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Audio: Strike four

Feature by Sukey Howard

After completing the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling started writing a mystery series under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. And happily, her virtuosic talent as a spinner of stories with intricate plots and singular characters is front and center again. Lethal White is the fourth in the Cormoran Strike series, and it’s perfectly narrated by Robert Glenister, who can ace a wonderfully wide range of British accents. In Lethal White, Strike, a London private investigator with a reputation for unraveling high-profile cases, and his able, lovely (yes, their attraction thrums below the surface) assistant, Robin, are in the thick of it, investigating political blackmail and the murder of a Tory minister, all wrapped in a blur of populist politics, replete with a wild cast that includes radical lefties, conservative snobs and a mentally ill young man who desperately wants Strike’s help. After this 22-hour treat, I can’t wait for Strike five.

FINAL CHALLENGE
Henry Worsley was 13 when he read Ernest Shackleton’s The Heart of the Antarctic, which detailed Shackleton’s expedition to the Antarctic in the early 20th century. Worsley fell under Shackleton’s spell, and the book shaped his own future as an explorer. The White Darkness, originally published in The New Yorker, is David Grann’s cogent, intensely drawn portrait of Worsley, his fascinating life, his lifelong obsession with the Antarctic and his relentless passion to follow in Shackleton’s footsteps and succeed where he didn’t: crossing Antarctica on foot, alone. Only two and a half hours long, The White Darkness is one of the most powerful audios of the year, made so by Grann’s deftly crafted prose and Will Patton’s unwavering performance, delivered with conviction and calm urgency. Worsley eventually made two successful Antarctic expeditions with teams in 2008 and 2011 and went back for a fateful third expedition alone in 2015. You’ll feel the icy cold, his exhaustion, courage and formidable will as he battles the “obliterating conditions” on his transcontinental quest. Perhaps you’ll come to understand what drove him and the brave few among us to challenge frontiers, regardless of risk.

TOP PICK IN AUDIO
In her new book, These Truths: A History of the United States, Jill Lepore writes, “The past is an inheritance, a gift, and a burden. . . . There’s nothing for it but to get to know it.” To make our past more knowable, Lepore has penned an astonishingly concise, exuberant and elegant one-volume American history that begins with Columbus and ends with Trump. Lepore questions, as Alexander Hamilton did, “whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice.” Lepore tells us upfront that much historical detail is left out; this is a political history, an explanation of the origins of our democratic institutions, and it lets history’s vast array of characters speak in their own words when possible. It also makes clear that slavery is an intimate, inextricable part of the American story. This is the past we need to know. Listen closely as Lepore reads with unexpected pizazz.

 

This article was originally published in the December 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Three absorbing audiobooks for all your holiday travels.
NonfictionAmerican History

Trouble in the City by the Bay

Feature by Keith Herrell

Ah, San Francisco—a tourist mecca with cable cars, the Golden Gate, steep hills and more. But the city’s cosmopolitan image doesn’t quite match up with its rough-and-tumble, often racist history, as demonstrated by two new books that might cause you to look at its past differently.

Already a bustling seaport while Los Angeles was still in its infancy, San Francisco in the mid-19th century was a major entry point to the American West and beyond. At the height of the California gold rush, thousands of men streamed in from China in search of jobs. Women followed, of course, and many encountered challenging and dangerous conditions—including involuntary prostitution. In The White Devil’s Daughters: The Women Who Fought Slavery in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Julia Flynn Siler recounts the history of these girls and women, as well as the social pioneers who battled Chinatown gang leaders and the city bureaucracy to rescue them from sex slavery and indentured servitude.

At the center of the story is Donaldina Cameron, a Presbyterian missionary nicknamed the “White Devil” by her many opponents in an attempt to keep their victims from fleeing to her. Operating from the Occidental Mission Home at the edge of Chinatown, Cameron provided a refuge for escapees, even seeking them out and spiriting them away from their captors. (Ironically, once safely at the mission, the girls and young women were subject to strict supervision, partly for their safety, and required to convert to Christianity.)

Siler tells the stories of many of these women in episodic fashion, with short chapters that keep the reader turning the pages. Heart-tugging personal stories include the history of Tien Fuh Wu, who was brought in the arms of a policeman to live at the mission as a child, and Tye Leung, who fled at age 12 to avoid an arranged marriage with an older man. Both women became trusted aides at the mission.

Iconic San Francisco historical events are prominent in Siler’s book, including the 1906 earthquake and fire and two outbreaks of the bubonic plague in the first decade of the 20th century. David K. Randall focuses on the plague in Black Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America From the Bubonic Plague. Chinatown is again the locus of events, as the first victim of the city’s plague outbreak in 1900 was a Chinese immigrant, and city officials immediately ordered a quarantine of the neighborhood. 

Racist leaders demanded that Chinatown be burned down, and corporate interests minimized the threat of danger to “European” residents of the city. It took a man of science with a compelling personal story, U.S. Public Health Service official Rupert Blue, to convince civic and corporate leaders that only the eradication of rats—and the fleas that carry the plague virus—would stop the disease’s spread. Randall brings Blue to life through letters to his family and co-workers and convincingly maintains that, had his efforts not been successful, the disease would have spread across the continent and San Francisco would not be the dream destination we know today.

