around.” A powerful tale of courage and principle igniting sweeping social change, told by a strong-minded, uniquely qualified eyewitness. (Graphic memoir. 11-15)

CHAMPION

Lu, Marie Putnam (384 pp.) $18.99 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-0-399-25677-6 Series: Legend, 3 This exhilarating finale to the dystopian Legend trilogy delivers on the promises of the genre without ever being predictable about details. June and Day are finally on the right side of the law, but nothing’s gotten any easier. June, the former soldier, is now one of three Princeps-Elect, next in line to lead the Senate. Day, “most-wanted-criminal-turned-national-hero,” is now the face of popular support for the young Elector. The future’s dazzlingly bright, right? In fact, from their high perches, June and Day can see everything about to go horrifyingly wrong. The Elector knows the Colonies are about to invade, and he thinks a plague cure will save the day—a cure he’s convinced they’ll discover by experimenting on Day’s brother, Eden. Day will never let the Republic have his brother again; he barely got Eden back alive after the first time they took him for medical experiments. On the other hand, since Day is dying, it’s not clear what he can do for Eden or the Republic. Brief international travel expands the worldbuilding of this universe: June and Day had encountered the capitalist dystopia of the Colonies in Prodigy (2012), while June here encounters the seemingly more idyllic society-as-game of Ross City, Antarctica. A civilization run as if it were “The Sims” is intriguing, and it’s disappointing that June spends little time there, but there’s plenty of betrayal and action to resolve back in the Republic. Ever respectful of the capacity of its readers, this series offers a satisfying conclusion of potential rather than a neatly wrapped denouement. (Science fiction. 13-16)

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

SEPTEMBER GIRLS

Madison, Bennett HarperTeen (352 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | May 21, 2013 978-0-06-125563-2 978-0-06-220129-4 e-book A meditation on manhood takes a turn into magical realism in this mesmerizing novel. Sam, his father and his older brother are all coping—with varying degrees of success; Sam’s coping includes whiskey and frozen pizza—with Sam’s mother’s departure for Women’s Land. In an attempt to pull things together, his dad decides they will spend the summer on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Prickly yet lethargic, 17-year-old Sam gradually becomes intrigued by the mysterious, beautiful blonde girls who work at the hotels and restaurants there. Interspersed throughout Sam’s slightly sarcastic firstperson narration are short, haunting prose poems from these sisters, who can’t swim though they come from the ocean and whose mother is the Deepness and whose father is the Endlessness. The girls seem to reinvent themselves as needed, much as they reinvent the island where they live, adding to the air of mystery. The brothers’ parents are vividly portrayed, particularly the once-frumpy mother who left their father in a “swamp of discontent”—which turns into a complete abandonment of his job and their usual life. The heart of the story centers on Sam’s gradual unfurling into a less brittle, kinder and more thoughtful youth. The writing, though realistically laced with the F-word and references to smoking and drinking, has a curiously appealing distance from the ordinary but doesn’t abandon it altogether. A not-mermaid story for boys. (Magical realism. 14 & up)

QUINTANA OF CHARYN

Marchetta, Melina Candlewick (528 pp.) $18.99 | Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-7636-5835-9 Series: Lumatere Chronicles, 3

Fans of Finnikin of the Rock (2010) and Froi of the Exiles (2012) will find deep satisfaction in this finale to the Lumatere Chronicles. This trilogy, taken as a whole, is stronger than each of its distinct parts. Marchetta, known for her mastery of character, shows herself here to have conquered the intricacies of plot, worldbuilding and theme. All three books demonstrate both the heights and depths of human nature. If the first two books depict two young men with depth and reality, this third applauds the growth and courage of Princess (or Queen, depending on who’s talking) Quintana—who is not immediately likable but becomes more admirable as the narrative progresses. Omniscient narration alternates three major stories: of Froi, who teen

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searches for Quintana in Charyn, of the residents of Lumatere, and of Quintana, who is in hiding to protect the life of her child. Peppering the tale are details of Quintana’s thoughts and longings, which broaden understanding of her personality. A multitude of plot twists and surprises bring together events that seemed complete in the first two books and emphasize the importance of Quintana’s story. Readers will have a hard time forgetting the complex, deeply human characters that populate this multifaceted narrative. (Fantasy. 14 & up)

YAQUI DELGADO WANTS TO KICK YOUR ASS Medina, Meg Candlewick (272 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-7636-5859-5

A nuanced, heart-wrenching and ultimately empowering story about bullying. When 15-year old Piedad Sanchez’s mother moves them to another part of Queens, Piddy is unprepared for the bullying that awaits her at her new school. Yaqui Delgado doesn’t know Piddy but decides she’s stuck-up and shakes her ass when she walks—accusations weighty enough to warrant a full-fledged bullying campaign. As her torments escalate, readers feel the intensity of Piddy’s terror in her increasingly panicked first-person narration. Interweaving themes of identity, escapism and body image, Medina takes what could be a didactic morality tale and spins it into something beautiful: a story rich in depth and heart. Piddy’s ordeal feels 100 percent authentic; there are no easy outs, no simple solutions. Displaying a mature understanding of consequences and refreshingly aware (no deducing supporting characters’ feelings before the protagonist, here), Piddy also exhibits an age-appropriate sense of vulnerability. The prose is both honest (“growing up is like walking through glass doors that only open one way—you can see where you came from but can’t go back”) and exquisitely crafted (“Fear is my new best friend. It stands at my elbow in chilly silence”). Far more than just a problem novel, this book sheds light on a serious issue without ever losing sight of its craft. (Fiction. 13-18)

