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 kingpin 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

Hometown hero Jazmine Sullivan has long been a hero of mine, not only for her deep, commanding voice and crisply atmospheric (self-) productions through (self-) penned, genre-jumbling compositions, but also her lyrical mien—one that was forever vulnerable yet take-no-prisoners strong, sexual and commanding. For her 2021 Heaux Tales album (many times Grammy-nominated for 2022 in the R&B category) and this year’s deluxe expanded edition, Heaux Tales, Mo’ Tales, Sullivan and her friends—including Insecure’s Issa Rae and vocalist Ari

Lenox—tell their own stories of shame, strength, sexuality, supplication, denial, hurt, and gain in a way that is as old as every soul music trope—and as new as a freshly blossomed flower. See this show.

Brockhampton, March 22, The Fillmore

Here’s a funny story: Brockhampton started out of the gate calling itself a boy band when instead they were closer to a hip hop harmony act with the weirdest of sonically arranged insurrections occurring through each song. Hardly pop, every Brockhampton track was an epic, and every one of its albums more brilliant than the last. And now, they say they're breaking up and that this is a united Brockhampton last tour. Maybe they’re lying, but why risk it?

NCAA March Madness, March 25 and March 27, the Wells Fargo Center

I know, Philly. You’ve been hurt this season on the basketball tip. Ben Simmons let you down. James Harden can’t get here and working with the 76ers fast enough. I’m psyched then to check the 2022 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament—March Madness—which brings the much-needed joy of college balling and hoops hoopla to town for the East Regional Sweet 16 and Elite Eight rounds of the tournament. Do this, Philly. It will heal you. n five decades expanded Lehigh’s collections and museum operations with operatic flair. He made the campus a center for abstract outdoor sculpture, classic jazz photographs by university graduate William Gottlieb and African portraits of Barack Obama. The gallery includes Viera’s gift of a video manipulating scenes from “West Side Story,” a sign of his Falstaffian gusto. (Zoellner Arts Center, 420 E. Packer Ave., Bethlehem; 610-7583615; luag.org)

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Stephanie Nagy customizes customer service at Spin Me Round Records, the Valley’s biggest, baddest music store. The animated owner may promote an old David Bowie album by chanting the cha-cha-cha lick from his song “Changes.” She may spin Lana Del Rey’s catalog by noting that the smart singer-songwriter earned a philosophy degree from Fordham University. Her discjockey jive fills a room as long as two bowling lanes. There’s plenty of space to comb neatly arranged, easily reachable shelves and bins with plenty of neat selections: Amy Winehouse remixes; the Del Vikings’ rare “Come Go” LP; a 45 of Simon & Garfunkel’s “My Little Town” with bonus singles from both boys. Bargains galore can be found among DVDs, books and boxed sets; four CDs of Bruce Springsteen’s “Tracks” cost me a mere 10 bucks. Nagy’s zesty spirit also sparks the store’s web site, a funky forum for news of new releases. (151 Palmer Park Mall, Easton; 610-258-8885; spinmeroundstore.com)

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This month marks the 20th anniversary of Tulum, the extremely popular, extremely good Beth-Mex eatery named for a Mexican city. Behind the extremely slender rustic wood façade is a beehive kitchen that makes hefty dishes with fresh, snappy ingredients. A relatively short menu has a long list of tasty flavorings: sweet potatoes; toasted almonds; the bittersweet chocolate sauce known as mole. My favorite choice is the Mayan, a burly burrito smoothed by guacamole and sharpened by grilled pineapple salsa. Tacos, quesadillas and wings can be eaten at a handful of tables, a counter or a backyard patio. Tulum is a great place to work off a hunger worked up at gallery or greenway. (17 W. Morton St., Bethlehem; 610-691-8300; tulumbethmex.com) n who infiltrates a gang of criminals plotting a diamond heist. He endears himself, in particular, to Mr. White (Harvey Keitel), a career thief whose trust in his treacherous companion only grows when Orange takes a bullet in the gut. Through the rest of the robbery’s fallout, the two men grow closer, and their backstories (along with a few other characters like Michael Madsen’s psychotic Mr. Blonde) are filled in via criss-crossing flashbacks. The out-of-order storytelling, along with the emotive performances by Keitel and Roth, make the moment when the mask finally drops, when White sees Orange for who he really is, that much more powerful and tragic. (Streaming on HBOMax.)

Damage (1992, Louis Malle, U.K./France) A London-based government minister, Dr. Stephen Fleming (Jeremy Irons), embarks on an affair with his son’s girlfriend, Anna (Juliette Binoche), in Louis Malle’s acidic drama. Despite the copious nudity, eroticism is blunted throughout. The sex scenes between Stephen and Anna have an air of guilt hanging about them since the participants are both so completely removed from their moral centers. It’s all feral coupling, a rageful sort of release from the bourgeois existence they’re each expected to uphold. It’s inevitable that the affair will be discovered. But how that happens is more shocking (tawdry in all the right ways) than you may think. In the disturbing back half, Miranda Richardson, playing Stephen’s prim and proper wife, gets to wrathfully let loose, and in the process steal the movie away from her costars. (Available via Amazon.) n

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