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What to read this Halloween, based on your ideal spooky activity

Whether you’re a homebody or a thrill-hunter, we’ve got a seasonal, spine-tingling read for you.
Whether you’re a homebody or a thrill-hunter, we’ve got a seasonal, spine-tingling read for you.
NonfictionLifestylesCookbooks

Bodega Bakes

In the personable Bodega Bakes, pastry chef Paola Velez presents just that: sweets that can be made solely from the ingredients found at a corner store.
In the personable Bodega Bakes, pastry chef Paola Velez presents just that: sweets that can be made solely from the ingredients found at a corner store.
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NonfictionBiography

The Inevitability of Tragedy

Review by Roger Bishop

Henry Kissinger’s approach to American foreign policy continues to be a subject of controversy, even though he’s been out of government since the 1970s. Regarded as a brilliant statesman by many, he has also been called an appeaser, a villain and a war criminal. What was it that caused people to view him so differently? Are there lessons for today we can learn from him? 

Barry Gewen, a longtime editor at the New York Times Book Review, explores these and other questions in his meticulously researched, consistently stimulating and deeply insightful intellectual biography, The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World. Through detailed analyses of Kissinger’s policy decisions on Vietnam and Chile, the influence of his personal life on his professional worldview, and the views of other Jewish European refugee intellectuals, Gewen offers a better understanding of Kissinger’s ability to challenge people to rethink their assumptions.

Kissinger always loved the U.S. but remained skeptical about democracy. Although he downplayed the influence of his youth in Weimar Republic Germany during the rise of Hitler, who could forget that the leader of the Nazi Party came to power primarily by democratic means? Kissinger believed not in grand dreams but in dealing with realities. Peace is not the natural condition of humankind, he said, and democracy will not guarantee global peace and stability. A balance of power is essential. All of these ideas were controversial, of course, but probably nothing caused him more trouble than believing that we should accept evil in the world rather than trying to eradicate it. As he put it, “Nothing is more difficult for Americans to understand than the possibility of tragedy.”

This beautifully written and engaging gem is an exciting, exhilarating must-read for anyone interested in international relations, American foreign policy or the ideas of Kissinger, whether you agree with him or not.

Henry Kissinger’s approach to American foreign policy continues to be a subject of controversy, even though he’s been out of government since the 1970s. Regarded as a brilliant statesman by many, he has also been called an appeaser, a villain and a war criminal. What was it that caused people to view him so differently? […]

Death By Shakespeare

A chemist with a penchant for poisonings, Harkup unearths the science and stagecraft behind the more than 250 deaths in the works of Shakespeare.
NonfictionFood & Drink

Dirt

Review by Alison Hood

Bill Buford (author of Heat) again chooses a single-word title for his new book, Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking, a funny, irreverent and obsessive account of his five-year odyssey to discover everything about French food—from learning how to cook it to exploring the medieval origins of the much-revered cuisine. France, he writes, “was secretly where I had wanted to find myself for most of my adult life. . . . But I could never imagine how that might happen.”

Through a connection at New York’s French Culinary Institute, Buford comes to know many influential French chefs, among them Michel Richard, Daniel Boulud and the legendary Paul Bocuse. What follows is a familial move to Lyon, the terrors (or, shall we say, “terroir”) of parenting twin toddlers in a gritty French city, sadistic “stagiaires”—essentially apprentice chefs—in famed Lyonnaise restaurants (pot-throwing, anyone?) and food-sleuthing expeditions to remote areas in France, where Buford comes to appreciate the soil that grows the unique wheat responsible for the country’s finest bread. Dirt sometimes ventures into the weeds in its excavation of culinary history and lore, but this may be forgiven in light of Buford’s honest hunger for knowledge and personal evolution: “I wanted to re-examine my assumptions about the kitchen, to restart my education, to get as elemental and as primary as possible. Heat. Water. Labor. Place. And its dirt.”

This book doesn’t offer any recipes, per se, but if perused closely, readers can find instructions for assembling perhaps the grandest concoction of them all: a life well and fully lived, seasoned with curiosity, perseverance and humor—and a dash of adventure.

Bill Buford (author of Heat) again chooses a single-word title for his new book, Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking, a funny, irreverent and obsessive account of his five-year odyssey to discover everything about French food—from learning how to cook it to […]

My Life as a Villainess

With its “gleefully honest” hits of humor and willingness to take a close look at some discomfiting truths, Laura Lippman’s essay collection is an engaging read.
NonfictionNature

The Language of Butterflies

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

Science journalist Wendy Williams, perhaps best known for her New York Times bestseller The Horse, turns her attention to humanity’s long-standing love of butterflies, those “flying flowers” that inhabit the natural world and have long inspired poets, artists and avid, obsessive collectors. The idea for this informative, thought-provoking account was sparked after Williams viewed thousands of astonishing butterfly specimens collected over a century and now housed at Yale University. Curious, she embarked on a two-year quest to investigate not only the insects but also our fascination with all things Lepidoptera. 

