One of the French Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s favorite models was Suzanne Valadon, a working-class teen raised in the Montmartre district of Paris. In his paintings, she’s always softly pretty, vibrant, approachable. Aside from her physical appeal, Valadon was herself a talented artist. Her first serious self-portrait couldn’t have been more different from Renoir’s depiction: She portrayed herself as spiky and tough, with a skeptical look and sharp nose.

That might give you some hint as to why you know Renoir’s work but perhaps have never heard of Valadon. She became an admired professional painter, but she was never widely popular. She was too unsparing, too “unfeminine.” The title of Catherine Hewitt’s biography of Valadon, Renoir’s Dancer, helps place her in the artistic universe, but the book is very much about the Valadon of the self-portraits.

Born in 1865, the incorrigible Valadon was the illegitimate daughter of a linen maid. She became a circus acrobat, then a successful model—and the probable lover of Renoir and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, among others. The latter recognized her talent and helped her connect with Edgar Degas, who became her tireless mentor.

She also had an illegitimate child, Maurice Utrillo, an emotionally troubled, alcoholic artist whose charming cityscapes made them both rich. Valadon eventually married one of her son’s friends, who was 20 years younger than her, and the trio lived a tumultuous life together.

You can’t go wrong with material like that, and Hewitt excels at re­creating the atmosphere of Montmartre as it evolved from bohemian enclave to tourist nightspot. The reader tags along with Valadon to heady establishments like Le Chat Noir and the Lapin Agile, where she stuns the men with her verve and intelligence. Hewitt introduces us to a frank, generous woman and bold artist who painted more nudes than babies. She ultimately overcame the prejudices: When she was 71, the French nation bought several of her works, and her paintings now hang in museums around the world.

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

Much has been written about Thomas Jefferson, his family and his illegitimate daughter, Harriet Hemings. But historian Catherine Kerrison eloquently manages to shed new light on the Founding Father and his relationships with three of his very different children in her new book, Jefferson’s Daughters.

Jefferson married a young widow, Martha Wayles Skelton, in 1772, and eventually had six children with her, although only two would reach adulthood—Martha and Maria. But these girls had half-siblings mothered by Sally Hemings, a slave who was their lady’s maid and companion.

Each daughter took a different path. Jefferson brought Martha, the apple of his eye, along with him while serving as ambassador in Paris, where she thrived and received a top-notch education. Maria was a beautiful and feisty young woman who strove to break away from her father’s control, exhibiting an “emotional maturity that has been entirely overlooked” by scholars. And although she was born into slavery, Harriet was able to leave Monticello and escape slavery at the age of 21, passing as a white woman and obtaining the “privileges of white womanhood,” bearing and raising her children in freedom. However, this meant giving up her family name and being separated from her mother and younger brothers, who remained in slavery.

Jefferson’s character has been the subject of much scrutiny, particularly after DNA testing documented a connection between Sally’s youngest child, Eston, and the Jefferson male line in 1998. Although Jefferson promoted individual liberty, he contradicted this endorsement by owning slaves. Kerrison writes about this contradiction with thoroughness and candor, piecing together massive amounts of research, including letters, journal entries, financial accounts and commentary from family descendants. In meticulous detail, her knowledgeable yet conversational style makes Jefferson’s Daughters a thought-provoking nonfiction narrative that reads like a novel.

If something called the American dream is still alive, it’s personified by the protagonist of the captivating The Monk of Mokha, Dave Eggers’ latest work of narrative nonfiction. In it, Eggers marshals the storytelling talent he displayed in Zeitoun, his 2009 account of a Syrian-American family devastated by Hurricane Katrina and inane bureaucracy, to explore the story of Mokhtar Alkhanshali, a young Yemeni American who must overcome civil war, terrorism and his own inexperience and self-doubt to pursue his singular vision of entrepreneurial success in the specialty coffee business.

In 2013, while employed as a doorman at a posh apartment building in San Francisco, 25-year-old Alkhanshali, who’d already demonstrated his superior salesman skills by dealing everything from Banana Republic clothing to Hondas, hatched a plan to revive the coffee business in his ancestral homeland. Eggers explains that although Ethiopia lays claim to the discovery of the coffee fruit, the first beans were brewed in Yemen, giving birth to the coffee known as “arabica.”