Ah, San Francisco—a tourist mecca with cable cars, the Golden Gate, steep hills and more. But the city’s cosmopolitan image doesn’t quite match up with its rough-and-tumble, often racist history, as demonstrated by two new books that might cause you to look at its past differently.

NonfictionAmerican History

Going South

Feature by Sam Worley

Two new tomes of nonfiction grapple with the South’s racist history while rustling up hope that this complex region can lead a better way forward.

Recent years have seen the massacre of black worshippers at a South Carolina church, fierce debates over the memorialization of white-supremacist American leaders and the ascendancy of a president who admires Andrew Jackson, a slaveholding Tennessee “populist.” As progress toward racial equality seems ever in danger of being erased, Americans have sought to make sense of the present by looking to the past—and looking south.

Two decades after Confederates in the Attic, Massachusetts-based journalist Tony Horwitz dips back below the Mason-Dixon Line and into an ongoing national conflict in Spying on the South. The book retraces an antebellum journey undertaken by Frederick Law Olmsted, who explored the southern U.S. as the country careered toward civil war. Olmsted wrote dispatches for northern newspapers that were later collected into The Cotton Kingdom, a window into a society structured around slavery. Horwitz similarly seeks to shed light on the region. Pondering the “inescapable echoes of the 1850s” in today’s politics, he travels down the Ohio River on a coal barge, finds the remnants of a massive cotton and sugar plantation in Louisiana and even embarks on an uncomfortable mule ride through Texas. Horwitz is an amiable narrator who marries a journalist’s knack for scene-setting and chatting folks up with the ability to tell a good historical tale. Back up north, he concludes with a walk through New York’s Central Park, the crowning jewel in Olmsted’s subsequent career as a landscape architect.

Jacquelyn Dowd Hall’s Sisters and Rebels is a master class in how to write history. The founding director of the Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Hall tells the story of three sisters from the Lumpkin family, whose father was a violent Reconstruction-era Klan member. While one daughter followed her father’s Lost Cause ideology, more compelling are the two who struck further out. Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin became involved in interracial organizing with the YWCA, enjoyed a prolific career as a sociologist and authored The Making of a Southerner, which explores the roots of racism and sexism in her own childhood. Grace Lumpkin moved to New York, joined the labor movement and wrote the influential proletarian novel To Make My Bread. Hall deftly situates each moment of these women’s lives within its historical context, producing a vital, timely narrative about how attitudes are formed and how they can be reshaped. This triple biography is also a corrective to histories of the South that emphasize its white male bigots, as Hall places women’s progressive political and intellectual work at the book’s heart. Despite being about a single family, Sisters and Rebels is breathtaking in its historical scope and flawlessly executed. The arc of the Lumpkin women raises at least the possibility of redemption—that the sins of the father need not be repeated by the daughters.

Two new tomes of nonfiction grapple with the South’s racist history while rustling up hope that this complex region can lead a better way forward.

NonfictionWomen's HistoryMusicFashionAmerican History

Gift books: For musicians, audiophiles and anyone with a song in their heart

Feature by Hilli Levin

Whether you’re shopping for a burgeoning Bach or someone who can’t carry a tune in a bucket, these books will play on any music lover’s heartstrings.

What do you get for the music obsessive on your list in the age of streaming? Skip the Spotify gift subscriptions and try one of these lovingly curated coffee table books instead. Whether you’re buying for a Woodstock fan who wants to relive the good ol’ days or for someone who’s always hoping to discover their next favorite artist, these are sure to please the person at your holiday gathering who always asks, “Hey, do you mind if I change the music?”

She Can Really Lay It Down by Rachel Frankel
“The present—if long overdue—push toward a more progressive, feminist reading of our cultural history requires disabusing ourselves of known canons, and some pretty deeply entrenched ideas about the history of popular music,” writes Amanda Petrusich in the foreword to the celebratory book She Can Really Lay It Down: 50 Rebels, Rockers, and Musical Revolutionaries. Author Rachel Frankel gamely sets out to help us reconsider the history of popular music with short but thorough essays on big names like Beyoncé, Selena and Dolly Parton. However, the most exciting pages in Frankel’s book shine a light on figures like guitarist Sister Rosetta Tharpe, folk musician Violeta Parra, South African singer-songwriter Miriam Makeba and other women who have been overlooked for too long. This incisive compilation delivers more than just surface-level girl power, and it would make an excellent gift for anyone with a deep interest in music, creativity and popular culture. I’d especially recommend putting this in the hands of a teenage girl.

Supreme Glamour by Mary Wilson
From the vantage point of 2019, it’s easy to wax poetic about the essential give-and-take between fashion and music, but that relationship certainly wasn’t a given when the Supremes began performing together and crafting their iconic looks in 1961. Mary Wilson, a founding member and anchor of the legendary musical group, takes us through the group’s sartorial evolution with Supreme Glamour, a collection of more than 400 photographs of their most influential sequined, bedazzled and brightly colored outfits. Wilson’s personal musings about the group’s journey perfectly accompany the glossy full-page spreads of dazzling gowns embellished with crystals and pearls, sequined show-stoppers seen on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and marabou-trimmed couture made for their Broadway performances. Fashion lovers will especially appreciate the attention to detail, with notes that include the material, embellishments and notable appearances of the outfits along with other interesting historical tidbits.