Williams is a consummate storyteller, and her narrative seamlessly integrates scientific facts with vivid portraits of characters as colorful as the butterflies that intrigue and inspire them. While some, like Charles Darwin, are household names, readers will also meet lesser known historical figures including Maria Sibylla Merian, whose artwork and observations provided scientific evidence of how a caterpillar emerges from its chrysalis to become a specific butterfly, and 19th-century Colorado homesteader Charlotte Coplen Hill, a mother of seven who discovered an incredibly detailed butterfly fossil.

Williams also teams up with researchers and citizen scientists to explore threats to butterfly populations, including monarchs, whose life cycles are dependent upon milkweed. She retraces the work that led to the discovery of monarch overwintering sites in Mexico and delves further into the decline caused by habitat loss, climate change and other factors.

While the news for butterfly populations is sobering, Williams urges us to never give up the work of conservation. She advocates for “the joining together of countless people of many different nations, across generations, in a united effort to protect at least one small joyful piece of the natural world to which we belong.” The Language of Butterflies is more than a small contribution to this crucial effort.

Science journalist Wendy Williams turns her attention to the “flying flowers” of the natural world, which have long inspired poets, artists and avid, obsessive collectors.

I Don’t Want to Die Poor

Echoing the sentiments of many people in author Michael Arceneaux’s age group, I Don’t Want to Die Poor is a candid study of the hydra-like power of student loan debt and, as a result, the rising cost of freedom.
NonfictionLatin American HistoryHistory

Coffeeland

Review by Deborah Hopkinson

The term “coffeeland” could easily describe the United States today. Long part of daily life and culture, coffee has evolved from an inexpensive, plain cup of joe to a dizzying array of menu choices. But in this fascinating history, Coffeeland: One Man’s Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favorite Drug, Augustine Sedgewick digs deeper to explore the little-known saga of James Hill, an Englishman who founded a coffee dynasty in El Salvador, where he arrived in 1889 at age 19. Not only did Hill change his own family’s fortunes, he transformed his adopted country into a coffee monoculture. By the second half of the 20th century, coffee made up more than 90% of El Salvador’s exports, bringing wealth to some and poverty to others.

Sedgewick sets Hill’s story against the backdrop of the history of the coffee business, which has its roots in the mid-1500s in Constantinople. By the mid-1650s, the coffee craze had taken England by storm. The coffeehouse, and the replacement of ale by coffee as people’s daily drink, has been linked to societal transformation and innovation. But it was textiles, not coffee, that originally brought Hill to Central America. Once there, he met and married Lola Bernal, whose dowry included coffee plantations. (Today, the company he founded continues as J. Hill and Company.)

Some of the most interesting sections of Sedgewick’s narrative trace Hill’s efforts to make his coffee the best, becoming an eager student of all aspects of coffee, from production to marketing. Sedgewick also is adept at incorporating Hill’s enterprise into the fabric of major historical events that impacted the world coffee market, such as the Great Depression. Sedgewick brings his narrative to a close with a discussion of the role of coffee today, arguing that coffee has replaced sugar as the commodity that most often drives discussion about the world economy and issues of economic justice.

Impeccably researched, with an extensive bibliography, source notes and an index, Coffeeland is a rich and immensely readable journey into an aspect of 21st-century life worth learning more about.

The term “coffeeland” could easily describe the United States today. Long part of daily life and culture, coffee has evolved from an inexpensive, plain cup of joe to a dizzying array of menu choices. But in this fascinating history, Coffeeland: One Man’s Dark Empire and the Making of Our Favorite Drug, Augustine Sedgewick digs deeper […]

Weird

Let your freak flag fly. There is pride in being a weirdo, in not fitting in with the rest of the pack—along with isolation, loneliness and a mirage of other emotions, both good and bad. In Weird: The Power of Being an Outsider in an Inside World, Olga Khazan explores what it means to be weird and how being different can be both a hindrance and a superpower. Though we are often taught to celebrate what makes us unique, “being the only one of your kind is doable, but wearying.”

NonfictionArts & Culture

Thinking Inside the Box

Review by Alice Cary

What do Stephen King, Nancy Pelosi, Sting, Martha Stewart and Jon Stewart have in common?