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SEX & VIOLENCE

Mesrobian, Carrie Carolrhoda Lab (304 pp.) $17.95 | $12.95 e-book | Oct. 1, 2013 978-1-4677-0597-4 978-1-4677-1619-2 e-book An intelligent, wry 17-year-old is brutally beaten in a communal shower by two classmates after he hooks up with one of their former girlfriends, setting the stage for a difficult recovery. Evan knows he’s sort of a dick when it comes to girls, but being constantly uprooted to various boarding schools by his emotionally inept dad has caused him to eschew relationships and focus on honing his knack for identifying Girls Who Would Say Yes. After the assault that leaves Evan in the hospital, his father whisks him off to his own boyhood home in Minnesota, where he’s uneasily sucked into a tightknit group spending their last summer at home getting high and hanging out before going off to college. Evan’s intense, often-discomfiting first-person narration will deeply affect readers, and his darker side is troubling—in an aside about girls with eating disorders, he thinks, “I’d known some of those barf-it-up girls, and they were the worst. So crazy. So clingy. The first to get deleted from my phone.” Packed with realistically lewd dialogue that is often darkly funny, this is a pitch-perfect, daring novel about how sex and violence fracture a life and the painstakingly realistic process of picking up the pieces. Evan’s struggle is enormously sympathetic, even when he is not. Utterly gripping. (Fiction. 16 & up)

A CORNER OF WHITE

Moriarty, Jaclyn Levine/Scholastic (384 pp.) $17.99 | $17.99 e-book | Apr. 1, 2013 978-0-545-39736-0 978-0-545-51021-9 e-book Series: Colors of Madeleine, 1 Another one of a kind from the inimitable Moriarty, this time, a barely epistolary fantasy series opener unlike anything

else out there. Fourteen-year-old Madeleine lives in Cambridge, England, with her zany mother in uncertain circumstances, having run away from their fabulously privileged international existence. Meanwhile, Elliot lives in Bonfire, The Farms, Cello, a parallel reality that might be the real fairyland (although that’s never explicitly stated, and this version seems utterly unlike most versions of fairyland). Through a crack between their worlds, they begin exchanging letters, although more of the novel is about one or the other of these two appealing characters than about their moments of intersection. Elliot wants to find his father, who disappeared mysteriously, while Madeleine wants |

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

to be found by hers and is also navigating friendship and her mother’s deteriorating health. Moriarty’s trademark wit and whimsy are on full display, with zingy dialogue that feels right if not entirely realistic and bizarre characters living unexpected lives that manage to be mundane and delightful at the same time. By the end, Madeleine’s story feels somewhat resolved, but Elliot’s has turned an unexpected corner that will bring their worlds much closer and bring readers more mystery and humor in the next volume. Quirky, charming, funny, sad: another winner from this always-surprising author. (Fantasy. 12 & up)

DARIUS & TWIG

Myers, Walter Dean Amistad/HarperCollins (208 pp.) $17.99 | $10.99 e-book | $18.89 PLB Apr. 23, 2013 978-0-06-172823-5 978-0-06-220925-2 e-book 978-0-06-172824-2 PLB A beautifully written story of friendship and the strength required to rise above limiting circumstances. Darius is a writer. Twig is a runner. Best friends since they were 9, the two 16-year-olds struggle with growing up in Harlem and, even more so, with making a better future for themselves. Through Darius’ poignant first-person narration, readers will sympathize with his feelings of hopelessness and being trapped in a life he doesn’t want, though Twig’s success on the track gives him faith that he might one day succeed as a writer. Darius also finds solace imagining himself as a falcon named Fury, soaring far above all of the problems that plague him. But the challenges Darius faces are constant and threaten to pull him back to earth—from bullies to his depressed mother and absent father to his own feelings of being overwhelmed, especially as the consequences of his past choices threaten his future. Darius and Twig’s conversations are both lyrically poetic and endearingly heartfelt as they fight to forge a brighter future than the limited options they see before them. Set in opposition to the bullies who make their lives difficult, Darius and Twig exemplify true friendship—two people who have been fortunate enough to find each other, who encourage one another and push each other to do their best—and the life-altering difference having a true friend can make. Myers at his impassioned best. (Fiction. 13 & up)

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

ENRIQUE’S JOURNEY The True Story of a Boy Determined to Reunite with His Mother Nazario, Sonia Delacorte (288 pp.) $16.99 | Aug. 27, 2013 978-0385743273

2003 Pulitzer Prize–winning author Nazario’s critically acclaimed book Enrique’s Journey, a heart-wrenching account of one young man’s journey to migrate illegally from Honduras to the United States to find the mother who left when he was 5, has been newly adapted for young people. Nazario’s vividly descriptive narrative recreates the trek that teenage Enrique made from Honduras through Mexico on the tops of freight trains. This adaptation does not gloss over or omit the harrowing dangers—beatings, rape, maiming and murder—faced by migrants coming north from Central America. The material is updated to present current statistics about immigration, legal and illegal, and also addresses recent changes in the economic and political climates of the U.S., Mexico and Honduras, including the increased danger of gang violence related to drug trafficking in Mexico. The book will likely inspire reflection, discussion and debate about illegal immigration among its intended audience. But the facts and figures never overwhelm the human story. The epilogue allows readers who are moved by Enrique to follow the family’s tragedies and triumphs since the book’s original publication; the journey does not end upon reaching the United States. Provides a human face, both beautiful and scarred, for the undocumented—a must-read. (epilogue, afterword, notes) (Nonfiction. 14 & up)

