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NonfictionGraphic Memoirs

Brittle Joints

In beautifully colored and evocative frames, Brittle Joints shares illustrator Maria Sweeney’s experiences living with a rare disability.
In beautifully colored and evocative frames, Brittle Joints shares illustrator Maria Sweeney’s experiences living with a rare disability.
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Hunting down answers in a brother’s murder

Award-winning journalist and Princeton University professor David Kushner was 4 years old when he asked his 11-year-old brother to bring home his favorite candy from the convenience store, just a short bike ride away through the woods. He could not have imagined that he would never see Jon again. Neither could his family, or anyone else in 1973 Tampa, Florida, where children were free to explore the outside world and parents fearlessly encouraged it. Jon’s brutal murder killed such innocence. Kushner’s riveting memoir, Alligator Candy, begins by asking how any parent or family can survive such unimaginable evil and devastating grief.
NonfictionArts & CultureArt

Portrait of the lonely artist

Review by Catherine Hollis

BookPage Nonfiction Top Pick, March 2016

Olivia Laing’s soulful blend of biography and autobiography makes her one of the most compelling nonfiction writers around. The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking made numerous “best of” lists in 2014 with its gimlet-eyed portrayal of the ravages of alcohol on the careers of otherwise distinguished writers. Laing continues to pursue her unique blend of experiential research in her new book, deepening her personal investment in the material.

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone begins with a brokenhearted Laing (who’s British) adrift in a series of New York City sublets. She finds, as so many do, that loneliness has a particularly urban flavor, and that modern cities are very easy to get lost in, particularly if they are not yours. Partly to assuage her loneliness, she starts pursuing the life stories of American visual artists who made the experience of isolation part of their art. 

She begins with Edward Hopper’s famous painting “Nighthawks,” with its indelible portrait of a late-night diner, and explores the bitter dynamics of his marriage to a fellow artist. Other subjects include Andy Warhol’s use of technology to create a safe barrier to intimacy, and—heartbreakingly—downtown artist David Wojnarowicz’s depiction of the tragic isolation of gay men in the era of AIDS. A chapter on outsider artist Henry Darger—the creator of the weird and epic Vivian Girls—argues for his deliberate transmutation of childhood trauma into art.

Laing’s own wrestling with loneliness, and her readings in psychology and philosophy, weave in and out of these portraits, creating a complex and multilayered narrative. Her experiences of “insufficient intimacy” and the social awkwardness of the lonely offer a humane and sensitive lens through which to view the life and art of her subjects. This is a stunning book on the nearly universal experience of feeling alone.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Olivia Laing’s soulful blend of biography and autobiography makes her one of the most compelling nonfiction writers around. The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking made numerous “best of” lists in 2014 with its gimlet-eyed portrayal of the ravages of alcohol on the careers of otherwise distinguished writers. Laing continues to pursue her unique blend of experiential research in her new book, deepening her personal investment in the material.

An iconic entertainer’s long road to self-discovery

At 83, Joel Grey is a lifelong entertainer who created an iconic stage and screen role, fathered a movie star in her own right and came out as gay in early 2015. And his memoir checks in at a grand total of 256 pages? Please, sir, we want some more.
NonfictionEducation

The power of preschool

Review by Kelly Blewett

Written for anyone who cares about preschool education in this country, The Importance of Being Little: What Preschoolers Really Need from Grownups offers terrific insights into the world of children—the delight of imaginative play, the allure of nature, the power of emotion. I read this book in the company of my own children, ages 5 and 2. Often, I found myself observing them more closely, appreciating their richness of expression more fully and identifying more sympathetically with their frustrations. At the same time, early childhood education expert Erika Christakis is undeniably grumpy when assessing what preschoolers are getting from most grownups these days.

She sneers at the handprint turkey craft many children make at Thanksgiving (a version of which was displayed framed on my own wall as I read the manuscript). She sighs with exasperation at the ineffective design of preschool classes. Overstimulating colors, bins filled with “educational” toys and insipid curriculum are among her many targets. Yet she redeems these critiques by moving beyond them. In chapters after chapter, Christakis poses compelling questions and imaginative solutions. She wonders why, for instance, the slow food movement hasn’t gained more traction in preschools, where children could prepare food together and then clean it up. She describes engaging classroom environments she’s seen in beguiling detail, and recounts evocative conversations she’s had and overheard among small people. Her respect and love for them is undeniable.

Until late last year, Christakis was a lecturer in early childhood education at Yale. She and her husband, Nicholas Christakis, a Yale professor, drew the wrath of some students when they voiced concern over Yale’s limitations on “offensive” Halloween costumes. Christakis quit her teaching post in December, citing a climate at Yale that was “not conducive to . . . civil dialogue and open inquiry.”

