books
We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker Henry Holt and Co., $27.99 Duchess Day Radley is a thirteen-year-old self-proclaimed outlaw. Rules are for other people. She is the fierce protector of her five-yearold brother, Robin, and the parent to her mother, Star, a single mom incapable of taking care of herself, let alone her two kids. Walk has never left the coastal California town where he and Star grew up. He may have become the chief of police, but he’s still trying to heal the old wound of having given the testimony that sent his best friend, Vincent King, to prison decades before. And he's in overdrive protecting Duchess and her brother. Now, thirty years later, Vincent is being released. And Duchess and Walk must face the trouble that comes with his return. We Begin at the End is an extraordinary novel about two kinds of families—the ones we are born into and the ones we create. Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought A.I. to Google, Facebook, and the World by Cade Metz Dutton, $28 Long dismissed as a technology of the distant future, artificial intelligence was a project consigned to the fringes of the scientific community. Then two researchers changed everything. One was a 64-yearold computer science professor who didn’t drive and didn’t fly because he could no longer sit down—but still made his way across North America for the moment that would define a new age of technology. The other was a 36-year-old neuroscientist and chess prodigy who laid claim to being the greatest game player of all time before vowing to build a machine that could do anything the human brain could do. They took two very different paths to that lofty goal, and they disagreed on how quickly it would arrive. But both were soon drawn into the heart of the tech industry. Their ideas drove a new kind of arms race, spanning Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and OpenAI, a new lab founded by Silicon Valley king20
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pin Elon Musk. But some believed that China would beat them all to the finish line. Genius Makers dramatically presents the fierce conflict among national interests, shareholder value, the pursuit of scientific knowledge, and the very human concerns about privacy, security, bias, and prejudice. Win by Harlan Coben Grand Central Publishing, $29 Over twenty years ago, the heiress Patricia Lockwood was abducted during a robbery of her family’s estate, then locked inside an isolated cabin for months. Patricia escaped, but so did her captors— and the items stolen from her family were never recovered. Until now. On the Upper West Side, a recluse is found murdered alongside two objects of note: a stolen Vermeer painting and a leather suitcase bearing the initials WHL3. For the first time in years, the authorities have a lead. Windsor Horne Lockwood III doesn’t know how his suitcase and his family's stolen painting ended up with a dead man. But his interest is piqued when the FBI tells him that the man who kidnapped his cousin was also behind an act of domestic terrorism—and that the conspirators may still be at large. The two cases have baffled the FBI for decades, but Win has three things the FBI doesn't: a personal connection to the case; an ungodly fortune; and his own unique brand of justice. Vogue Paris: 100 Years by the Editors of Vogue Abrams, $65.00 A visually engaging history of the 100year-old fashion authority Vogue Paris Always a defender of artistic and literary creation, Vogue Paris, more than other publications, makes fashion a cultural and societal topic as much as an object of fantasy. With photographs, drawings, and magazines, this book will highlight how Vogue Paris plays a major and singular role in the diffusion of Parisian style. n