MORE THAN THIS

Ness, Patrick Candlewick (480 pp.) $19.99 | Sep. 10, 2013 978-0-7636-6258-5

Seth, not yet 17, walks into the Pacific Ocean and ends his life. Or does he? He wakes, groggy, in front of the house in England where he spent his childhood, before his little brother, Owen, was kidnapped and the family moved to America. He spends days in a dust-covered, desolate landscape scavenging for food in empty stores, imagining that he’s in a “hell built exactly for him.” His dreams are filled with vivid memories of his life: his romance with a boy named Gudmund, a photo that’s gone viral, and farther back, his inability to keep Owen safe. Seth is rescued by a girl named Regine and Tomasz, a younger, Polish boy, from pursuit by a silent, helmeted figure they call the Driver. Past and present collide as Seth struggles to determine what’s real and teen

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“Through Eleanor and Park’s alternating voices, readers glimpse the swoon-inducing, often hilarious aspects of first love….” from eleanor & park

what isn’t, whether circumstances are all of his own doing. He faces doorways everywhere, with genuine death seemingly just beyond, but there are hints of something even more sinister going on. There are no easy answers either for Seth or readers. With a nod to Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Ness brilliantly plays with contrasts: life and death, privacy and exposure, guilt and innocence. In characteristic style, the author of the Chaos Walking trilogy delves into the stuff of nightmares for an existential exploration of the human psyche. (Fiction. 14 & up)

DR. BIRD’S ADVICE FOR SAD POETS

Roskos, Evan Houghton Mifflin (320 pp.) $16.99 | Mar. 5, 2013 978-0-547-92853-1 Self-deprecating humor abounds in this debut novel that pulls no punches about the experience of depression and anxiety for its teen protagonist. The words of Walt Whitman provide solace for 16-year-old James, whose mental health struggles are exacerbated by living with abusive parents and agonizing over what he could have done differently to prevent his older sister, Jorie, from being thrown out of the house. James’ intense firstperson narration, which includes imagined therapy sessions with a pigeon he calls Dr. Bird, both flares with frenetic silliness and sinks heavily into despair, realistically depicting his mood swings. At times contemplating suicide, he’s aware of the gravity of his situation, even as his parents react with heartbreaking ambivalence: “Therapy isn’t what you need....You’re just at that age where you think everything is so horrible and terrible.” His self-awareness makes him an enormously sympathetic character. Readers will root for him to win over Beth, the editor of his school’s literary magazine, and forgive him for going over the top (“I know that they’re all just going to pretend like I’m not here trying to tear the walls down with my fucking barbaric yaawwwwwppppp!”) when he rages at a woman who has been carrying on an affair, with his best friend Derek, behind the back of her fiance. Captivating introspection from a winning character. (Fiction. 14 & up)

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ELEANOR & PARK

Rowell, Rainbow St. Martin’s Griffin (320 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 26, 2013 978-1-250-01257-9 Awkward, prickly teens find deep first love in 1980s Omaha. Eleanor and Park don’t meet cute; they meet vexed on the school bus, trapped into sitting together by a dearth of seats and their low social status. Park, the only half-Korean fan of punk and New Wave at their high school, is by no means popular, but he benefits from his family’s deep roots in their lower-middle-class neighborhood. Meanwhile, Eleanor’s wildly curly red mane and plus-sized frame would make her stand out even if she weren’t a new student, having just returned to her family after a year of couch-surfing following being thrown out by her odious drunkard of a stepfather, Richie. Although both teens want only to fade into the background, both stand out physically and sartorially, arming themselves with band T-shirts (Park) and menswear from thrift stores (Eleanor). Despite Eleanor’s resolve not to grow attached to anything, and despite their shared hatred for clichés, they fall, by degrees, in love. Through Eleanor and Park’s alternating voices, readers glimpse the swoon-inducing, often hilarious aspects of first love, as well as the contrast between Eleanor’s survival of grim, abuse-plagued poverty and Park’s own imperfect but loving family life. Funny, hopeful, foulmouthed, sexy and tear-jerking, this winning romance will captivate teen and adult readers alike. (Fiction. 14 & up)

DEATH, DICKINSON, AND THE DEMENTED LIFE OF FRENCHIE GARCIA

Sanchez, Jenny Torres Running Press Kids (272 pp.) $9.95 paper | May 27, 2013 978-0-7624-4680-3 After one life-changing night with her secret crush Andy Cooper, Frenchie Garcia, a cigarette-smoking artist who quotes Dickinson and hangs out in a cemetery, is haunted. Frenchie is in the limbo of what-comes-next. She’s finished high school but has been rejected by art school. She is sullen and anxious and can’t seem to get her life moving. Gradually, what happened that night with Andy and its lingering impact on Frenchie are revealed. It was the same night that Andy ended his own life. No one even knows that she liked Andy, let alone about the time they spent together, so Frenchie keeps her guilt and confusion to herself. When her internal rage finally boils over, she embarks upon an all-night trek with Colin, a boy she barely knows, re-creating every step of her spontaneous |

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

( not

great love stories

just

that

CHASING SHADOWS

kind of love )

REALITY BOY

Swati Avasthi Illus. by Craig Phillips Knopf

A.S. King Little, Brown

Two friends alternate narration and struggle with grief and trauma after a violent murder.

