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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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Business & Finance

The Second Chance Club

Review by Carly Nations

As a teacher, I spend a lot of time doing what author Jason Hardy calls “disaster prevention”—desperately trying to catch kids before they fall through the cracks. In his debut book, The Second Chance Club: Hardship and Hope After Prison, Hardy details his own time in “disaster prevention” as a New Orleans probation and parole officer (PO). Though we’d like to hope that teachers’ and POs’ jobs wouldn’t overlap too much, it’s clear that both the educational and criminal justice systems often provide the least to those who need the most.

Readers who enjoyed Matthew Desmond’s Evicted will find a similar narrative voice in Hardy’s book. Weaving the experiences of his offenders with pertinent facts about the criminal justice system, Hardy removes the ability to blame each individual completely for their actions and informs us of the breadth and depth of systemic problems within law enforcement, addiction treatment, American poverty and racial disparity.

Throughout The Second Chance Club, it’s clear that Hardy’s work with his offenders resulted in meaningful relationships—relationships that become meaningful to the reader, as well. However, as with all jobs in public service, at the end of the day, empathy doesn’t solve problems. Money does. Hardy must frequently manage and anticipate problems in his caseload, deciding between helping one individual and eschewing another. Alongside him, readers will worry about who gets left behind and what happens when they do.

Though I don’t work in law enforcement, the language that Hardy uses seems eerily familiar. Lamenting the constant failures of a system intended to help the neediest folks, assessing individual needs and risks to determine whether or not to cut corners, making decisions that affect people’s lives without really having any proper training or experience—the “empathy exhaustion” that Hardy feels is the constant companion of so many in public service. In a world where my most underprivileged students have the potential to become Hardy’s next offenders, the need to resolve these systemic incongruities is greater than ever, as The Second Chance Club makes vividly clear.

As a teacher, I spend a lot of time doing what author Jason Hardy calls “disaster prevention”—desperately trying to catch kids before they fall through the cracks. In his debut book, The Second Chance Club: Hardship and Hope After Prison, Hardy details his own time in “disaster prevention” as a New Orleans probation and parole officer (PO). Though […]
NonfictionTrue Crime

The Scientist and the Spy

Review by Kelly Blewett

A neatly planted cornfield in Iowa might not seem like the setting for an international trade war, but looks can be deceiving. Mara Hvistendahl, a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction, has been writing about China for over a decade. A former Midwesterner who is equally comfortable in farmers’ kitchens as in her high-rise apartment in Beijing, Hvistendahl is uniquely situated to tell this unexpectedly dramatic story.

Robert Mo originally came to the U.S. to pursue a career in thermodynamics. Unable to land a tenure-track job in academia, Mo accepted a lucrative position at a Chinese agricultural company. Soon, Mo was on the road to various Midwestern towns.

Police reports record sightings of “an Asian man in a suit, standing in a cornfield.” Mo was seeking corn samples from the biggest companies in the business, Monsanto and DuPont Pioneer, and he was not alone. Many companies seek shortcuts to the kinds of high-performing strains of corn that are private intellectual property in the U.S. Mo soon finds himself trailed by FBI agents, and a slow game of cat-and-mouse ensues. One larger-than-life corn consultant, Kevin Montgomery, tries to piece together the puzzle while drinking lemonade on his back porch. As Montgomery’s interviews with Hvistendahl suggest, the tactics of both the Chinese and the FBI are equally baffling for an insider in corn genetics.

Chinese agricultural espionage has been a topic of increasing significance, but where do our ideas about China come from? In The Scientist and the Spy, Hvistendahl traces the particulars of Mo’s case, but she also explores the racialized history of FBI investigations into Chinese immigrants. Her careful contextualization of the case makes its particulars loom with the uncertainty of a fun house mirror. Those who seem like perpetrators look, in certain lights, like victims, and the victims like perpetrators. As the “truth” of the case itself fades from visibility, what remains is the feeling that the case is, as Hvistendahl puts it, “a Rorschach test” for views on the Chinese technology threat. To find your own perspective, read this fascinating story, which speaks to the larger geopolitical tensions shaping our time.