Country Music: An Illustrated History by Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns
As PBS devotees know, a new Ken Burns documentary is cause for celebration, and “Country Music” is already being hailed as one of his best. Although a big ol’ coffee table book that ties in with a television series can be a tough sell, Country Music: An Illustrated History is definitely a worthy companion piece. Country music afficionados are often left a little high and dry, as music journalists tend to reserve their ink for rock ’n’ roll heroes. But authors Dayton Duncan and Ken Burns dive deep into the roots and rise of this genre: the African American banjo players and Scottish American fiddlers who laid the foundations of the genre, the gospel-infused songs from groups like the Carter Family that helped radio stations get on board, the surprising rise of Hank Williams, the storied Nashville Sound of the 1960s, the outlaw swagger of Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter, the rise of modern pop-country and everything in between. This tome packs in hundreds of rare photographs, excellent historical asides and interviews with influential figures like singer-songwriter Emmylou Harris. I’d wager that this will be one of the more popular gifts for music lovers this year.

Woodstock Live: 50 Years by Julien Bitoun
It’s the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, and, like it or not, this music festival on a dairy farm in upstate New York remains one of the most influential cultural events in modern history. Long before “festival fashion” was even a part of the zeitgeist, more than 500,000 Woodstock attendees jammed out in harmony with each other, in the rain and mud, while watching performances that have reached near-mythological status. Guitarist and author Julien Bitoun revisits the weekend with Woodstock Live: 50 Years, an attractive giftbook that includes a short and reverential summary of each performance, along with every performer’s setlist, their accompanying musicians, the amount of time they spent on stage and striking photographs from each gig. Bitoun begins with Richie Havens’ improvised opening set at 5:07 on Friday and ends with Jimi Hendrix’s guitar-burning closer on Monday morning, then wraps it all up in an extensive epilogue that runs through notable absentees, the most iconic guitars played at the festival and how the weekend is remembered today. This will make a great gift for anyone hoping to relive the experience, or those who dream about traveling back in time to attend.

What do you get the music obsessive on your list in the age of streaming? Skip the Spotify gift subscriptions and try one of these lovingly curated coffee table books instead.
NonfictionFictionYA FictionYAAmerican History

Book Clubs: Immigration sagas

Feature by Julie Hale

In these stories of farewells and fresh starts, crafted with discernment and compassion, book clubs will find inspiration for vibrant discussion. 

Eitan Green, an Israeli surgeon, is involved in a fateful accident in Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s suspenseful novel Waking Lions. During a late-night drive, Eitan hits and kills an Eritrean man and leaves the scene. When the victim’s wife tracks him down, she agrees to keep silent about the incident if Eitan promises to secretly treat undocumented Eritrean immigrants. Eitan agrees, but the decision leads him into a web of deceit. This razor-sharp examination of the plight of displaced peoples will give reading groups plenty to talk about as it delves into questions of integrity, loyalty and honesty.

For reading groups that enjoy science and social history, Daniel Okrent’s The Guarded Gate  focuses on the eugenics movement in early 20th-century America and how it helped bring about the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act, a law that prevented millions of Europeans from immigrating to the United States. This volume is a sobering, expansive study of discrimination and nativism, but it’s also eminently readable thanks to Okrent’s accessible writing style.

In Rakesh Satyal’s novel No One Can Pronounce My Name, Harit, a middle-aged Indian immigrant, lives with his troubled mother in the Cleveland suburbs. They are each mourning the death of Harit’s sister, Swati, in their own ways. Harit finds an unexpected friend in Ranjana, a fellow immigrant coping with her own losses by secretly writing paranormal romances. Satyal fashions a narrative tinged with melancholy and humor in this rewarding book, which engages with issues of gender roles and family ties.

American Street, Ibi Zoboi’s debut YA novel, tells the story of 16-year-old Fabiola, who leaves Haiti to settle with her mother, Valerie, in Detroit. When they arrive in the United States, Valerie is detained by customs officials. After being taken in by her American cousins, Fabiola grapples with an unfamiliar culture while trying to hold on to the traditions of home. Poignant but hopeful, American Street is a powerful examination of identity and kinship that’s enriched by Zoboi’s use of Haitian mythology. It’s an unforgettable account of the difficulties of assimilation and the experience of being an outsider.

In these stories of farewells and fresh starts, crafted with discernment and compassion, book clubs will find inspiration for vibrant discussion.
Science Fiction & FantasyRomanceNonfictionAudioTechnologyMemoirAmerican History

Lockdown listening: Our favorite quarantine audiobooks

Feature by the editors of BookPage

For years, audiobooks have been our constant companions while cooking, cleaning and gardening—and in the age of COVID-19, we’re spending a lot more time doing those things than we used to. A few of the BookPage editors share the audiobooks that have been keeping us company in quarantine.