“Everybody’s so full of shit,” declares the epigraph of this heartpounding and heartbreaking novel, setting the tone of the narrative: cynical, disappointed and slyly funny.

ELEANOR & PARK

Rainbow Rowell St. Martin’s Griffin

Awkward, prickly teens find deep first love in 1980s Omaha.

ALL THE TRUTH THAT’S IN ME

Julie Berry Viking

Eighteen-year-old Judith Finch gradually reveals the horror of her two-year disappearance in a stunning historical murder mystery and romance.

MIDWINTERBLOOD

Marcus Sedgwick Roaring Brook

ROMEO AND JULIET

Gareth Hinds Illus. by Gareth Hinds Candlewick

The Time Traveler’s Wife meets Lost in this chilling exploration of love and memory.

Shakespeare’s tragic lovers receive star treatment in this spellbinding graphic-novel production. 58

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

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great love stories (cont.)

THE DREAM THIEVES

ALL OUR YESTERDAYS

The second installment of Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle is as mindblowingly spectacular as the first.

Narrator Em and her boyfriend, Finn, escape from their totalitarian future, time traveling back four years to commit a heartwrenching assassination of a loved one in order to prevent time travel from being invented and the future from turning so wrong.

Maggie Stiefvater Scholastic

Cristin Terrill Hyperion

SOME QUIET PLACE

Kelsey Sutton Flux

Haunting, chilling and achingly romantic, Sutton’s debut novel for teens will keep readers up until the wee hours, unable to tear themselves away from this strange and beautifully crafted story.

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ZERO FADE

Chris L. Terry Curbside Splendor Kevin Phifer, 13, a black seventh-grader in 1990s Richmond, Va., and hero of this sparkling debut, belongs in the front ranks of fiction’s hormone-addled, angst-ridden adolescents, from Holden Caulfield to the teenage Harry Potter.

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

adventure with Andy and desperately searching for whatever she must have missed. Sanchez’s expertly crafted narrative moves seamlessly between “that night” and now, pulling readers into Frenchie’s anger and pain without straying into clichés of teen angst. Frenchie’s struggle to identify and process her own emotions rings out as authentic and honest. There are no easy answers for Frenchie Garcia as she attempts to recover from the tragedy of suicide. An exceptionally well-written journey to make sense of the senseless. (Fiction. 14 & up)

THE WAR WITHIN THESE WALLS

Sax, Aline Illus. by Strzelecki, Caryl Translated by Watkinson, Laura Eerdmans (176 pp.) $17.00 | Oct. 1, 2013 978-0-8028-5428-5 The sights, sounds and smells of the Warsaw ghetto assail readers’ senses in a raw, brutal telling of the unimaginable horror of that time and that place. When the Nazis took Warsaw in 1939, they immediately initiated their separate war against the Jews in an ever-worsening web of destruction. Jews were prevented from using public transportation, doing business or attending schools. Then thousands were moved to the overcrowded ghetto, where they died of epidemics and starvation. Finally, relocations to the concentration camps emptied the ghetto. Sax gives voice to the fear and anger, hopelessness and terror through Misha, a fictional young teen who represents those who really lived and died there. In short staccato sentences, he bears witness to the madness, telling it all, from the struggle to stay alive to the corpses in the streets to the beatings and executions. Misha takes part in the doomed Warsaw Uprising and survives to tell the world of this last act of defiance. Strzelecki’s pen, ink and black-and-white pencil illustrations graphically depict pain and despair as they accompany text printed on stark white or black backgrounds. With the events of the Holocaust growing ever more remote with the passage of time, Sax gives modern readers an unrelenting, heart-rending insight into the hell that the Nazis created. Gripping, powerful, shattering. (Historical fiction. 14 & up)

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

SOMEBODY UP THERE HATES YOU

Seamon, Hollis Algonquin (256 pp.) $16.99 | Sep. 3, 2013 978-1-61620-260-6

When you’re surrounded by death, anything can look like a good opportunity. Death is all around 17-year-old Richie Casey. Diagnosed with cancer, he’s spending his final days in hospice care in upstate New York. He’s weak. He can’t eat. He’s also a wiseass with a biting sense of humor, and he’s persuasive enough to convince even the toughest nurse to let him do what he wants. Seamon’s debut for teens follows Richie over 10 days leading up to his 18th birthday. His ne’er-do-well uncle breaks him out for a wild, cathartic, drunken, lust-filled night on the town in a wheelchair to celebrate Cabbage Night (the night before Halloween). He pursues his girlfriend down the hall, Sylvie, who is also dying from cancer. Each character is vividly drawn, with a sharp, memorable voice that readers will love and remember. While there is plenty of death to go around, the novel’s tone shifts from dark to light when opportunity presents itself to narrator Richie. Both the characters and readers empathize with his urge to break out and experience life despite his constraints and the consequences that might befall him. His ups and downs are what power the plot, and readers come to learn that Ritchie isn’t full of joie de vivre. Instead, he’s full of fight, and that’s what makes him so admirable and memorable. A fresh, inspiring story about death and determination. (Fiction. 14 & up)

