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The Icon and the Idealist

The Icon and the Idealist is a compelling, warts-and-all dual biography of the warring leaders of the early 20th-century birth control movement: Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett.
The Icon and the Idealist is a compelling, warts-and-all dual biography of the warring leaders of the early 20th-century birth control movement: Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett.
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NonfictionTravelMemoir

The Impossible City

Review by Celia Mattison

Journalist Karen Cheung’s intimate memoir of Hong Kong explores what it means to live in and love a complicated city. In The Impossible City, Hong Kong frequently appears as a temperamental partner described in body horror-like terms: It’s a city that’s dying, a city “on the verge of mutilation,” a city ready to disappear. But Cheung’s Hong Kong is also vividly multifaceted, at once marked by the constructed “Hong Kong cool” glamorized in Wong Kar Wai films and yet full of people yearning for a more equitable future built through collective action and protest.

Though Cheung was ambivalent about Hong Kong as a child, an outsider in both the elite international school and public secondary school she attended, she eventually embraced her hometown as a second family after her beloved grandmother died and her father’s home became too abusive to remain in. Alongside her evolving personal relationship with Hong Kong, she narrates the city’s most significant and turbulent moments from her lifetime, including the Handover in 1997, when the United Kingdom returned Hong Kong to China; Occupy Central in 2014, also known as the Umbrella Movement, when crowds occupied Hong Kong for 79 days to demand more transparent elections; and both the SARS and COVID-19 pandemics. In Cheung’s hands, the problems, charms and complexities that characterize the city are illuminated with grace and intelligence. She refuses to write from a distance or cater to a white audience, dismissing the bland both-sidesism of modern journalism.

Cheung explores gentrification not just through statistics and citations but through a summary of the six different residences and 22 different roommates she lived with in just five years. An ongoing and citywide mental health crisis is discussed through her own struggle to access reliable psychiatric care. Most powerfully, The Impossible City asks how we can belong to and believe in a city and world that are frequently disappointing, and how we can continue to care about a future we may never see.

Cheung’s luminous memoir will appeal to both those familiar with Hong Kong and armchair travelers hoping to better understand the roots of the city’s political movements. Beyond that, The Impossible City will resonate with anyone who has struggled to love their city of residence in a time characterized by political dissent, racial strife and pandemic.

In Karen Cheung’s luminous debut memoir, Hong Kong’s problems, charms and complexities are illuminated with grace and intelligence.
NonfictionHumor

Greg Brennecka: Humor meets hard science

Interview by Deborah Hopkinson

Greg Brennecka is a cosmochemist with a sense of humor and a flair for making complex topics both understandable and entertaining. We asked him to share a little scientific advice for all those who feel inspired to study the stars after reading Impact.

No doubt you get this a lot, but what exactly is a cosmochemist?
Ha, well, most people don’t even ask—probably because they just figure it’s something completely made up. I guess I would properly define cosmochemistry as the study of extraterrestrial materials with the goal of understanding the origin and evolution of our solar system and our cosmic neighborhood. But basically, it’s just looking at stuff not from Earth to learn cool things.

The subtitle of your book is quite memorable: How Rocks From Space Led to Life, Culture, and Donkey Kong. What was your history with Donkey Kong before writing Impact?
To be honest, I am more of a Ms. Pac-Man fan, but I also enjoyed the original Donkey Kong arcade game quite a bit growing up. I also usually choose a Donkey Kong character when racing in Mario Kart because I love throwing bananas all around the course. Please don’t hate me for that.

Your book brims with wit and humor. Have you ever considered stand-up cosmochemist comedy?
If there is a job more made up than “cosmochemist,” it is “stand-up cosmochemist comedian”!

Read our starred review of ‘Impact’ by Greg Brennecka

Many of the concepts in Impact are highly technical and complex, yet you’ve found a way to make them accessible to readers. What’s your secret?
My secret is that I am not that great at discussing things in a technical way! I think it helps that a lot of the questions we ask in geology and meteoritics are straightforward questions, such as “When did this happen?” or “What happened that could make it look like this?” There may be some technical aspects to how we get at the answers, but the questions and goals themselves are usually very relatable to readers of all backgrounds, and I think that makes my job as a writer a lot easier.