Cat, Deputy Editor

You Never Forget Your FirstOf all the quarantine reading and listening I’ve done, no audiobook has inspired more people to ask me for more information than You Never Forget Your First, Alexis Coe’s myth-busting biography of George Washington. Coe contextualizes and humanizes Washington’s victories and losses on the battlefield, his many (many) illnesses, his politics and home life in a whole new way, and it’s made all the more accessible by Brittany Pressley’s wry, clear narration. Most importantly, you’ll explore the hypocrisy in Washington’s fight for liberation from British rule while keeping black people enslaved. For readers interested in thinking critically about American history, this is a good start.

How to Do NothingI didn’t think it was possible to be more chained to my phone—and thus, more uncomfortable with my relationship to social media—but here we are in a pandemic, and nearly all our social interactions are now on screens. Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing has helped temper those feelings by providing guidance to resist the guilt of feeling unproductive and the demands on our attention. I find Rebecca Gibel’s narration to be hypnotic in its dryness, allowing me to reprioritize and realign where I give my focus.

Stephanie, Associate Editor

Red White and Royal BlueMy thoughts have increasingly strayed to the week each year my family spends at a condo on the Florida gulf—specifically, to the books I read on last summer’s trip, one of which was Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue, which feels like an Aaron Sorkin production with the more melodramatic moments of “The Crown.” When I decided to reexperience it via the audiobook, I’m not sure whether I was motivated by a desire to return to the world McQuiston’s ebullient romance between the president’s son and an English prince, to return to the beach itself or to transport myself to a happy moment in a simpler time. Probably a bit of all three. Regardless, the absorbing and rapid-fire story, paired with Ramón de Ocampo’s warm, exuberant narration (and fantastic British accent, when performing Prince Henry’s lines) made for the perfect, swoonworthy escape.

Ninth HouseNinth House is an addicting mystery set at a magical secret society at Yale University, author Leigh Bardugo’s alma mater. Narrators Lauren Fortgang and Michael David Axtell alternate between Galaxy “Alex” Stern and Daniel “Darlington” Arlington; of the two, Fortgang is the standout. Her performance is as sharp as Alex herself, who’s been through a lot before arriving at Yale. Scenes where Alex lets her rage and trauma surface are riveting as Fortgang snarls and performs through clenched teeth. Fortgang’s visceral performance of Alex’s anger makes the rare moments of genuine affection that Alex permits herself—particularly toward Hellie, a close friend, and Pamela Dawes, the society’s in-house researcher—moving in their tenderness, as Fortgang softens her voice to convey Alex’s vulnerability. Anyone looking to be swept up in a story of dark magic in which nothing is as it seems should give Ninth House a try.

Christy, Associate Editor

Heavy audiobookI read a hard copy of Kiese Laymon’s memoir Heavy when it came out in 2018 and loved it—in that had-to-lie-down-for-two-and-a-half-hours-afterward kind of way. (The book is aptly named.) When my professor assigned it for a graduate class I took this spring, I decided to give the award-winning audiobook a try for my second reading. Hearing Laymon’s words in his own voice was even more affecting than reading them on the page. In the audio version, you get the full playfulness of he and LaThon’s middle school riffing on words like “galore” (gal-low), “meager” (mee-guh) and “y’all don’t even know.” You also hear the full tenderness of Laymon’s conversations with his mother, in which they try to tell each other the truth about addiction, abuse, deception and love. When I finished listening to Heavy this time, I still had to lie down afterward to digest its contents—white supremacy, disordered eating and violence against Black Americans, among other things—but since a late afternoon stress-nap was already a staple in my quarantine routine, it turned out to be a perfect pandemic listen.

Trick Mirror audiobookI was two chapters into my hardcover of Trick Mirror when the audiobook became available to check out from the library. (Apparently, I had placed it on hold during pre-COVID times and then, along with all the other trappings of normal life, forgot about it.) Jia Tolentino’s nuanced essays are the sort of reading you want to absorb every word of, so I wasn’t sure the audiobook would be the best fit. But out of curiosity (and a desire to make good on the library’s monthslong waitlist), I checked it out and grabbed my headphones. Next thing I knew, I was three hours in and plumbing the depths of my to-do list for more things to work on so I could keep listening. With an engaging balance between the personal and the reported, Tolentino’s exacting explorations of feminism, the internet and the self lend themselves nicely to audio, as it turns out. And as for my to-do list, her intellectual, no-frills narration provided the perfect soundtrack for taking a walk, doing the dishes, brushing the cats, making banana bread and mending that tear in my duvet cover.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Discover more of our favorite audiobooks.

For years, audiobooks have been our constant companions while cooking, cleaning and gardening—and in the age of COVID-19, we’re spending a lot more time doing those things than we used to. A few of the BookPage editors share the audiobooks that have been keeping us company in quarantine.
NonfictionFood & DrinkBlack HistoryBiographyAmerican History

Fall’s biggest biographies

Feature by BookPage contributors

Big names, big personalities and big legacies. The subjects of this fall’s most captivating biographies need no introduction.

Mad at the World
By William Souder

John Steinbeck just might be the novelist for our time. In his sprawling epic The Grapes of Wrath, he captured Americans’ peculiar yearning for a life not their own, the promise of wealth beyond the veil of desolation and the wretched impossibility of such a promise. Steinbeck’s other epic, East of Eden, illustrates the ragged desperation of human nature, wreaking destruction rather than carrying hope. William Souder’s bracing Mad at the World: A Life of John Steinbeck vividly portrays the brooding and moody writer who could never stop writing and who never fit comfortably into the society in which he lived.

Souder, whose biography of John James Audubon was a Pulitzer finalist, traces Steinbeck’s love of stories to his childhood. As a teenager, Steinbeck immersed himself in Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, which he translated later in life, and in adventure tales and classics such as Treasure Island, Madame Bovary and Crime and Punishment. This early reading gave him glimpses into the shadowy corners of the human heart and provided him with models for telling tales of people engaged in heroic struggles against the injustices of their eras.

Steinbeck was a born storyteller who was a bit out of step with his times; many of his social realist novels appeared during the innovations of modernism. But Steinbeck remains widely read and relevant today, as vibrantly illuminated by Mad at the World.

—Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

★ Eleanor
By David Michaelis

Fueled by 11 years of research, the new biography of Eleanor Roosevelt by David Michaelis (N. C. Wyeth) is both compelling and comprehensive, making use of previously untapped archival sources and interviews. Michaelis, who actually met Roosevelt when he was just 4 years old, trains his careful attention on virtually all aspects of her incredible life and times to craft a fast-moving, engrossing narrative.

Eleanor follows its subject from birth to her death in 1962. Roosevelt’s life journey took her from a shy, often ignored child, whose mother shamed her with the nickname “Granny,” to a dynamic first lady and then a “world maker” when, as one of the country’s first delegates to the United Nations, she spearheaded the adoption of the first Universal Declaration of Human Rights in history. Of course, Eleanor Roosevelt’s life was also entwined with that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Eleanor was so intrinsically linked with the New Deal and World War II, it’s sometimes easy to forget that she was born in 1884 and was almost 36 years old when the 19th Amendment passed in 1920.

Michaelis never neglects the politics and history that marked the life of this remarkable, fascinating woman. At the same time, his impeccable storytelling and seamless integration of dialogue and quotations allow him to create an intimate, lively and emotional portrait that unfolds like a good novel. As America faces another challenging period in its history, there may be no better time for readers to turn to the life of one of our nation’s truly great leaders for inspiration.

—Deborah Hopkinson

His Truth Is Marching On
By Jon Meacham

It’s been only a few months since the death of civil rights giant John Lewis, and though eloquent tributes from leaders like Barack Obama have attempted to sum up his legacy, it will ultimately fall to future generations to fully assess his contributions to the cause of racial equality in America. One of our most prominent contemporary historians, Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham, offers an appreciative early assessment in His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope.

Meacham frankly admits that his book makes no attempt at a full-scale biography of Lewis. Instead, he focuses on the tumultuous period from 1957 to 1966, when Lewis rose from obscurity in a family of sharecroppers in Troy, Alabama, to national prominence in the civil rights movement. This “quietly charismatic, forever courtly, implacably serene” man was motivated by a fierce commitment to nonviolence and above all by his unswerving attachment to the vision he shared with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. of a “beloved community”—in Lewis’ words, “nothing less than the Christian concept of the kingdom of God on earth.”

Meacham makes a persuasive case for his claim that “John Robert Lewis embodied the traits of a saint in the classical Christian sense of the term.” At a moment when events have once again forced Americans to confront the evils of racism, His Truth Is Marching On will inspire both courage and hope.

—Harvey Freedenberg

★ The Man Who Ate Too Much
By John Birdsall

American cookery rests squarely on the shoulders of the late, great James Beard. His life and experiences are extremely well known and have been written about extensively. Yet in his new book, The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard, John Birdsall—a gastronomic expert in his own right, having twice won a James Beard Award—gives foodies a fresh, intimate look at Beard. He writes with candor, wit and vibrancy, as if Beard himself is speaking through Birdsall’s pen, retelling his colorful life and inviting us into his world. And Birdsall doesn’t mince words, delivering a raw, revealing look into how and why Beard had to tread cautiously as he navigated the world as a closeted gay man during the often unforgiving 20th century.

Birdsall’s strength as a food writer shines, with mouthwateringly descriptive prose about cuisine peppered throughout the book. He also provides touchstones to what was going on globally, including both World Wars, the World’s Fair of 1939, the Vietnam War, Watergate and the civil rights movement, giving context for the major events that affected Beard’s life.

The Man Who Ate Too Much is meticulously researched. Additionally, Birdsall’s insightful style allows readers to feel Beard’s successes and failures, highs and lows, and revelations and discoveries as they become deeply familiar with the family, friends, colleagues and rivals who impacted his life.

—Becky Libourel Diamond

★ The Dead Are Arising
By Les Payne and Tamara Payne

Pulitzer Prize winner Les Payne’s monumental and absorbing The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X peers into the gaps left by Malcolm X’s autobiography, taking us more deeply into the intimate details of his life, work and death.

In 1990, investigative reporter Payne began conducting hundreds of interviews with Malcolm X’s family members, childhood friends, classmates and bodyguards, as well as with FBI agents, photographers, U.N. representatives, African revolutionaries and presidents and the two men falsely imprisoned for killing Malcolm X. Drawing on these conversations, Payne traces Malcolm X’s story from his childhood in Omaha, Nebraska, through his teenage years in Lansing, Michigan, where Malcolm learned to resist the racial provocations of his white classmates. Payne chronicles Malcolm X’s time in prison, where fellow inmate John E. Bembry challenged Malcolm X by telling the young prisoner, “If I had some brains, I’d use them.” This encouraged Malcolm X to read all he could and to not only engage others with words but also support those words with facts from experts. In vivid detail, Payne retells the events leading up to Malcolm X’s assassination, offering fresh information about those involved.

The Dead Are Arising is essential reading. Completed after the author’s death in 2018 by Tamara Payne, Les’ daughter and the book’s primary researcher, it captures the vibrant voice of a revolutionary whose words resonate powerfully in our own times.

—Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

★ Red Comet
By Heather Clark

In Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, biographer and Plath scholar Heather Clark lifts the poet’s life from the Persephone myth it has become and examines it in all its complexity. Clark admirably identifies and resists the morbid tendency to look at every moment, every work, as a signpost on the way to Plath’s tragic suicide. She also liberates the supporting cast of Plath’s life from the damning and one-dimensional roles they often occupy as part of the death-myth of Plath’s life. Her husband, Ted Hughes; his lover, Assia Wevill; Plath’s mother, Aurelia Plath—they are not villains but people who created art of their own, who loved and fought with Plath, who were not always good or right.

Clark’s detailed, multidimensional treatment infuses Plath’s life and work with dignity, character and a sense of interiority. We get the full scope of Plath’s incredible talent here, rightfully established as complicated, radiant and worthy of deep consideration. Plath was a genius. She was a woman living in a time of great social restriction for women. She had complicated and human relationships. She was mentally ill, and this mental illness both illumined her work and colored her perspective on the world. All of these things are held alongside one another without conflict in Clark’s book. Red Comet allows Plath to emerge from the shadows, shining in all her intricacy and artistry.

—Anna Spydell

Big names, big personalities and big legacies. The subjects of this fall's most captivating biographies need no introduction.
Mad at the World By William Souder John Steinbeck just might be the novelist for our time.…
NonfictionWomen's HistoryNatureAmerican History

Book Clubs: September 2021

Feature by Julie Hale

These four provocative nonfiction books offer fresh perspectives on our nation.

A first-rate collection of essays gathered from Southern Living and Garden & Gun magazines, Where I Come From: Stories From the Deep South by beloved memoirist Rick Bragg provides unique insights into the author’s corner of America. In these brief but powerful pieces, Bragg’s curiosity ranges far and wide as he reflects upon personal interests (pickup trucks, Southern cuisine, country music) and more universal matters (race and religion). Offering a kaleidoscopic look at the contemporary South, this colorful compilation is sure to inspire rousing discussions. 

David Gessner takes readers on an unforgettable tour of the nation’s monuments and parks in Leave It As It Is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt’s American Wilderness. Gessner gives an overview of the life and conservation work of Theodore Roosevelt and also shows how that work remains significant today as he visits Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Canyon and other sites. Subjects such as environmentalism and the future of public lands will get book clubs talking, and Gessner’s humor and incisive observations make him a wonderful traveling companion.

In Looking for Miss America: A Pageant’s 100-Year Quest to Define Womanhood, Margot Mifflin delivers a fascinating historical survey of the Miss America pageant. Using the contest as a gauge of the advancement of women in America, Mifflin traces its evolution from a tourist attraction in Atlantic City in 1921 to a scholarship contest 100 years later. Her brisk, spirited narrative will entertain readers even as it presents fruitful material for discussion, with topics as wide-ranging as the #MeToo movement and the role of pageants in society.

Ojibwe author David Treuer gives a fresh account of Native American history in The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present. Blending history and reportage with personal narrative, Treuer sets out to show that, contrary to the story told in books such as Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Indigenous culture was not destroyed in the late 19th century. Rather, it is still alive and vibrant today. Authoritative yet accessible, his book is rich in talking points, including contemporary depictions of Native Americans in popular culture and the impact of the American Indian Movement.

These four provocative nonfiction books offer fresh perspectives on our nation.

HistoryAmerican History

The bonds that started a nation

Review by Roger Bishop

The crucial political decisions in the young American republic of the late 18th century were made by relatively few leaders. They knew one another personally, and their face-to-face interaction in social settings had a significant impact on the choices they eventually made. In the words of historian Joseph Ellis, these decisions with long-ranging consequences came about "in a sudden spasm of enforced inspiration and makeshift construction. How this worked is the subject of Ellis' magnificent new study Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. The author knows the terrain well. His American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson received the National Book Award in 1996, and Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams is regarded as one of the best books on our second president.

Ellis eloquently conveys the interconnected personal relationships and overriding issues that set the nation's course. The eight most influential leaders he focuses on are: George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and Abigail and John Adams. The extraordinary mix of such diverse personalities with strongly held opinions helped check each other. Despite their differences, and particularly when contrasted with what was happening in France during the same period, it is noteworthy that the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr in 1804 was the only case in "the revolutionary generation when political difference ended in violence and death rather than in ongoing argument. The author says the Jefferson-Madison relationship "can be considered the most successful political partnership in American history. For many years, Jefferson provided the grand strategy and Madison was an agile tactician. In the 1790s, Madison managed the effort behind the scenes to oppose the policies of Washington and Hamilton and to prepare the way for Jefferson's presidential candidacy. Ellis contrasts Washington, the realist, and Jefferson, "for whom ideals were the supreme reality and whose inspirational prowess derived from his confidence that the world would eventually come around to fit the picture he had in his head. The author explores Washington's vision as expressed in his last Circular Letter as commander in chief of the army to the states in 1783 and in his Farewell Address as president. It is interesting to note that Washington, in his "Address to the Cherokee Nation, imagined the inclusion of Native Americans in the developing country. And, in contrast to Jefferson, "He tended to regard the condition of the black population as a product of nurture rather than nature that is, he saw slavery as the culprit, preventing the development of diligence and responsibility that would emerge gradually and naturally after emancipation.

John Adams is one of the author's favorite characters. "His refreshing and often irreverent candor provides the clearest window into the deeper ambitions and clashing vanities that propelled them all. Ellis shows how all other political leaders deserted Adams when he became president and Abigail became his one-woman staff. The author masterfully steers us through the Adams presidency and Abigail and John's reconciliation with Jefferson, which led to their 14-year exchange of letters, now considered the most important correspondence between prominent American statesmen.

This carefully researched, beautifully written overview of the "band of brothers and Abigail Adams who established our nation" should be enjoyed by a wide readership.

Roger Bishop is a regular contributor to BookPage.

 

The crucial political decisions in the young American republic of the late 18th century were made by relatively few leaders. They knew one another personally, and their face-to-face interaction in social settings had a significant impact on the choices they eventually made. In the words…

NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

The Cause

Review by Roger Bishop

No one called it the “American Revolution” while it was happening. The British spoke of the American rebellion. Those protesting in the colonies merely called it “the Cause” and insisted they were not engaged in revolution. Even now, the question of whether it was a true revolution remains controversial.

Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling historian Joseph J. Ellis superbly captures the issues, personalities and events of the American Revolution from the perspectives of both England and the colonists in his eminently readable The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773–1783. Using rigorous scholarship, Ellis offers vivid portraits of and penetrating insights about this period in history, while challenging our conventional understandings of it.

For the British, Ellis argues, the defining issue was power, not money. Imposing new taxes on the colonies was a way to establish parliamentary sovereignty, not to reduce the debt they accumulated during the Seven Years’ War. Trade with the American colonies was lucrative for Britain, after all, and any taxation policy that put their trade relationship at risk would have been too costly.

Also counter to the narrative we usually hear, those early colonial Americans had a conservative character. From their perspective, the British were more revolutionary than they were. Britain was causing revolutionary change by taxing colonists without their consent, and even then, no American delegate to the first Continental Congress advocated for independence.

Likewise, John Trumbull’s famous painting, “The Declaration of Independence,” depicts an event that never happened. Thomas Jefferson wrote the original version on his own, then Congress made 85 specific changes to Jefferson’s draft, revising or deleting slightly more than 20% of the text. The final version was sent to the printer on July 4, and the printer put that date on the published version. Most delegates actually signed it on August 2, although there was no single signing day.

By the end of the war, a majority of Americans felt that the creation of a nation-state was a distortion of the Cause. George Washington, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, among others, were outliers, not leaders of the dominant opinion.

This riveting, highly recommended book by one of America’s major historians will change how you see the American Revolution.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph J. Ellis superbly captures the issues, personalities and events of the American Revolution in The Cause.
NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

Travels With George

Review by Priscilla Kipp

As the familiar story goes, George Washington, the Revolutionary War’s iconic general, led the Colonies to an improbable victory over the crushing British monarchy and its oppressive taxation. But according to Nathaniel Philbrick in Travels With George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy, Washington’s real challenges as a leader began after that. With abolitionists to the north, enslavers to the south and anti-Federalists everywhere (even in his own Cabinet), Washington set out just months after his 1789 inauguration on an uncomfortable, arduous tour of the shaky new union he felt compelled to unite.

In the late summer of 2018, in a time hardly less politically fraught, Philbrick, his wife and their “red bushy-tailed Nova Scotia duck-tolling retriever,” Dora, embarked from Washington’s Mount Vernon to follow in the former president’s footsteps. Inspired by Travels With Charley by John Steinbeck—who wrote, “We do not take a trip; a trip takes us”—Philbrick expected “a journey of quirky and lighthearted adventure” that instead “proved more unsettling and more unexpected than I ever could have imagined.”

Read our starred review of the ‘Travels With George’ audiobook, narrated by the author.

Visiting the cities Washington once rode through on his white horse, or paraded through in a cream-colored carriage with two enslaved postillions, or strode into wearing a simple brown suit (the new president had a feel for political theater), Philbrick delivers the details. He explains how Washington became “the father of the American mule,” debunks myths about the first president’s wooden teeth and enriches facts with help from local archivists, librarians, curators, docents and even the descendants of those who were there. But Philbrick keeps one foot in, and a respectful perspective on, the present throughout, assessing hazards then—such as when Washington’s horses fell off a ferry—and now—such as when Philbrick’s own sailboat nearly capsized in a vicious storm on his way to Newport, Rhode Island.

When BookPage interviewed Philbrick in 2006 for Mayflower, his Pulitzer Prize history finalist, he said, “I think it’s really important that we see the past as a lived past rather than something that was fated to be.” With Travels With George, he succeeds again at this aim. Washington emerges as the complicated, flawed but no less heroic leader that his newborn country desperately needed. The quantity and quality of the details Philbrick gathers as he straddles past and present make this an extraordinary read.

As Nathaniel Philbrick retraces George Washington’s tour of the shaky new union, the first president emerges as a complicated, flawed but no less heroic leader.
NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

Hero of Two Worlds

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

In this engrossing biography, author and history podcaster Mike Duncan, who explored the Roman Republic in The Storm Before the Storm, illuminates the eventful life of the Marquis de Lafayette. Lafayette is, of course, a popular hero of the American Revolution. Hero of Two Worlds: The Marquis de Lafayette in the Age of Revolution broadens our understanding of his engagement in other major political movements, as well, chronicling his role in the French Revolution and the toppling of the Bourbon Dynasty in 1830.

At first glance, nothing in Lafayette’s early history suggests his future commitment to liberal ideals. Lafayette (1757–1834) was born Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier in Chavaniac, France. A son of the nobility, he lost his father when he was only 2, making him the sole heir to the family’s fortune. His mother’s death when he was 12 left him in the care of guardians who made many decisions for him, including arranging his marriage to Adrienne d’Ayen at age 16. They were a devoted couple until her death in 1807.

Duncan traces the origin of Lafayette’s embrace of liberty and equality to the summer of 1775, when he first learned of George Washington and the colonists’ struggles. Politics had cut short his career in the French army, so Lafayette decided to follow this new noble cause. He managed to become a major general in the Continental Army, and by age 24, he’d earned a stellar reputation on both sides of the Atlantic.

In detailing Lafayette’s long career, Duncan takes a measured approach to his subject, making excellent use of primary sources, especially letters. The author effectively balances Lafayette the man with Lafayette the public figure and helps delineate the relationship between the United States and France. 

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of A Hero of Two Worlds is Duncan’s exploration of Lafayette’s long and enduring popularity with Americans. (Unlike the French, the Americans never stopped loving him.) In 1824, Lafayette was invited for a visit by President James Monroe as the nation prepared for its 50th anniversary. Lafayette received a hero’s welcome, his presence reminding “local and state leaders they were a single nation with a shared past and collective future.”

Lafayette was a unique and unifying figure in American history, celebrated and revered by all political parties. As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, Duncan’s impressive biography provides an insightful look at the American Revolution that can be appreciated by history lovers and general readers alike.

Mike Duncan’s insightful, impressive biography of the Marquis de Lafayette can be appreciated by history lovers and general readers alike.
NonfictionBiographyAmerican History

The Outlier

Review by Roger Bishop

While Jimmy Carter’s post-presidential years have been exemplary, filled with significant humanitarian projects, his presidency is often regarded as a failure. Biographer and historian Kai Bird (American Prometheus) takes a fresh look in his balanced, detailed and very readable The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, summed up their administration’s aims: “We obeyed the law, we told the truth, and we kept the peace.” Carter added, “We championed human rights.” His radical foreign policy initiatives and stellar domestic legislative record made his term an important one. Bird argues that Carter will come to be regarded as a significant president who was ahead of his time, despite the numerous missteps, misunderstandings and gossip treated as investigative reporting during his administration.

Carter was an outlier, “a person or thing situated away or detached from the main body or system.” Deeply religious and fiercely committed to the job, he was not an ideologue but a liberal Southern pragmatist, a fiscally conservative realist. He was perhaps our most enigmatic president, basically a nonpolitician who “refused to make us feel good about the country. He insisted on telling us what was wrong and what it would take to make things better,” Bird writes. 

Two of Carter’s most successful foreign policy initiatives, securing Senate ratification of the Panama Canal Treaty and personally brokering the Camp David Accords, wouldn’t have happened without his persistence. He also normalized relations with China, negotiated an arms control agreement with the USSR and influenced his successors and others around the world with his human rights emphasis.

Domestically, Carter’s controversial appointment of Paul Volcker to lead the Federal Reserve helped to heal the economy. He appointed a record number of women and Black Americans to federal jobs, including a substantial number of nominations to the federal bench. He and Mondale also expanded the role of the vice president, creating the modern vice presidency we know today.

His first major mistake was to appoint Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was always a disruptive force, as national security adviser. Others in Carter’s administration were not Washington insiders, and there was often friction between them and the press, members of Congress and others who were lifelong politicians.

This compelling portrait of Carter, a complex personality who was finally undone by the Iran hostage crisis, is an absorbing look at his life and administration that should be appreciated by anyone interested in American history.

Bird argues that Jimmy Carter’s radical foreign policy initiatives and stellar domestic legislative record make his presidency important, despite the missteps.

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