MIDWINTERBLOOD

Sedgwick, Marcus Roaring Brook (272 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 5, 2013 978-1-59643-800-2

The Time Traveler’s Wife meets Lost in this chilling exploration of love and memory. A dystopian start to the novel finds journalist Eric on remote Blessed Island in the extreme north in the year 2073. Tasked with gathering information on a rare orchid that is rumored to stop the aging process, he feels instant attraction to native islander Merle. As Eric drinks a strange tea brewed from the orchid, he begins to forget his life on the mainland yet remembers feelings for Merle. But how and when did he know her? Seven linked stories progress backward across centuries, following Eric and Merle’s relationship as it takes on many forms, such as father/daughter or brother/sister, throughout time. Presented as different cycles of the moon, the stories feature various genres, from realistic and war stories to stories about ghosts and Viking vampires, ending with a hint of mystery teen

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“Smith…laces meaning and poignantly real dialogue into uproariously funny scatological and hormonally charged humor….” from winger

to be revealed in subsequent chapters. This form, as well as the novel’s reliance on adult protagonists, is a rarity in literature for teens. Inspired by Swedish artist Carl Larsson’s controversial painting, Midvinterblot (translated as midwinter sacrifice), Sedgwick crafts these seven treats with spare, exact prose in which no word is unnecessary. Together, their reoccurring motifs of orchids, moons, blood and language— to name a few—reinforce Eric and Merle’s enduring love. Haunting, sophisticated and ultimately exquisite. (author’s note) (Fantasy. 13 & up)

OUT OF THE EASY

Sepetys, Ruta Philomel (352 pp.) $17.99 | Feb. 12, 2013 978-0-399-25692-9

Step right onto the rough streets of the New Orleans French Quarter, circa 1950… …and meet 17-year-old Josie Moraine, a feisty young woman whose mother, a prostitute in a Conti Street brothel, offers her nothing but scorn and abuse. From the tender age of 12, Josie has made her own way in the world, working in a local bookstore in exchange for a safe place to sleep and cleaning the brothel to earn money toward her planned escape from the Big Easy. Equal parts book smart and street smart, Josie’s dream is to attend Smith College, and she will go to extremes, even blackmail, in her desperation to be accepted. But just when her plans start to gain some traction, her mother strikes again, putting Josie in the middle of a murder investigation and saddling her with a mob debt. There are some meaningful messages here: that love can come from the unlikeliest of sources—the roughand-tumble brothel madam is much more supportive of Josie than her mother ever was—and that we are all in control of our own destinies if only we choose to be. With a rich and realistic setting, a compelling and entertaining first-person narration, a colorful cast of memorable characters and an intriguing storyline, this is a surefire winner. Immensely satisfying. (Historical fiction. 14 & up)

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WINGER

Smith, Andrew Simon & Schuster (448 pp.) $16.99 | May 14, 2013 978-1-4424-4492-8 A boarding school is the setting for lifechanging experiences in this smart, wickedly funny work of realistic fiction from the author of The Marbury Lens (2010). Self-proclaimed loser Ryan Dean is a 14-year-old junior at Pine Mountain, where he plays wing for the tightknit rugby team. In a magnificently frenetic first-person narration that includes clever short comics, charts and diagrams, he relates the story of the first few months of the school term as he’s forced to room with an intimidating senior on the restricted, euphemistic Opportunity Hall, due to transgressions from the previous year. He’s completely head over heels for Annie, an older classmate who insists she can’t be in love with him due to his age, and lives in fear of the “glacially unhot” teacher Mrs. Singer, who he’s certain is a witch responsible for cursing him with a “catastrophic injury to [his] penis,” among other ailments. He’s also navigating letting go of some old friends and becoming closer to one of his teammates, Joey, who’s gay. Smith deftly builds characters—readers will suddenly realize they’ve effortlessly fallen in love with them—and he laces meaning and poignantly real dialogue into uproariously funny scatological and hormonally charged humor, somehow creating a balance between the two that seems to intensify both extremes. Bawdily comic but ultimately devastating, this is unforgettable. (Fiction. 14 & up)

THE DREAM THIEVES

Stiefvater, Maggie Scholastic (448 pp.) $18.99 | $18.99 e-book | Sep. 17, 2013 978-0-545-42494-3 978-0-545-57717-5 e-book Series: Raven Cycle, 2 The second installment of Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle is as mind-blowingly spectacular as the first. Now that the ley line near Henrietta, Va., has been woken, strange currents race through the town. There’s too much electricity—or none at all. The four Raven Boys—Gansey, Adam, long-dead Noah and Ronan—continue to search for the grave of the Welsh king Glendower, but now Ronan is starting to pull objects out of his dreams. Small ones, like the keys to Gansey’s Camaro, and larger, lethal nightmare creatures. But his greatest nightmare can’t be grasped—how do you hold onto home? Not-quite-psychic Blue Sargent realizes that Gansey might really be her true love—and if she kisses him, he’ll die—and meanwhile, her wholly psychic mother is dating the hit man come to steal Ronan. Stiefvater’s careful exploration of class and wealth and their limitations and opportunities |