Alkhanshali’s audacious business model involved the promotion of the direct trading of rare coffee varietals to premium roasters. Ignoring a State Department travel warning, he left for Yemen amid U.S. drone strikes, the attacks of Houthi rebels and the constant threat of terrorism from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

In the final third of The Monk of Mokha, Eggers, who has been a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, describes Alkhanshali’s harrowing journey back to America, carrying suitcases packed with coffee beans whose quality he hopes will secure both his business’s future and the prosperity of his farmer clients. It’s a nail-biting account, with each checkpoint and interrogation posing a new peril.

Propelled by its engaging main character and his improbable determination, The Monk of Mokha, for all its foreign elements, is at its heart a satisfying, old-fashioned American success story.

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

Max Boot’s The Road Not Taken is a page-turning story of a how a now largely forgotten figure could have turned the tide of the Vietnam War if someone in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations had just listened to him.

Drawing deeply on previously unavailable archival materials, Boot deftly chronicles the life and career of Edward Lansdale, the CIA operative and Air Force officer who allegedly was the model for Alden Pyle in The Quiet American by Graham Greene. Tracing Lansdale’s sheltered childhood and youth, Boot portrays a young man fascinated by the perceived romance of Southeast Asia. Later, in his short-lived career in advertising, Lansdale developed his trademark knack for honesty, insolence and an ability to see others as equals—qualities that would lay the foundation of his successful covert work in the Philippines and Vietnam.

During the United State’s involvement in the Vietnam War, Lansdale, working as a CIA operative, argued that the U.S. could operate most effectively not by increasing firepower but by making Saigon’s government more “accountable, legitimate, and popular to the people it aspired to serve.” Boot sums up Lansdale’s policy of friendly persuasion to win “hearts and minds” with three L’s—Look: understand how the foreign society works and don’t impose outside ideas that won’t translate to the society; Like: become a sympathetic friend to the leaders of the society; Listen: hear out the leaders’ ideas.

Boot’s mesmerizing, complex biography and cultural history not only recovers Lansdale and his foreign policy strategies but also illustrates the ways that those strategies might be effective in dealing with various military conflicts today.

Maybe you never expected to read biographical analyses of Shirley Temple and Bill Gates in the same book, but the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. It certainly did to Ann Hulbert, author of Off the Charts.

Hulbert, who previously covered a century of child-rearing advice in Raising America, turns her sights to the intriguing phenomenon of early genius. In Off the Charts, she peers into the formative years of 15 individuals, combining lively biographical sketches with serious analysis of the factors that contributed to their ascendancy in the public eye. Most of these prodigies we know, while some—such as precocious novelist Barbara Newhall Follett—have been virtually lost to history, but all offer important lessons.

Not surprisingly, those lessons tend to circle back to the prodigies’ parents—who run the gamut from free-range advocate to prison warden without the charm—and in many ways the book is as much about the parents as it is about their progenies. Wisely, Hulbert downplays judging the children’s genius and lets the facts—and often the prodigies—speak for themselves.

Rest assured, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to rearing a genius. And even the most seemingly well-adjusted prodigies don’t exactly breeze through adolescence. The “hidden lessons” are there in plain sight, but many of them are impossible to avoid.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Ann Hulbert about Off the Charts.

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

Edward Garnett, a reader with exquisite taste, a perceptive critic and a writer, played a crucial role in the literary history of Britain between 1887 and 1937. His unique talent for recognizing and promoting future noteworthy authors is legendary, and he became many writers’ devoted friend and editor. Those authors include Joseph Conrad, Robert Frost, D. H. Lawrence, John Galsworthy, Stephen Crane, Sarah Orne Jewett and more. E. M. Forster noted: "[Garnett] has done more than any living writer to discover and encourage the genius of other writers, and he has done it all without any desire for personal prestige."

Helen Smith's absorbing An Uncommon Reader: A Life of Edward Garnett captures Garnett’s extraordinary life and times. Smith’s extensive research includes fascinating excerpts of letters and recollections of Garnett’s friends.

