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NonfictionDesign

Defining Style

Emphasizing personal style, Joan Barzilay Freund’s Defining Style is a freeing, inspiring and extremely innovative look at interior design.
Emphasizing personal style, Joan Barzilay Freund’s Defining Style is a freeing, inspiring and extremely innovative look at interior design.
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Sharks Don’t Sink

In Sharks Don’t Sink, marine biologist Jasmin Graham pushes for diversity in her field while also celebrating her deep, abiding love for the titular fish.
NonfictionHistory

Raiders, Rulers, and Traders

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Don’t be put off by the erudite title of David Chaffetz’s vividly narrated book. Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires reads like an enthralling travel memoir. It begins with the author perched uncomfortably on the back of a sure-footed pony on the steppes of Mongolia, where his arrival at a remote yurt is celebrated with ayraq, fermented mare’s milk. “We could no more drink all of the milky liquor on offer than we could take in all of the Milky Way above our heads,” he writes, charmingly. Likewise, Chaffetz’s account of how horses and landscapes shaped the distant past glimmers with myriad fascinating insights, seamlessly woven into a cohesive whole.

He begins at the very start of Homo sapiens-Equus interactions, when horses were hunted for meat and gradually domesticated for nutrient-rich mare’s milk. That, in turn, led to the need to ride horses to manage larger herds. Chaffetz demonstrates how the grassy steppes of Eurasia, rather than the forests of Western Europe, best suited horses, which led to their role as engines of war and empire-building in Persia, India and China.

Never dry, the narrative is enlivened by intriguing details. Chaffetz reports that the word “post” can be traced to Persian mounted messengers who navigated hundreds of miles of terrain. Along the messenger’s route, horses were tied to stakes, or posts, so a rider could quickly dismount a tired horse and remount a fresh horse and continue their journey, carrying a ruler’s decree across vast distances. In this way, horses were key to conquering territory in war and then governing it. Chaffetz sets the stage for his discussion of Genghis Khan with the observation of a medieval visitor: “When I travelled in the steppes, I never saw anyone walking. . . . Even the poor have to have one or two [horses].” The Mongols’ vast herds presented an opportunity. As Chaffetz explains, “The rains, the grasses, and the geldings of Mongolia did not create Genghis Khan, but his conquests are impossible to understand without them.”

Chaffetz, whose previous two books show him traveling through Afghanistan on horseback and celebrating Asian divas of old, exudes a contagious enthusiasm and curiosity. In Raiders, Rulers, and Traders, readers will happily follow his journey as he chronicles how closely our history is intertwined with the magnificent horse.

 

David Chaffetz’s charming, masterful Raiders, Rulers, and Traders glimmers with fascinating insights into how horses have helped build our world.

Reap the Whirlwind

The piercing Reap the Whirlwind chronicles a historic 1985 homicide, and shows how perspectives on law enforcement and innocence shift depending on who you are.
NonfictionLifestylesDesign

Parachute

Review by Laura Hutson Hunter

When I first saw Parachute: Subversive Design and Street Fashion, I didn’t think I was familiar with the Montreal-based brand, which was founded by American architect Harry Parnass and British designer Nicola Pelly in the late 1970s. But after spending only a few minutes with the book, I realized I was wrong. Parachute’s influence on New Wave style was so pervasive that it was almost impossible to miss. Think about exaggerated trench coats or kimono-style jumpsuits, and you’re likely thinking of Parachute-influenced designs. Though the brand’s heyday was the ’80s, the book itself feels very current, with text in both English and French and a dynamic layout that changes from section to section. Author Alexis Walker is associate curator of dress, fashion and textiles at the McCord Stewart Museum in Montreal, and she presents her subject as if in a comprehensive museum archive. It’s rare to see a brand as subversive as Parachute become so influential, and the book gracefully walks the line between commerce and art. In a chapter dedicated to Parachute’s enduring, collaborative relationship with the musician Peter Gabriel, Gabriel is quoted as saying “Parachute always seemed different—smarter and highly original.” This book is that, as well.

 

The dynamic, photo-heavy Parachute shows the titular brand’s influence on fashion and culture.