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

“Time travel done right.” from all our yesterdays

astounds with its sensitivity and sophistication. The pace is electric, the prose marvelously sure-footed and strong, but it’s the complicated characters—particularly Ronan, violent, drunk, tender and tough—that meld magic and reality into an engrossing, believable whole. Remember this: Ronan never lies. How long until Book 3? (Fantasy. 12 & up)

GOLDEN BOY

Sullivan, Tara Putnam (368 pp.) $16.99 | Jun. 27, 2013 978-0-399-16112-4 Some call Habo a zeruzeru—a zero-zero—nothing. Others willingly pursue the riches his albino body parts will bring on the black market in Sullivan’s intense debut. With his white skin, shaky, blue, unfocused eyes and yellow hair, 13-year-old Habo fits nowhere in his chocolate-brown Tanzanian family—not with his brothers who shun him, nor even with his mother, who avoids his touch. Did this bad-luck child even cause his father to abandon him at his birth? Only Habo’s sister, Asu, protects and nurtures him. Poverty forces the family from their rural home near Arusha to Mwanza, hundreds of miles away, to stay with relatives. After their bus fare runs out, they hitch a ride across the Serengeti with an ivory poacher who sees opportunity in Habo. Forced to flee for his life, the boy eventually becomes an apprentice to Kweli, a wise, blind carver in urban Dar es Salaam. The stark contrasts Habo experiences on his physical journey to safety and his emotional journey to self-awareness bring his growth into sharp relief while informing readers of a social ill still prevalent in East Africa. Thankfully for readers as well as Habo, the blind man’s appreciation challenges Habo to prove that he is worth more alive than dead. His presenttense narration is keenly perceptive and eschews self-pity. A riveting fictional snapshot of one Tanzanian boy who makes himself matter. (Fiction. 12-16)

SOME QUIET PLACE

Sutton, Kelsey Flux (360 pp.) $9.99 paper | Jul. 8, 2013 978-0-7387-3643-3

Haunting, chilling and achingly romantic, Sutton’s debut novel for teens will keep readers up until the wee hours, unable to tear themselves away from this strange and beautifully crafted story. Elizabeth Caldwell can’t feel emotions, yet she sees them everywhere, human in appearance, standing alongside their “summons.” Guilt and Worry flank the mother of a dying friend. Resentment grips the shoulder 62

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

of her bruised and battered mother. Elizabeth can see them, acknowledge their power and even speak to them, but ever since the night of a terrible car accident when she was 4, the only sensation Elizabeth is capable of mustering is a numb nothingness. The only emotion that still bothers to come calling is Fear, a menacing and surprisingly seductive suitor who seems as determined as Elizabeth to uncover the truth behind who and what she truly is—no matter what the cost. Elizabeth may not be able to feel, but her novel-long dance with Fear is as sexy and intense as any couple’s in recent memory. This is a testament to Elizabeth’s brilliantly crafted narrative voice. Reminiscent of Death in Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, she shares her story with the cold detachment of the emotionless yet still manages to convey the urgent and desperate nature of her search for the truth. Chills and goose bumps of the very best kind accompany this haunting, memorable achievement. (Paranormal romance. 14 & up)

ALL OUR YESTERDAYS

Terrill, Cristin Hyperion (368 pp.) $17.99 | Sep. 3, 2013 978-1-4231-7637-4

Time travel done right. Narrator Em and her boyfriend, Finn, escape from their totalitarian future, time traveling back four years to commit a heart-wrenching assassination of a loved one in order to prevent time travel from being invented and the future from turning so wrong. The future’s hinted-at horrors are threatening but expertly backgrounded, avoiding dystopia-fatigue. The clever, accessible time-space treatment isn’t weighed down by jargon. Em and Finn’s proactive mission means the characters are the hunters instead of the frequently seen on-the-run teen protagonists. The other side of the storyline, taking place in the past that Em and Finn travel to and starring their past selves, is narrated by Marina (Em, in this timeline) and involves her brilliant yet interpersonally challenged best friend (and crush) James and his friend Finn, who annoys Marina, as they deal with a tragedy in James’ family. The believable, complex relationships among the three characters of each respective time and in the blended area of shared time add a surprise: A plot ostensibly about assassination is rooted firmly in different shades of love. Perhaps richest is the affection Em feels for Marina—a standout compared to the truckloads of books about girls who only learn to appreciate themselves through their love interests’ eyes. Powerful emotional relationships and tight plotting in this debut mark Terrill as an author to watch. (Science fiction. 12 & up)

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ZERO FADE

Terry, Chris L. Curbside Splendor (294 pp.) $12.00 paper | Sep. 16, 2013 978-0-9884804-3-8 Kevin Phifer, 13, a black seventhgrader in 1990s Richmond, Va., and hero of this sparkling debut, belongs in the front ranks of fiction’s hormone-addled, angst-ridden adolescents, from Holden Caulfield to the teenage Harry Potter. Kevin wants a fade, thinking the stylish haircut will bolster his shaky standing in the cutthroat world of middle school, where he’s just one friend away from eating lunch alone. But his mother, a church secretary and solo parent studying for a nursing degree at night, won’t even try. Expressing his frustration leads to a week’s grounding. Tyrell and his entourage of bullies make Kevin’s life miserable at school. In science lab, Aisha, girl of Kevin’s dreams, points out his “mushy tushy.” Sandbagged by dizzyingly abrupt mood shifts, Kevin hurtles from altruism to craven self-interest, mature self-knowledge to wild fantasy. His anchor in rough seas is Uncle Paul, a quiet, manly museum security guard. Weary of hiding his sexual orientation, Paul’s recently come out to family and friends but has yet to tell Kevin, for whom “faggot” is the worst insult there is. Paul’s perspective, with its temporal and social context, enriches and deepens the narrative, offering an effective contrast to Kevin’s volatile reality, where “now” is all that counts. Original, hilarious, thought-provoking and wicked smart: not to be missed. (Historical fiction. 12 & up)