Garnett insisted he was an "outsider," by which he meant "outside all coteries and collections of people," as a reader and critic. But he was well connected in the literary world. His father was Keeper of Printed Books at the British Museum, and Garnett’s wife, Constance, was well known for her groundbreaking translations of Russian classics into English. She and Garnett led quite interesting and unorthodox lives, which Smith discusses in detail.

As an author himself, Garnett was often disappointed. His novels, poems and plays were not successful, although his reviews, essays and short author biographies were generally well received. The discovery of a writer was always the greatest pleasure of Garnett's professional life.

This enlightening and intimate biography looks behind the scenes to show how much time and effort went into the making and maintenance of promising , sometimes struggling, writers who became prominent authors.

As a connoisseur of memoir, I thought I had read it all: stunningly dysfunctional families, toxic relationships, addictions. But I have never read a memoir as terrifying as Maude Julien’s The Only Girl in the World. Newly translated into English, this is the must-read memoir of the season for those who, like me, have read them all.

Today Julien is a French psychotherapist specializing in patients who are recovering from extreme psychological and behavioral control, such as cult victims. Julien had the misfortune of being born to a completely unhinged father who was able to disguise his insanity from the outside world. A high-ranking Freemason, he believed that his daughter would become a “supreme being” as long as she was raised under his control in complete isolation.

Julien’s father had previously adopted, raised and “trained” her mother, and he turned their remote château in the French countryside into a chamber of horrors. As a child, Julien was introduced to unthinkable trials designed to toughen her up: meditations on death in a rat-infested cellar, being forced to hold onto an electric fence. Written in a childlike first-person voice, this memoir brings to life Julien’s horrifying experiences and her subtle rebellions against her parents as she refuses to be broken. The reader, too, is trapped and riveted by her story. An epilogue, written from her adult perspective, explains Julien’s theory of the cultlike psychological and behavioral control she was subjected to, and how it continues to shape her dreams and fears. This is a truly fascinating and intense read, and highly recommended.

This article was originally published in the December 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

BookPage Top Pick in Nonfiction, December 2017

Step aside, James Bond. There’s a new sexy spy hero in town, and this one has the advantage of being real. His name is La Rochefoucauld, Robert de La Rochefoucauld, and his career as a résistant in Nazi-occupied France is the subject of Paul Kix’s The Saboteur: The Aristocrat Who Became France’s Most Daring Anti-Nazi Commando.

La Rochefoucauld, the carefree second son of one of France’s most distinguished families, was an unlikely hero. A bit of a ne’er-do-well, La Rochefoucauld was in no way the exemplary son that his beloved elder brother was. But La Rochefoucauld inherited the same sense of duty that had marked generations of his family, and at the age of 19, when France capitulated to Germany, he was determined to continue the fight against the Nazis.

After rigorous—and downright dangerous—training in England, La Rochefoucauld parachuted into France and began his spectacular career as a saboteur of Nazi operations. Captured, tortured and condemned to death by the Germans, La Rochefoucauld managed to escape from certain doom time and time again. If this were fiction, the plot would be fantastical; as a work of nonfiction, it is a testament to the resilience and ingenuity of the human spirit.

Kix’s sharp, well-paced writing is perfect for telling La Rochefoucauld’s story. But this is more than a gripping yarn of daring-do. La Rochefoucauld was a complex character, and Kix’s portrait is nuanced and moving. We are introduced to La Rochefoucauld when he is about to testify in the trial of an accused war criminal and collaborator—for the defense. Obviously, this is not your stereotypical resistance fighter, and Kix’s book poses the big questions: What is duty? What is courage? What is loyalty?

Like many veterans of his generation, La Rochefoucauld rarely spoke about his experiences to his family. We are fortunate to have Kix’s richly detailed book so we can remember the remarkable courage of an extraordinary man.

This article was originally published in the December 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected President four times, led the country through the Great Depression and World War II, and died after constructing the framework for a postwar world. Despite facing challenges and much criticism, Roosevelt was immensely successful. Presidential historian Robert Dallek makes a strong case for how he found success in his splendid Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life. Roosevelt “was an instinctively brilliant politician;” virtually everything he said and did was to serve political ends. Beyond his personal complexity and ability to keep his own counsel, he had an intuitive sense of timing and used his charm and guile effectively. Although he had firm convictions about public policy, he was careful not to get too far ahead of public opinion.