A neatly planted cornfield in Iowa might not seem like the setting for an international trade war, but looks can be deceiving. Mara Hvistendahl, a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction, has been writing about China for over a decade. A former Midwesterner who is equally comfortable in farmers’ kitchens as in her high-rise apartment […]
Nonfiction

Author in Chief

Review by Priscilla Kipp

It may be hard to believe in these days of seemingly endless political campaigns, but once upon a time, presidential candidates disdained personally stumping for political office. Asserting oneself through the written word was considered vain, undignified and beneath the status of a public figure. This is not to say they stayed silent: Through “anonymously” written biographies, pamphlets and authoritative histories like Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, they made themselves known and helped themselves become, for the most part, exalted. (Try as he might, John Adams didn’t fare so well in his attempts, and even Washington’s Farewell Address and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address had their partisan cynics and critics.)

In this eye-opener of a read, Author in Chief: The Untold Story of Our Presidents and the Books They Wrote, Craig Fehrman resurrects many such presidential pages, along with a plethora of facts and foibles about their writers—and ghostwriters. Alexander Hamilton and Ted Sorensen were among these invisible helpers, and their tales are here, too. For both the scholar and the casually curious, there is a lot to learn about our presidents.

This story cannot be told without layering in the birth of the publishing industry and the growing pains of transportation, and Fehrman weaves a detailed tapestry from these threads. From salesmen on horseback to today’s online clicks, authors have struggled to reach their readers. As Fehrman explains, “The most interesting thing about Obama and Lincoln are the differences”—as in, riding a horse to a distant general store with the hope that any book might be there in one era, and downloading an eBook onto one’s phone in the next.

There are the predictable standouts—Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Grant, Roosevelt and Kennedy—and some outstanding surprises, such as Coolidge, Truman and Reagan. Whiffs of scandal puff up now and then. Jefferson spoke mightily of human rights but kept his slaves. Kennedy earned his Pulitzer Prize for Profiles in Courage, or did he? Every candidate used the power of the written word to open the door to the White House and, later, secure his legacy. Fehrman ensures their words will continue to matter.

It may be hard to believe in these days of seemingly endless political campaigns, but once upon a time, presidential candidates disdained personally stumping for political office. Asserting oneself through the written word was considered vain, undignified and beneath the status of a public figure. This is not to say they stayed silent: Through “anonymously” […]
NonfictionMilitary HistoryHistory

A Game of Birds and Wolves

Review by Deborah Mason

Games can be deadly serious—ask any soccer parent—but we generally see them as child’s play. It is therefore surprising that in war, where the stakes are the absolute highest, games play an essential role. War games allow armies to test officers’ strategies and decision-making in a risk-free environment, and lessons learned on the game board are frequently transferred to the battlefield. One man who thoroughly grasped this idea was Captain Gilbert Roberts, who, along with his team of eight officers from the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS, popularly known as the Wrens), devised a game that arguably changed the course of World War II. In A Game of Birds and Wolves, Simon Parkin tells this remarkable and little-known story.

In 1941, Great Britain was in danger of being starved of food and supplies by U-boat attacks. Roberts realized that, by simulating the conditions of war as closely as possible on an auditorium-sized game board, he could devise countermeasures to the tactics used by U-boat captains. He could also train submarine hunters without the risk of failure. Ultimately, the men who played the game used their knowledge to defeat the U-boat fleet in the decisive Battle of Birds and Wolves. Without the Wrens, who not only ran the games but also helped design new scenarios and countermeasures, none of this would have happened.

Like a well-designed game, A Game of Birds and Wolves is fun, informative and intense. Parkin naturally focuses much of his attention on Roberts, whose story of triumph over adversity and skepticism is a great read. But the book really shines when Parkin reclaims the history of the Wrens. Although women played a vital role in the war, their work was often undervalued, and much of this history was lost or destroyed. The Wrens, working with Roberts, were instrumental to an Allied victory, but few among us know what we owe to them. 