ROSE UNDER FIRE

Wein, Elizabeth Hyperion (352 pp.) $17.99 | Sep. 10, 2013 978-1-4231-8309-9

After a daring attempt to intercept a flying bomb, a young American pilot ferrying planes during World War II is captured by the Nazis in this companion to Printz Honor–winning Code Name Verity (2012). After being brutally punished for her refusal to make fuses for flying bombs and having “more or less forgotten who [she] was,” Rose is befriended by Polish “Rabbits,” victims of horrific medical experimentation. She uses “counting-out rhymes” to preserve her sanity and as a way to memorize the names of the Rabbits. Rose’s poetry, a panacea that’s translated and passed through the camp, is at the heart of the story, revealing her growing understanding of what’s happening around her. As the book progresses, Wein masterfully sets up a stark contrast between the innocent American teen’s view of an untarnished world and the realities of the Holocaust, using slices of narrative from characters first encountered in the previous book. Recounting her six months in the Ravensbrück |

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concentration camp through journal entries and poems, Rose honors her commitment to tell the world of the atrocities she witnessed. Readers who want more Code Name Verity should retool their expectations; although the story’s action follows the earlier book’s, it has its own, equally incandescent integrity. Rich in detail, from the small kindnesses of fellow prisoners to harrowing scenes of escape and the Nazi Doctors’ Trial in Nuremburg, at the core of this novel is the resilience of human nature and the power of friendship and hope. (Historical fiction. 14 & up)

BLACK HELICOPTERS

Woolston, Blythe Candlewick (176 pp.) $15.99 | Mar. 12, 2013 978-0-7636-6146-5

A chilling exploration of the life, motivations and strategies of a young American suicide bomber. Valkyrie (née Valley) White is on a mission to wake up everyone. Her statement of purpose recorded and media-ready, she departs the survivalist camp where she and her brother Bo live, but when her driver detonates their truck bomb too early, Valkyrie sets off on her own to complete the mission. Through brief chapters alternating between the past and present, readers learn about Valley and Bo’s childhood in Montana’s backwoods, where their Da trained them to be self-sufficient and deeply wary of the world outside their land. After Valley and Bo’s mother, Mabby, dies in what they believe was a black-helicopter attack authorized by Those People in the government, Da insists that the children learn paramilitary and bomb-building skills along with chess and how to read. In the present, Valkyrie uses Da’s lessons to manipulate a teenage boy into driving to an opportune place for her to detonate her vest. Woolston’s slow, tense revelation of the full horror of what the adults in Valkyrie’s life have wrought in and through her is breathtaking. Readers who may have previously associated suicide bombers with religious fanaticism will be fascinated by Valkyrie’s totally secular but equally single-minded devotion to anti-government rhetoric and revenge. Harrowing and unforgettable. (Fiction. 14-18)

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

BOXERS & SAINTS

Yang, Gene Luen Illus. by Yang, Gene Luen First Second (512 pp.) $34.99 paper | Sep. 10, 2013 978-1-59643-924-5 Printz Award winner Yang’s ambitious two-volume graphic novel follows the intertwined lives of two young people on opposite sides of the turn-of-the-20thcentury Boxer Rebellion. Little Bao, whose story is told in Boxers, grows up fascinated by the opera’s colorful traditional tales and filled with reverence for the local deities. Appalled by the arrogant behavior of foreign soldiers, Christian missionaries and their Chinese supporters, he eventually becomes a leader of the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fist, fighting under the slogan “Support the Ch’ing! Destroy the Foreigner!” The protagonist of Saints—an unlucky, unwanted, unnamed fourth daughter—is known only as Four-Girl until she’s christened Vibiana upon her conversion to Catholicism. Beaten by her family for her beliefs, she finds refuge and friendship with foreign missionaries, making herself a target for the Boxers. Scrupulously researched, the narratives make a violent conflict rarely studied in U.S. schools feel immediate, as Yang balances historical detail with humor and magical realism. Ch’in Shihhuang, the first emperor of China, and Joan of Arc serve as Bao’s and Vibiana’s respective spiritual guides; the rich hues of the protagonists’ visions, provided by colorist Lark Pien, contrast effectively with the muted earth tones of their everyday lives. The restrained script often, and wisely, lets Yang’s clear, clean art speak for itself. This tour de force fearlessly asks big questions about culture, faith, and identity and refuses to offer simple answers. (bibliography) (Graphic historical fiction. 12 & up)

THE LUCY VARIATIONS

Zarr, Sara Little, Brown (320 pp.) $17.99 | May 7, 2013 978-0-316-20501-6

Having publicly abandoned a promising piano career after her grandmother died while Lucy Beck-Moreau was a continent away preparing to perform, the 16-year-old struggles to figure out the place of music in her life apart from her

family’s expectations. What makes Lucy’s story especially appealing is the very realistic way this “entitled brat” (as grandfather called her) acts out as she experiments with new identities. Prone to adolescent crushes, she obsesses about an English teacher, impulsively kisses a serviceman met in a candy shop and falls hard for her brother’s new piano teacher, Will Devi. Lucy is 64

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

impressively privileged: Old family money makes it possible for her to wear expensive clothes and attend an exclusive school; the family housekeeper provides important support. She also hurts. As the book opens, eight months after the death of the grandmother she still misses, she’s futilely performing CPR on her brother’s former teacher, dead of a stroke in the middle of a piano lesson. The third-person narration focuses entirely on Lucy but allows readers enough distance to help them understand her behavior in ways Lucy cannot. Occasional flashbacks fill out the back story. The combination of sympathetic main character and unusual social and cultural world makes this satisfying coming-of-age story stand out. (Fiction. 12-18)

PALACE OF SPIES

Zettel, Sarah Harcourt (368 pp.) $16.99 | Nov. 5, 2013 978-0-544-07411-8 Series: Palace of Spies, 1 A rollicking spy caper in corsets. In 1716 London, gimlet-eyed Peggy is 16 and orphaned, living off the charity of her beloved cousin’s family. When her grim, unsentimental uncle arranges a marriage of convenience to a brute, Peggy’s adventure begins. In desperation, she accepts the help of Mr. Tinderflint, a mysterious stranger who claims to have known her mother and offers her an outlandish escape. When she finds herself in the court of King George I, having assumed the identity of a maid of honor (now secretly and suspiciously deceased) in the Princess of Wales’ entourage, her own skepticism about the plausibility of the scheme is part of the fun. Ostensibly there to spy for her employer, she quickly learns that all is not as it seems, and she’s left to suss out the motivations of both her friends and enemies while staying one step ahead of them all. In less adept hands, this would be formulaic folderol, but Zettel arms her narrator with a rapier wit; Peggy is observant and winningly funny as she recounts the intrigues, flirtations and dangers she encounters at court. The tale is studded with rich period descriptions of the foods, fashions and foibles of royal protocols. This witty romp will delight fans of historical fiction as well as mystery lovers. (Mystery/historical fiction. 12 & up)

This Issue’s Contributors # Kim Becnel • Kimberly Brubaker Bradley • Sophie Brookover • Louise Brueggemann Timothy Capehart • Ann Childs • Carol Edwards • Brooke Faulkner • Laurie Flynn • Judith Gire • Kathleen T. Isaacs • Deborah Kaplan • Joy Kim • K. Lesley Knieriem • Angela Leeper Ellen Loughran • Joan Malewitz • Hillias J. Martin • Michelle H. Martin PhD • Rachel G. Payne • John Edward Peters • Susan Pine • Rebecca Rabinowitz • Nancy Thalia Reynolds Leslie L. Rounds • Katie Scherrer • Dean Schneider • Stephanie Seales • Karyn N. Silverman Jennifer Sweeney • Monica Wyatt

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book s th at w ill get

you r pu lse pou n ding

THE SIN-EATER’S CONFESSION

NOWHERE TO RUN

Ilsa J. Bick Carolrhoda Lab

Claire J. Griffin Namelos

Stationed in Afghanistan, medic Ben spends a long day drafting a detailed confession about the tragedy that threw his life off course two years earlier.

This brief debut packs a serious punch and will leave readers stunned with gifted track star Calvin’s grim options.

VORTEX

DELILAH DIRK AND THE TURKISH LIEUTENANT

S.J. Kincaid Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins

Tony Cliff Illus. by Tony Cliff First Second/Roaring Brook

In Cliff ’s swashbuckling print debut, a tea-loving Turkish janissary must choose his future path after his quiet life is turned upside down by an encounter with a brash adventuress.

Kincaid’s sequel to Insignia (2012) moves beyond derivative fun to real depth.

DARK TRIUMPH

Robin LaFevers Houghton Mifflin

EARTH GIRL

Janet Edwards Pyr/Prometheus Books A disabled teen archaeologist works in fascinating, hazardous conditions on a far-future Earth.

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An assassin with a will of steel fights her way through deadly palace deceptions, sickening sexual servitude and baffling assignments from her convent, becoming a major player in Brittany’s 15th-century resistance of French occupation.

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

book s th at w ill get

you r pu lse pou n ding

ENRIQUE’S JOURNEY

( con t.)

GOLDEN BOY

Sonia Nazario Delacorte

Tara Sullivan Putnam

Some call Habo a zeruzeru—a zero-zero—nothing. Others willingly pursue the riches his albino body parts will bring on the black market in Sullivan’s intense debut.

BLACK HELICOPTERS

Blythe Woolston Candlewick

THE WAR WITHIN THESE WALLS

Aline Sax Illus. by Caryl Strzelecki Eerdmans

A chilling exploration of the life, motivations and strategies of a young American suicide bomber.

The sights, sounds and smells of the Warsaw ghetto assail readers’ senses in a raw, brutal telling of the unimaginable horror of that time and that place.

best nonfiction & teen books of 2013

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