The Yale controversy played no role in the book, however, and The Importance of Being Little doesn’t delve into the nuts and bolts of preschool education at the policy level. What Christakis does offer is a compelling vision of what preschool could become, with many examples that provide useful context. Her experiences at Yale—surrounded by bright and curious people, resource-rich schools and extensive libraries—enrich what she offers to the reader: a somewhat academic, more than a little cantankerous and ultimately earnestly hopeful discussion about how to best serve our youngest charges.

Written for anyone who cares about preschool education in this country, The Importance of Being Little: What Preschoolers Really Need from Grownups offers terrific insights into the world of children—the delight of imaginative play, the allure of nature, the power of emotion.

Navigating the minefield of female adolescence

If the teen years are a difficult passage, Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions Into Adulthood seeks to map the journey, at least as it relates to girls. Lisa Damour divides this "tangle" into seven strands (parting with childhood, harnessing emotions, etc.) and offers wisdom drawn from her research and experience to help parents and, really, anyone who has girls in their care to understand and assist the process. Her advice is clear-headed, to the point and often surprising.
NonfictionPolitics

Tough love for a pivotal president

Review by Priscilla Kipp

In a recent Salon interview, Georgetown University professor and political analyst Michael Eric Dyson asked, “[H]ow do you carry out a criticism of those with whom you disagree without losing your humanity or questioning theirs in the process?” He answers his own question in The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America. Driven by the hopes Obama raised with his historical rise to power, Dyson delivers a provocative scrutiny of a presidency as complex as the ongoing issues of race, and he does so with grace and wary empathy.

Some of Obama’s fellow African Americans, like civil rights leader Jesse Jackson and academic-activist Cornel West, can be brutally critical, while others, like Al Sharpton and Andrew Young, have been candid but kinder. Nationwide, blacks who voted in record numbers to help elect Obama have mostly given him a pass, according to Dyson, hesitant to speak too harshly because he is one of their own.

Dyson, though also black, is none of these. His review of Obama’s presidency is as unsparing as a parent practicing tough love. The love is there, but it grows tired. Why, he asks, does Obama so often point out the failings of his fellow African Americans while minimizing the context of racial inequality in America? Why can’t the president be as forthcoming as his wife Michelle in acknowledging the trials of being the first black family to occupy the White House? Why does he speak out about racial injustices less forcefully than his former attorney general, Eric Holder? Dyson carries his lengthy list of disappointments and complaints into the Oval Office and a revealing interview with the president himself.

Then come Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddy Gray and Charleston. The black president who had seemed so reluctant to address his own blackness is finally moved to speak from his spirit, in a eulogy that seems to deliver, Dyson says, on “the promise of his black presidency” at last. Time will tell whether Obama can include racial progress in his legacy. Dyson is cautiously holding onto that hope.

 

Priscilla Kipp is a writer in Townsend, Massachusetts.

In a recent Salon interview, Georgetown University professor and political analyst Michael Eric Dyson asked, “[H]ow do you carry out a criticism of those with whom you disagree without losing your humanity or questioning theirs in the process?” He answers his own question in The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America. Driven by the hopes Obama raised with his historical rise to power, Dyson delivers a provocative scrutiny of a presidency as complex as the ongoing issues of race, and he does so with grace and wary empathy.

A wrenching tale of the power of love

New York Times correspondent Rod Nordland’s The Lovers: Afghanistan’s Romeo and Juliet, the True Story of How They Defied Their Families and Escaped an Honor Killing reveals the highlights of this tale in its lengthy subtitle. We know the end before we know the beginning (the young couple doesn't die a tragic death with love unfulfilled), just as we know that this is a story of young lovers who, like Shakespeare's classic couple, must defy their parents and their culture to be together at any cost.
NonfictionHistory

Remembering George Washington

Review by Anne Bartlett

Of all the weird twists in the 40-year drama of building the Washington Monument, perhaps the oddest was in 1855, when a band of rebels staged a coup and seized the project, largely because the board overseeing the construction had accepted a commemorative stone from Pope Pius IX. The Know-Nothing Party faction didn’t give back the monument until 1858.

Of course, the “monument” was then a 153-foot stump, decades from completion. As John Steele Gordon shows in his enjoyable Washington’s Monument, a history of the memorial specifically and obelisks more generally, dysfunction is not a modern phenomenon. Officials dithered over a suitable honor for George Washington from 1783, when Congress first passed a resolution, to 1888, when the obelisk-shaped tower, by then its full 555 feet, officially opened. The pattern: initial community enthusiasm, declining interest, failed fundraising, government bailout.

Gordon calls it “obelisk-shaped” because a real obelisk is by definition a monolith, carved from a single piece of stone. Obelisks were first erected—probably—by the ancient Egyptians, to stand in pairs outside temple entrances. There are still plenty of them around, and Gordon interweaves their stories with that of our monument.  

The heroes of Gordon’s book are the engineers who figured out how to move the ancient obelisks and build the Washington Monument. Each project presented a huge logistical challenge, overcome by technical innovation. These were astounding feats, forever capturing the public imagination: Some 600,000 people visit the Washington Monument annually.

 

This article was originally published in the February 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Of all the weird twists in the 40-year drama of building the Washington Monument, perhaps the oddest was in 1855, when a band of rebels staged a coup and seized the project, largely because the board overseeing the construction had accepted a commemorative stone from Pope Pius IX. The Know-Nothing Party faction didn’t give back the monument until 1858.

An intricate portrait of Iran

In 1979, Iran became a revolutionary theocracy. Since then, to the outside world, the country has been identified with repression, false confessions, brutality, torture and worse. But as journalist Laura Secor demonstrates in her compelling, enlightening and often disturbing Children of Paradise: The Struggle for the Soul of Iran, there is another aspect of the country’s modern history, a “revolutionary impulse as complexly modern as the society that produced it.”
NonfictionBiography

The year that made a monster

Review by Edward Morris

Only a society riven by fear and desperation would have incubated a figure as initially uncredentialed and unimpressive as Adolf Hitler. A school dropout and frequent vagrant, Hitler had no achievements to speak of until he served honorably in the German army during the Great War. He remained in the army after Germany’s defeat and discovered his gift as a public speaker when he was assigned to a propaganda unit set up to encourage nationalism and root out Marxist inclinations among the troops. Eventually, he moved into a leadership position in the German Workers’ Party, a virulently anti-Semitic assemblage that tapped into the social discontent ravaging the fractious and debt-ridden country.

By late 1923, Hitler and his adherents had gained enough critical mass to move against the political establishment, which it did in the infamous “beer hall putsch.” Hitler took command of the overflow crowd at a Munich beer hall and declared that both the Bavarian and national governments were being replaced by a provisional government. It was a heady effort, but the putsch failed. Hitler and his chief conspirators were soon arrested and lodged in Landsberg Prison. Hitler was tried for high treason by a sympathetic judge, convicted and given a five-year sentence.

Providing superb detail and background, 1924: The Year That Made Hitler focuses on the few months he actually served at Landsberg, during which he was treated royally rather than punitively. Freed from the daily demands of party politics, Hitler was able to put his thoughts on nationalism and strong-man governance into a book that would become the first volume of Mein Kampf—and the grand rationale for the murderous Third Reich.

 

This article was originally published in the February 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Only a society riven by fear and desperation would have incubated a figure as initially uncredentialed and unimpressive as Adolf Hitler. A school dropout and frequent vagrant, Hitler had no achievements to speak of until he served honorably in the German army during the Great War.

Falling in love with a language

In her deeply personal new book, In Other Words, acclaimed novelist Jhumpa Lahiri notes that “writing in another language represents an act of demolition, a new beginning.” It’s a neat summing-up of what takes place in this brief, meditative memoir—Lahiri’s first work of nonfiction—as she shares the story of her passion for Italian and how she set out to master it.
NonfictionHistoryArt

The darker side of genius

Review by Sheila M. Trask

Historical figures tend to become one-dimensional in our minds over time. We remember Princess Diana’s beauty and generosity, Andy Warhol’s artistic genius and George Gershwin’s unmistakable melodies, but we don’t always acknowledge their personal struggles. Veteran journalist Claudia Kalb asks us to do just that in Andy Warhol Was a Hoarder, a collection of 12 seemingly disparate stories of luminaries in architecture, science, politics and more. 

While none of Kalb’s individual mini-biographies is startling on its own (we’re hardly surprised to learn that President Lincoln faced depression), when combined, they raise some interesting questions, among them whether mental illness and creative genius are intimate bedfellows. When we read about the endless collection of detritus left behind by Warhol, for instance, we may recognize a hoarding disorder, but also a man who saw objects in a different light and treated them with a reverence many of us do not. We wonder if Frank Lloyd Wright could have continued to create his unique architecture through years of financial ruin if he hadn’t had some sort of narcissism driving his work. 

Kalb doesn’t just look at the possible positive effect of mental illness on creativity, though. She also examines the ways psychological disturbances can tragically cut short creative endeavors. From Marilyn Monroe to Howard Hughes, Kalb shows how early experiences may have set the stage for an ultimate breakdown. We don’t come away wishing mental illness on anyone, only discovering that it can, indeed, happen to even the most talented among us.

 

This article was originally published in the February 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Historical figures tend to become one-dimensional in our minds over time. We remember Princess Diana’s beauty and generosity, Andy Warhol’s artistic genius and George Gershwin’s unmistakable melodies, but we don’t always acknowledge their personal struggles. Veteran journalist Claudia Kalb asks us to do just that in Andy Warhol Was a Hoarder, a collection of 12 seemingly disparate stories of luminaries in architecture, science, politics and more.

A monstrous crime unveils mental health care failings

On a hot summer night in 2009 in Seattle, a 23-year-old man crept through the bathroom window of the home of 39-year-old Teresa Butz and her partner, 36-year-old Jennifer Hopper. The pair awoke to find the stranger standing over their beds with a knife; he proceeded to rape and stab the women repeatedly.

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