NEW BOOKS

Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention

by Ben Wilson Doubleday; 464 pages November 10, 2020

In the two hundred millennia of our existence, nothing has shaped us more profoundly than the city. Historian Ben Wilson, author of bestselling and awardwinning books on British history, now tells the grand, glorious story of how city living has allowed human culture to flourish. Beginning with Uruk, the world's first city, dating to 5000 BC and memorably portrayed in the Epic of Gilgamesh, he shows us that cities were never a necessity but that once they existed their density created such a blossoming of human endeavor—producing new professions, forms of art, worship, and trade—that they kick-started nothing less than civilization.

Guiding readers through famous cities over 7,000 years, he reveals the innovations driven by each. Lively, erudite, page turning, and irresistible, Metropolis is a grand tour of human achievement.

Fossil Men: The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind

by Kermit Pattison William Morrow; 544 pages November 10, 2020

In 1994, a team led by fossil-hunting legend Tim White uncovered the bones of a human ancestor in Ethiopia. Radiometric dating indicated the skeleton was 4.4 million years old, more than a million years older than “Lucy.” Kermit Pattison brings into focus a cast of eccentric, obsessive scientists: Tim White— an exacting and unforgiving fossil hunter whose virtuoso skills in the field were matched only by his propensity for making enemies; Gen Suwa, a Japanese savan; Owen Lovejoy, a onetime creationistturned-paleoanthropologist; and the Leakeys, for decades the most famous family in paleoanthropology.

Fossil Men is popular science at its best, and a must read for fans of Jared Diamond, Richard Dawkins, and Edward O. Wilson.

The Best of Me

by David Sedaris Little, Brown and Company; 400 pages November 3, 2020

For more than twenty-five years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre. A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned to the world outside. It opens our eyes to what is at absurd and moving about our daily existence. And it is almost impossible to read without laughing. Now, for the first time collected in one volume, the author brings us his funniest and most memorable work. But if all you expect to find in Sedaris’s work is the deft and sharply observed comedy for which he became renowned, you may be surprised to discover that his words bring more warmth than mockery, more fellow-feeling than derision. Nowhere is this clearer than in his writing about his loved ones. In these pages, Sedaris explores falling in love and staying together, recognizing his own aging not in the mirror but in the faces of his siblings, losing one parent and coming to terms—at long last—with the other.

Taken together, the stories in The Best of Me reveal the wonder and delight Sedaris takes in the surprises life brings him. No experience, he sees, is quite as he expected—it’s often harder, more fraught, and certainly weirder— but sometimes it is also much richer and more wonderful.

Bag Man: The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover-up, and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House

by Rachel Maddow and Michael Yarvitz Crown; 304 pages December 8, 2020

Is it possible for a sitting vice president to direct a vast criminal enterprise within the halls of the White House? To have one of the most brazen corruption scandals in American history play out while nobody’s paying attention? And for that scandal to be all but forgotten decades later?

The year was 1973, and Spiro T. Agnew, the former governor of Maryland, was Richard Nixon’s second-in-command. Long on firebrand rhetoric and short on political experience, Agnew had carried out a bribery and extortion ring in office for years, when—at the height of Watergate—three young federal prosecutors discovered his crimes and launched a mission to take him down before it was too late, before Nixon’s impending downfall elevated Agnew to the presidency. The self-described “counterpuncher” vice president did everything he could to bury their investigation: dismissing it as a “witch hunt,” riling up his partisan base, making the press the enemy, and, with a crumbling circle of loyalists, scheming to obstruct justice in order to survive.

From Hang Time to Prime Time: Business, Entertainment, and the Birth of the Modern-Day NBA

by Pete Croatto Atria; 384 pages December 1, 2020

Perfect for fans of Moneyball and The Book of Basketball, this vivid, thoroughly entertaining, and well-researched book explores the NBA’s surge in popularity in the 1970s and 1980s and its transformation into a global cultural institution. Far beyond simply being a sports league, the NBA has become an entertainment and pop culture juggernaut. From all kinds of team logo merchandise to officially branded video games and players crossing over into reality television, film, fashion lines, and more, there is an inseparable line between sports and entertainment. But only four decades ago, this would have been unthinkable.

Featuring writing that leaps off the page with energy and wit, journalist and basketball fan Pete Croatto takes us behind the scenes to the meetings that lead to the monumental American Basketball Association–National Basketball Association merger in 1976, revolutionizing the NBA’s image. He pays homage to legendary talents including Julius “Dr. J” Erving, Magic Johnson, and Michael Jordan and reveals how two polar-opposite rookies, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, led game attendance to skyrocket and racial lines to dissolve. n