Parkin’s respect and affection for these women is apparent on every page, and his extensive research and excellent storytelling go a long way toward paying that debt.

Games can be deadly serious—ask any soccer parent—but we generally see them as child’s play. It is therefore surprising that in war, where the stakes are the absolute highest, games play an essential role. War games allow armies to test officers’ strategies and decision-making in a risk-free environment, and lessons learned on the game board […]
NonfictionMiddle Eastern HistoryHistory

Black Wave

Review by Sarojini Seupersad

“What happened to us?” This question haunts the Middle East and the Arab world, from Iraq to Syria, Iran to Saudi Arabia. It’s also the question posed by Kim Ghattas at the beginning of her new book, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the Middle East.

Ambitious and novelistic in its approach, Black Wave attempts to answer this question through extensive research, vibrant reporting and personal stories. At its core, the book is a survey of the once harmonious relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iran. As Ghattas examines how a culturally diverse region full of hope could twist itself into an entirely new body of destruction and instability, she explores the events that led to these nations’ opposition of each other, and to their desire for cultural supremacy over an entire region and its people.

Ghattas, an Emmy award-winning journalist who was born and raised in Lebanon, focuses on the three major touchstones in 1979 that led to the current crisis: the overthrow of the shah and the Iranian Revolution; the siege of the Holy Mosque in Mecca by Saudi militants; and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. As Ghattas writes, “Nothing has changed the Arab and Muslim world as deeply and fundamentally as the events of 1979.”

Unlike narratives told from a Western point of view, this book doesn’t highlight terrorism or ISIS but instead seamlessly weaves history and personal narrative into a story that explains the gradual suppression of intellectualism and the creep of authoritarianism in the region, while highlighting those who have tried to fight against it, like murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi. It also shows how the United States’ numerous attempts at intervention have made the situation indelibly worse.

Illuminating, conversational, rich in details and like nothing else you’ve ever read about the Middle East, Black Wave will leave you with a new understanding of this diverse and troubled region.

“What happened to us?” This question haunts the Middle East and the Arab world, from Iraq to Syria, Iran to Saudi Arabia. It’s also the question posed by Kim Ghattas at the beginning of her new book, Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Forty-Year Rivalry That Unraveled Culture, Religion, and Collective Memory in the […]
NonfictionHistoryAmerican History

1774

Review by Roger Bishop

American colonists loved tea and wished to acquire it cheaply. Parliament’s Tea Act of 1773, however, made that impossible. As an anonymous New York writer at the time explained, colonists would pay “a duty which is a tax for the Purpose of raising a Revenue from us without our own consent, and tax, or duty, is therefore unconstitutional, cruel, and unjust.” It was an effort to help the financially struggling East India Company. In protest, some ports halted or sent back their shipments of tea. In Boston, in December of 1773, men disguised as Native Americans destroyed 342 chests of tea. The term “Boston Tea Party” wasn’t used until the next century, but the action was controversial and set in motion crucial actions and discussions that lasted until mid-April 1775.

The vigorous debates regarding freedom and liberty during that period prepared the country for what was to follow in 1776. Drawing on correspondence, newspapers and pamphlets, noted historian Mary Beth Norton brings that 16-month period vividly alive in her meticulously documented and richly rewarding 1774: The Long Year of Revolution.

Support for resistance to King George III was far from unanimous. Loyalists sought to deal rationally with Parliament on the Tea Act and other issues. The proposal to elect a congress to coordinate opposition tactics came not from radical leaders but from conservatives who hoped for reconciliation with Britain. Loyalists to England, not the revolutionaries, were the most vocal advocates for freedom of the press and strong dissenting opinions. But shortsighted decisions from London often moved these conservatives in the opposite direction. 

This important book demonstrates how opposition to the king developed and shows us that without the “long year” of 1774, there may not have been an American Revolution at all.

American colonists loved tea and wished to acquire it cheaply. Parliament’s Tea Act of 1773, however, made that impossible. As an anonymous New York writer at the time explained, colonists would pay “a duty which is a tax for the Purpose of raising a Revenue from us without our own consent, and tax, or duty, […]

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