Asteroids have been in the news of late, with NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission. What excites you most about it?
One thing to keep in mind with DART: It’s conceivable that we will need to adjust the path of an asteroid to keep it from hitting Earth someday, so making sure we know how to do that is a pretty sound preparation. And I know that “sound preparation” isn’t usually associated with excitement, but I am always very excited by humanity striving to do cool and difficult things, advancing our capabilities.

What’s the most common question about asteroids that you get?
For asteroids specifically, probably whether Earth is going to be hit by one—which probably isn’t a surprise given the popular Hollywood movies on the subject. When it comes to meteorites—the small chunks of asteroids that land on Earth—I sometimes get asked about being hit by one, but also often about what they are worth if you find one. I guess that tells us pretty clearly what motivates people: fear and money.

“Basically, it’s just looking at stuff not from Earth to learn cool things.”

If you could be magically transported to another planet so you could get a better look, which would you choose?
Oooh, that is tough. I would probably be most interested in a planet’s potential ability to harbor life, so it would be hard to argue with Mars. Do moons count? Because if so, probably one of the moons of Jupiter or Saturn, like Europa or Enceladus. There are some potentially habitable exoplanets that are being discovered almost daily now, as well, so some of those would be incredible to check out up close.

If you could go back in time on Earth, what would you want to see most?
Wow. I would probably want to figure out how life got its start on Earth, so I would travel to sometime around 4 billion years ago. If I had a second choice, perhaps Cretaceous age or so when the dinosaurs were cruising around. I wouldn’t last long, but it would be an exciting few minutes!

What has been your most breathtaking experience looking through a telescope?
For me, it probably didn’t even take place while using a telescope. Just lying down and looking at the stars in places without light pollution, I get a real feeling for how vast, diverse and dynamic the cosmos are. It blows me away every time I get the chance.

“I am always very excited by humanity striving to do cool and difficult things.”

Your book combines a love of history with a love of science. Who are some of the writers who have influenced you?
This is an easy one: Bill Bryson. His A Short History of Nearly Everything was an incredibly influential book for me and really got me into learning about the history of science and culture. I reread it in 2017, and the lack of information about meteorites is what inspired me to write Impact. I also really enjoy stuff by Mark Kurlansky (Salt) and Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind).

Your book ends with a discussion of some of the most fascinating unanswered questions in space science. What research are you working on now?
My colleagues and I are working on a few different topics mentioned in the book. One is searching for the source of water on Earth. Currently we are doing this using lunar rocks, of all things, but I think we are onto something, so keep an eye on the scientific literature. Secondly, we are working on what I like to call “cosmolocation,” which is studying meteorites to find out where they originally formed in the solar system. Basically, this involves re-creating the solar system’s structure from when it first started—before all the planets formed and moved everything around to where it is now.

There’s a long tradition of amateur astronomers. What advice do you have for someone who wants to start studying the night sky?
This might be a weird answer, but I would let them know that they don’t need to buy that big backyard telescope as a first step. There is so much open-access data available from NASA and other agencies that people can just poke through and make discoveries on their own using data about the surface of Mars or deep space images from space telescopes like Hubble. There is a lot yet to be discovered in those data troves, should one feel like getting involved.

A bona fide meteor master shares the secret behind his accessible, fascinating and funny debut, Impact.
NonfictionNatureMemoir

In the Shadow of the Mountain

Review by Catherine Hollis

Mountaineering is healing. This is a secret climbers know—that despite the risks of injury, frostbite or even death, climbing high mountains is a peculiar balm for the soul. There’s something about being forced into the present moment, step by step, that helps ease the mind of its burdens.

Silvia Vasquez-Lavado, the first Peruvian woman to summit Mt. Everest, understands this truth. Her memoir, In the Shadow of the Mountain: A Memoir of Courage, is a brilliant assessment of the power of high altitudes to heal trauma. Beautifully structured in back-and-forth chapters, the memoir travels between Vasquez-Lavado’s childhood in the civil strife of 1970s Peru to her ultimately successful attempt to complete the Seven Summits, the Earth’s highest mountains.

Unlike mountaineering memoirs that celebrate the ego of the individual, usually male, climber, Vasquez-Lavado’s story is intimately collaborative and feminist. This is most true when she brings a group of young women from Nepal and America who have survived sex trafficking and other sexual violence to Everest’s base camp. Their travels as a group, and their individual stories, are the emotional heart of this memoir. When Vasquez-Lavado continues without them to Everest’s summit—Chomolungma, or the Great Mother—her triumph at the mountain’s peak is merely a bonus. The real journey is these women’s path toward healing. 

Vasquez-Lavado’s own journey from horrific childhood sexual abuse through immigration to the U.S. and professional success in San Francisco’s first (and second) dot-com booms mirrors her trip up the mountain. In both worlds, the body holds trauma and has the power to release it, but the process is arduous and filled with potential setbacks. But as Vasquez-Lavado learns, the reward for persistence is the unimaginable beauty of dawn lighting up the roof of the world, and the exhilaration of releasing shame.

Read more: Silvia Vasquez-Lavado narrates the audiobook for ‘In the Shadow of the Mountain.’

Unlike mountaineering memoirs that celebrate the ego of the individual climber, Silvia Vasquez-Lavado’s story is intimately collaborative.

Matters of the heart

If you’re searching for clarity regarding the elusive emotion of love (and who isn’t?), start with these four perceptive nonfiction books.
Nonfiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Getting to the heart of the matter: Sweet reads for Valentine’s Day Chocolate melts, flowers wither, but a book lasts forever in your Valentine’s heart. How can a book express your love? Let me count the ways! February brings a love-themed bounty. Wrap up The Random House Treasury of Favorite Love Poems (Random House, $10, 0375707689), and you won’t need a card. Shakespeare, Yeats, Spenser, and Browning pretty much say it all. Categorized by themes like New Love, Lifetime Love, Enduring Love, and Passionate Love, this classic collection is the perfect size to pack into a picnic for two. Writers have compared love to everything from an eiderdown fluff to a universal migraine. Whether you consider relationships a headache or heaven, or you are single, sappy, or cynical, Oxford Love Quotations proves somebody has felt the same as you. Here you’ll find more than 2,000 quotes on everything from affairs to virtues, from chastity to seduction. From anonymous sources to famous lovers come lines that have been spoken, sung, or written in the name of love, lust, or loss. Some are fascinating for what they say and who said it, like Brigitte Bardot’s declaration, I leave before being left. I decide. Others leave you humming, like Cole Porter’s I’ve got you under my skin, I’ve got you deep in the heart of me. Perhaps best of all are the many insights from comedians and satirists, like Dorothy Parker, who quips, That woman speaks 18 languages, and can’t say no in any of them. Words of wisdom also abound in William Martin’s The Couple’s Tao Te Ching (Marlowe ∧ Company, $13.95, 1569246505). Basing his work on the ancient writings of Zen master Lao Tzu, Martin presents a spiritual collection of simple yet profound thoughts on loving. They are presented with lovely little brush paintings that stay true to the book’s authentic Asian origins. Martin says he hopes that readers will have an experience that will touch the heart each time they open the book. Your beloved’s life is precious, he writes. A natural wonder, a shining jewel. Don’t tamper with it. It does not need polishing, improving or correcting. Neither do you. Of course, some relationships could use a little polishing, improving, and correcting. An exotic method of relationship repair is found in T. Raphael Simons’s The Feng Shui of Love (Three Rivers Press, $21, 0609804626). Based on the ancient Chinese art of placement, this ethereal manual explains how rearranging your home can help you attract and hold love. The idea is that a comfortable, balanced living space presents the kind of harmony and peace that people want to be around. The design elements that work best for you personally, says Simons, depend on your Chinese astrological sign, your yin-yang style of relating, and your animal sign compatibility. Sound a little out there? The enjoyment and usefulness of The Feng Shui of Love definitely depends upon open-mindedness. But the book also has plenty of common sense suggestions for fixing difficult home designs and making the most of where you live. If consulting the stars in the search for eternal love isn’t lofty enough for you, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach suggests you look to a higher power. His Dating Secrets of the Ten Commandments (Doubleday, $21.95, 0385496206) is full of the kind of pithiness and wit that made his book Kosher Sex such a bestseller. This time around, he references everything from Monty Python to Monica Lewinsky to drive home his point that romance is next to godliness. Take two tablets and find your soul mate, he says in his typical double-entendre humor. Boteach finds modern applicability not just in the words of the Ten Commandments, but in the way they are presented. For example, the first commandment starts, I am the Lord, your God. The rabbi’s take on it: Hell of an introduction, isn’t it? If only we could all be so cool and confident on a first date, he suggests, half the awkwardness of dating would be squelched.

Why do we bother anyway? For all the trouble relationships bring, why do we search for that special someone to call a Valentine? In her book Dating (Adams Media, $9.95, 1580621767), Josey Vogels says, Let’s face it, it’d be nice to have someone to feed the pigeons with when the eyesight starts to go. Vogels, a syndicated sex and relationship columnist in Canada, gathered the best anecdotes from her many straight, single, twenty- and thirty-something readers to write what she calls, a survival guide from the frontlines. The result is a funny and honest look at the world of boy-meets-girl, from Dates from Hell to The Science of Attraction. There are tidbits to help both men and women get through the whole soulmate interview process with minimal embarrassment. For instance, Vogels’s first-date conversation no-no’s include exes, bodily functions, and how much you hate your family. She also includes advice from relationship experts and matchmakers along with her own insightful viewpoint. Most importantly, Vogel admits that you can indeed be happily single. Then you can spend Valentine’s Day with the most low-pressure date of all: a good book.

Emily Abedon is a writer in Charleston, South Carolina.

More to Love.

21 Ways to Attract Your Soulmate by Arian Sarris (Llewellyn, $9.95, 1567186114). Learn how to find a life partner that clicks with you instead of clanks.

The Mars Venus Affair: Astrology’s Sexiest Planets by Wendell and Linda Perry (Llewellyn, $17.95, 1567185177). A guide to finding that starry-eyed mate.

The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars by Joel Glenn Brenner (Broadway, paperback $14, 0767904575). Goes well with a heart-shaped box of the real thing.

Get Smart with Your Heart: The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Love, Lust, and Lasting Relationships by Suzanne Lopez (Perigee, $13.95, 0399525793). For the gal who knows what she wants (well, sort of), but doesn’t know quite how to get it.

Agape Love: A Tradition Found in Eight World Religions by Sir John Templeton (Templeton Foundation Press, $12.95, 1890151297). Explore the principle of unconditional love.

Love and Romance: A Journal of Reflections by Tara Buckshorn, Glenn S. Klausner, and David H. Raisner (Andrews McMeel, $12.95, 0740700480). A journal, a keepsake, a place for all of your passionate scribblings about your love life.

Passionate Hearts: The Poetry of Sexual Love compiled and edited by Wendy Maltz (New World Library, $14, 1577311221). Essential bedside reading to be sure.

Getting to the heart of the matter: Sweet reads for Valentine's Day Chocolate melts, flowers wither, but a book lasts forever in your Valentine's heart. How can a book express your love? Let me count the ways! February brings a love-themed bounty. Wrap up The…

NonfictionTravelDesignCookbooks

Lifestyles: February 2022

Feature by Susannah Felts

★ Grist

James Beard Award-winning chef Abra Berens and her collaborators have created a most magical combination of aesthetics, soul and practical guidance in Grist, a cookbook focused on humble stuff: beans, legumes, grains and seeds. Let it be said that I love beans, and I really love the way Berens provides, along with specific recipes, a number of templates to follow for any combination of ingredients you crave or happen to have on hand. For example, a bean + vegetable + flavor + texture chart starts with beans (any kind), then lists four suggested ingredients for each step: add veg, add flavor, add extra texture and serve. Elsewhere, she walks us through a week’s worth of lentils without boredom, and her recipes regularly include three or more variations. Topping it all off are Lucy Engelman’s beautiful illustrations, which make this a true work of cookbook art. 

Where They Purr

A bedroom decked out in lush linens and pillows—and a cat, luxuriating on the bespoke duvet. A kitchen with floor-to-ceiling windows—and a cat, nonchalantly surveying the room from atop the dining table. This is the fabulous world of Where They Purr: Inspirational Interiors and the Cats Who Call Them Home, in which images of sleek interiors foreground the homes’ feline overlords. