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Distinguished critic, editor and writer Anatole Broyard spent 18 years penning literary criticism for the New York Times, while cultivating a reputation as a highly sophisticated, elegant artisan and scholar. But he was also living a lie that dated back to the ’20s, when his family moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn from New Orleans. Broyard’s parents were light-skinned blacks, something he concealed from even his closest friends as well as his children until his death from prostate cancer in 1990 (even his death certificate identified him as white).

His daughter Bliss Broyard’s stunning new book One Drop: My Father’s Hidden Life A True Story of Race and Family Secrets illuminates the Broyard story, though it’s as much a chronicle of her struggle as her father’s. Both she and her brother Todd grew up as whites, facing none of the problems associated with skin color routinely addressed by individuals of other races on a daily basis. Broyard researched her family’s history in hopes of better understanding not only her father’s reasons for the deception, but its long-term impact.

The results are alternately fascinating, sad and revealing. Crossing the nation from New York to Los Angeles to New Orleans, Broyard discovered many of the things her father loved (dancing, Afro-Cuban sounds, jazz) were cultural retentions from his youth that he didn’t want to abandon. But he incorporated these passions, plus his interest in famous writers and personalities like Kafka and Philip Roth, into a personality that never discussed or acknowledged the subject of race or origin.

Broyard’s book is also an ongoing dialogue on race: its murky nature, and the fact that so much of what people call themselves is determined by environment, parental influence and societal attitudes. For many years Bliss Broyard never knew or considered what it meant to be black in America, and she’s still grappling with it after completing this book. But she understands that her father made a choice he deemed would give him maximum freedom and social mobility. She’s still dealing with the fallout from discovering, then examining, his decision. Ron Wynn writes for Nashville City Paper and other publications.

In the late 1970s, millions of little girls cut their hair into a short, bouncy wedge, signed up for ice skating lessons and tried to emulate their idol’s signature move, the Hamill camel. Dorothy Hamill’s 1976 Olympic gold medal and subsequent international touring reinvigorated ice skating in the United States, and brought a level of athleticism to the sport that has become the norm. Despite being the darling of the ice skating world for decades, however, Hamill’s life wasn’t the picture-perfect image seen on television.

Hamill narrates A Skating Life, her new memoir, with clinical dispassion. The story of her formative years is one of nomadic travel from rink to rink and coach to coach in pursuit of better training; the only constant was her emotionally distant mother, who drove her to higher achievement. But her mother was absent for the pinnacle of Hamill’s career, her gold medal performance at the Innsbruck games, something that puzzled and hurt Hamill for years.

Unprepared to live on her own after she turned professional, Hamill found herself lost amid the complexities of managing her superstar career. Public adoration of her remained high, however, and it was the act of skating, meeting fans and the freedom of the ice that provided stability, even through her turbulent relationship with first husband Dean Paul Martin (son of Dean Martin), who was killed in a plane crash, and her second marriage to a man who stole her money and habitually cheated on her. After the failure of her second marriage, Hamill reconciled with her estranged parents, who we learn expected continual monetary payback for their sacrifices when she was an amateur. This reconciliation, plus a recognition of the family’s depressive medical history, brought focus back to Hamill’s life. The bright spot for Hamill is her daughter Alexandra, who became the skater’s reason for pushing forward through the trials.

Hamill is still active in the skating community, and her story will give inspiration to anyone striving toward a seemingly impossible dream or dealing with obstacles, whether physical, emotional or mental. Kelly Koepke was one of those little girls sporting Hamill’s signature haircut.

<b>A boomer’s frothy ode to Starbucks</b> Michael Gates Gill was accustomed to things going his way. The son of <i>New Yorker</i> writer Brendan Gill, he spent his childhood summers at a lovely country house, attended Yale, and, with help from his connections, landed a job at a prestigious ad agency. Though Gill routinely missed family milestones to tend to work-related tasks, he was fired after 25 years when a new team took over the company. He tried to make a go of it as a consultant; indeed his previous book, <i>Fired Up! The Proven Principles of Successful Entrepreneurs</i>, addresses the transition from a corporate job to self-employment. By age 63, however, he was nearly broke, looking for a place to live (after a divorce due to his extramarital affair), and in need of health insurance, as he admits in his latest book, <b>How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else</b>.

Which is when he found Starbucks, or rather it found him. One desolate day, Gill filled out an application and was hired to work in a Manhattan store. He shamefacedly donned a green barista’s apron and entered a world in which he was a minority: His colleagues were African-American and decades younger, and he was the least skilled person in the room. Gill becomes adept at his new job; along the way, he muses on his breathtakingly biased former self: Race, social class, age you name it, he condescended about it from his former position at the top of American society as a member of the Ruling Class. By memoir’s end, the reader will have learned much about life as a barista, from company policy to coffee tastings. Gill compares his plight to that of baby boomers nationwide, and reflects on his new perspective. Some readers may find elements of the book hard to swallow Gill’s wonderment at his scrappy young coworkers is patronizing and his devotion to another large corporation cloying, especially considering his insistence that he is a changed man. This barista’s story ends on an up-note, though; he transfers to a Starbucks near his apartment in a tony suburb, and has a movie in development with Tom Hanks as the lead. It does seem as if his Starbucks job gave Gill new hope; it will be interesting to see if he remains a barista, and whether he retains the lessons he learned as a Starbucks employee. <i>Linda M. Castellitto once worked as a barista. Her favorite task: manning the drive-through window.</i>