They’re all cruciverbalists—that is, crossword fans. The ever-popular puzzle first appeared seemingly by accident in 1913, when Arthur Wynne introduced a new amusement because he had space to fill in the Christmas edition of the New York World newspaper. He called it a “Word-Cross Puzzle.” A transposing typo two weeks later called a subsequent brainteaser a “Cross-Word,” and the name stuck.

Adrienne Raphel takes readers on a deep lexical dive into the history and culture surrounding the beloved linguistic sport in Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures With Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can’t Live Without Them. Her enthusiastic account will appeal to all sorts of puzzle and word lovers, even those who are just dabblers. (Raphel calls herself a “hunt-and-peck” solver, admitting that she’s more of a Boggle fanatic.)

In lively chapters, Raphel constructs her own puzzle and submits it to the New York Times (no spoilers here on whether it’s accepted), visits fabled Times puzzle master Will Shortz, reports on a crossword puzzle tournament, delves into the puzzle’s history and evolution and crosses the Atlantic on a themed trip aboard the Queen Mary 2 celebrating the 75th anniversary of the New York Times crossword, which first appeared in 1942.

Ironically, the Times long resisted printing these puzzles, proclaiming in 1925, “The craze evidently is dying out fast and in a few months it will be forgotten.” There’s plenty of intriguing history there, and some of the most fascinating discussions involve puzzle-related issues of gender, race and class. As Raphel points out, “The crossword is black and white, but it’s very, very white. This monoculture seeps into the types of clues that appear in the puzzle, and the way that words get clued.” Happily, there are signs of progress, with the author noting that crosswords are becoming “increasingly woke.”

Raphel certainly knows how to write, coming up with sentences like, “The fifty-two-story New York Times skyscraper rises out of the grid of midtown Manhattan like a steel fantasy of a crossword, a study in squares and frosted glass.” At times the book is uneven, however, with certain chapters more engaging than others. Nonetheless, Thinking Inside the Box offers a unique crossword puzzle tour that will likely have you sharpening your pencil by book’s end.

What do Stephen King, Nancy Pelosi, Sting, Martha Stewart and Jon Stewart have in common? They’re all cruciverbalists—that is, crossword fans. The ever-popular puzzle first appeared seemingly by accident in 1913, when Arthur Wynne introduced a new amusement because he had space to fill in the Christmas edition of the New York World newspaper. He […]
NonfictionHumorEssays

Wow, No Thank You.

Review by Amy Scribner

The ability to write 240 witty characters on social media does not necessarily translate to being someone whose books you want to read. But that’s what happened with Samantha Irby, whom I first knew as the person consistently killing it on Twitter, making me laugh out loud with her tweets on “Judge Mathis” and “Succession.” (She’s obsessed with both.)

It was later that I realized she also writes stunningly astute, hilarious essays about topics both serious (becoming a stepmother) and less so (her slightly lazy beauty rituals). But like all the best essayists, Irby brings deeper insights to even her most lighthearted work.

In “Girls Gone Mild,” Irby reflects on her extreme reluctance to go out, now that she’s rounding the corner to 40: “Remember when you could be roused from a night being spent on the couch in your pajamas, curled around a pint of Chubby Hubby, and goaded into joining your friends at the bar even though you’d already taken off your bra? Yeah, I can’t either, but I know those days existed. I have the liver damage to prove it.” By the end of the essay, Irby has made peace with her new slower pace of life. It’s simultaneously funny and poignant, as are all the entries in this unflinching collection. 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Samantha Irby discusses moving to Kalamazoo, Michigan, working in Hollywood and writing her newest book, Wow, No Thank You.

Perhaps the most powerful is “Body Negativity,” in which Irby catalogs the many ways women are expected to perform upkeep on our appearances so we have glowing skin, flowing eyelashes, smooth foreheads and snow-white teeth. But guess what? Irby has discovered that, unless it makes you feel good, none of that really matters: “I have threaded, I have microbladed, I have trimmed, I have tinted, I have filled in, I have styled, I have contoured, and I have microfeathered my stupid eyebrows, and none of those things has ever had a discernible impact on my life. Now I do nothing, and it’s fine!”

Frankly, Irby’s radically honest writing in Wow, No Thank You. makes me feel better—or at least less bad—about myself. She gives a welcome voice to what so many women in 2020 are feeling: overleveraged, underappreciated, exhausted, bloated—but hopeful. 

The ability to write 240 witty characters on social media does not necessarily translate to being someone whose books you want to read. But that’s what happened with Samantha Irby, whom I first knew as the person consistently killing it on Twitter, making me laugh out loud with her tweets on “Judge Mathis” and “Succession.” […]

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