Dallek covers Roosevelt’s entire personal and political life, including the influence of Roosevelt’s mother, his often awkward marriage to Eleanor, his struggle with polio, his close friendship with his cousin Daisy Suckley and other confidantes, such as Missy LeHand, his long-serving and devoted secretary.

Dallek is the author of the Bancroft Prize-winning Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945, and his sections on the subject of foreign policy are outstanding. Roosevelt’s approach to strong isolationism in the 1930s and his complicated relations with Churchill and Stalin are covered in significant detail. Roosevelt’s most controversial decisions, such as his response (or failure to respond adequately) to the Holocaust and the internment of Japanese Americans in camps were made for political reasons, Dallek argues.

This book is authoritative, insightful and consistently interesting.

BookPage Top Pick in Nonfiction, November 2017

Walter Isaacson, who recently authored the door-stopping, New York Times bestselling biography of Steve Jobs, turns his attention to Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci in his latest book. Careful scouring of Leonardo’s notebooks, located variously in the United States, France, England and Italy, enabled Isaacson to write a work of breathtaking scope and intimacy. Leonardo, the bastard son of a notary, had what Isaacson calls “an instinct for keeping records.” He filled notebooks with observations, sketches, lists and questions about the world.

The many pleasures within Isaacson’s thick tome include gorgeous illustrations, beautiful and precise writing, surprising glimpses into Leonardo’s thinking and, perhaps most satisfyingly, a stunning survey of the artist’s best-known works. Isaacson closely observes the paintings, guiding readers to consider their complexity, implied movement and brilliant interplay of shadow and light. Isaacson also elaborates on Leonardo’s innovative approaches to painting, such as sfumato, the shading of edges through shadow rather than lines.

Leonardo’s life led him to the courts of Milan, Florence, various Italian cities and finally to France. Isaacson explores not only the artistic masterpieces that Leonardo left behind, but also the many remarkable treatises on anatomy, engineering and geography, and the projects that were left unfinished, including a gigantic bronze sculpture of a horse (his rival Michelangelo never let him forget that). Leonardo was a singular man, interested in a range of topics from flying machines and fetal development to the properties of water and the deadliest weapons on the battlefield. Rather than viewing Leonardo’s broad interests as distractions from his artistry, Isaacson helps readers see how the vigorous curiosity that animated these investigations enriched both Leonardo’s life and his art.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Walter Isaacson about Leonardo da Vinci. 

This article was originally published in the November 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

When he was a student at Harvard in the 1930s, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. decided that history was “the only possible career” for him. But he wanted to be part of the political world as well. During the next 70 years, he played a unique role in American life as a historian-participant. Acknowledged as one of the foremost historians and public intellectuals of the postwar era, he received two Pulitzer Prizes (his first, for The Age of Jackson, was awarded when he was 28) and two National Book Awards. He expressed his views as a liberal activist in books and essays and as a speechwriter for presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson. But he is perhaps best known for his work as a special assistant to President John Kennedy and author of A Thousand Days, a Pulitzer winner and bestselling account of life in the Kennedy administration. The book remains a primary source for the Kennedy legacy, and it brought him both praise and criticism as one of the great political image-makers.

Historian Richard Aldous brings the man and his extraordinary life of influence and controversy vividly to life in his meticulously researched and consistently enlightening Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian. Early in Schlesinger’s life, he became a keen observer and literary stylist. In the White House, Kennedy sought his counsel on some contemporary matters, but Kennedy had a longer view in mind, for as the president often said, “history depends on who writes it.” A Harvard professor and the author of highly regarded books on Frederick D. Roosevelt, whose work JFK admired and whom he liked as a person, seemed like the perfect White House historian. Kennedy told Schlesinger that his most important job was to keep a record of administration activity. The historian set up procedures to capture information and always kept index cards with him.

Schlesinger’s opposition to the Vietnam War and his books, including The Imperial Presidency and his biography of Robert Kennedy, are also explored in detail in this insightful and engaging look at one of the most influential historians of his time.