Meet the Neighbors

Brandon Keim’s awe-inspiring Meet the Neighbors exhorts us to consider that all animals, from dolphins to salamanders, are just as capable of thinking and feeling as we are.
NonfictionTrue Crime

Mississippi Swindle

Review by Anne Bartlett

The public attacks by NFL Hall of Famer Brett Favre and his nationwide legion of fans were bad enough. But Mississippi State Auditor Shad White also faced hostility close to home, even at church, from friends of the well-known family that was the focus of his investigation into the theft of millions in public welfare funds. You might think of their incredulity as the “nice lady” defense: How can you be going after Nancy New? She’s so nice at PTA meetings.

White’s team plowed ahead, and New, the head of an education nonprofit, and her son Zach ultimately pleaded guilty to fraud-related charges for financing their high-spending lifestyle with money from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program—including $250,000 used by Nancy to buy herself a new home in an affluent neighborhood. So much for nice. White, a Republican wunderkind (Rhodes scholar, Harvard Law) who became auditor at 32, gives us his insider perspective in Mississippi Swindle: Brett Favre and the Welfare Scandal That Shocked America, a lively account of a case that has raised questions about Favre, former football player Marcus Dupree and White’s own mentor, former Mississippi governor Phil Bryant.

Starting with a whistleblower’s tip actually forwarded to him by Bryant, White directed his team of auditors and agents to probe odd spending of federal welfare dollars by the head of Mississippi’s Department of Human Services, which they soon discovered included treatment at a luxury drug rehab center for a personal friend of the agency director. It ballooned from there.

Readers will be engrossed by the feud that developed between Favre and White after the investigation uncovered payments of welfare money by New’s nonprofit to finance a “deluxe” volleyball facility at the university where Favre’s daughter was a volleyball player. New’s nonprofit also paid welfare funds to Favre Enterprises for speaking engagements that Favre never did. Favre adamantly denies wrongdoing, while White points to evidence in the form of text messages and other records. (Favre has not been charged with any crime; he was sued in civil court by the state over the money.) But White’s harsh critiques of fellow Republican officials, notably a U.S. Attorney who White thinks tried to undermine him out of professional rivalry, are equally fascinating.

This isn’t a book about politics, but it’s not hard to discern White’s conservative views. Some readers will disagree with them. But everyone can unite around his anger at a broken system that allowed poor people to suffer so that an elite few could spend tax dollars on luxuries.

Mississippi Swindle is the shocking true story of how public welfare funds were used to finance the extravagant lifestyles of an elite few.

Manboobs

Komail Aijazuddin’s Manboobs is a winning and heartfelt debut memoir, rife with clever humor and an inspiring message of hard-won self-acceptance.
NonfictionHistoryEuropean History

Irena’s Gift

Review by Joy Ramirez

Karen Kirsten spent afternoons as a young child at the home of her Polish grandparents in Melbourne, Australia, eating cakes from her grandmother’s favorite patisserie and listening to classical music. Adored by her maternal grandparents Alicja and Mietek, both Holocaust survivors, she could not understand why they never spoke about their past. As a young adult, she wondered why she was taught nothing about Judaism, and she struggled to explain her mother’s tales of a troubled and abusive childhood with parents she claimed did not love her.

What Kirsten didn’t know is that when her mother, Joasia, was 32, she received a letter from a stranger that blew open her world. It was from her real father—not Mietek, but another man who was living in Canada—and he wrote that her actual mother, Alicja’s sister Irena, was fatally shot by the Nazis in occupied Poland. Joasia would soon learn that as a baby, her father smuggled her out of the Warsaw ghetto in a backpack. Alicja and Mietek, her aunt and uncle, never told her the truth. And like her aunt and uncle, Joasia kept these revelations a secret from her own children for decades.

Irena’s Gift: An Epic WWII Memoir of Sisters, Secrets, and Survival chronicles Kirsten’s remarkable, decade-long quest to understand and heal the transgenerational trauma of war on her family. Using historical accounts, interviews and extensive archival research, Kirsten movingly reconstructs scenes of violence and heroism in the lives of everyday people, most notably the extraordinary women who came before her. After years of emotionally intense research reconstructing her mother’s and grandparents’ past, Kirsten takes Joasia to Poland to uncover the origins of their pain.

Pain sometimes travels through families until someone is ready to feel it. This memoir is the result of Kirsten’s journey to break open the seal of suffering and rebuild her family’s Jewish identity after decades of silence. Irena’s Gift is a beautifully written testimony to the power of memoir to heal and recreate a family’s history.

Weaving history with mystery, Karen Kirsten uncovers her family’s traumatic experiences during the Holocaust in her remarkable memoir, Irena’s Gift.

I Am on the Hit List

I Am on the Hit List pairs relentless reporting and historical context in a vivid exploration of a fearless Indian journalist’s assassination.
NonfictionMemoir

Drawn Testimony

Review by Amy Scribner

In her decades as a courtroom artist, Jane Rosenberg has used her trusty pastels to sketch some of the most infamous moments in American legal history.

She was there when Susan Smith apologized to her estranged husband for drowning their two young sons in a South Carolina lake, and when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was found guilty of the carnage at the Boston Marathon bombing. When Donald Trump appeared in a Manhattan courtroom to be arraigned on charges of falsifying business records, Rosenberg was there to capture his “Day-Glo complexion: base layers of red, purple, even green and blue, that were softened and smoothed over with lighter pinks and whites, accented with strokes of burnt sienna.”

Drawn Testimony: My Four Decades as a Courtroom Sketch Artist takes a mesmerizing look at this rarest of professions. In a time of Court TV and paparazzi, the idea of artists capturing legal drama through drawing is almost quaint. Yet Rosenberg’s images continue to be broadcast by news outlets around the world: Woody Allen and Mia Farrow sitting stone-faced during their custody battle, Harvey Weinstein crumpled in a wheelchair listening to victim impact statements, John Gotti with his shock of silver hair. Ghislaine Maxwell, Bill Cosby, Tom Brady: She has sketched them all. (And in the case of Brady, had her artwork go viral for all the wrong reasons when she struggled to capture the particular angles of his face. She calls the ensuing media attention “a storm which struck with hurricane force.”)

As talented as Rosenberg is at drawing, she is an equally gifted writer. She describes the technique she has honed over so many years and cases, how she quickly builds sketches that capture singular moments in court, even as the action continues in front of her. She writes in visceral detail about being one of the few in-person witnesses during the most vulnerable moments of so many famous and powerful people. An utterly absorbing read, Drawn Testimony captures “the rhythms of a criminal trial and the layers of humanity they could contain—stunning tales of ambition, betrayal, family, and bloodshed.”

 

For four decades, courtroom sketch artist Jane Rosenberg has portrayed the famous and infamous at high-profile trials. She tells all in Drawn Testimony.

Circle of Hope

Eliza Griswold’s Circle of Hope is the intimate story of one small, progressive church, but it carries profoundly relevant lessons for all people of faith.
NonfictionSocial ScienceLifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children

Review by Laura Hutson Hunter

Both an art book and a kind of poetic herbarium, An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children defies easy classification. That’s for the benefit of readers, though: Untethered to the conventions of traditional genres, writer Jamaica Kincaid is free to create something brand new, and perusing the pages feels like true discovery. Kincaid’s tone shifts from erudite to casual with a buoyancy that will make readers want to follow her thoughts through till the end. In the section that begins “O is for Orange,” Kincaid writes of the many names and etymological roots for oranges, and how the Earth is indifferent to the names we assign its fruits: “The vegetable kingdom persists and will most likely do so when we are no longer here to name and identify it.” The book’s colorful watercolors are by celebrated artist Kara Walker, and they’re treated as equal partners to Kincaid’s prose. In Walker’s hands, the illustration for poppies includes carnivalesque swirls of opium and bagels, a woman in seductive repose and a man hanging his head in despair. This niche but precious volume feels outside of time, and will be a treat to gardeners, children, artists, poets and book lovers alike.

 

Jamaica Kincaid and Kara Walker’s An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children will be a treat to gardeners, children, artists, poets and book lovers alike.

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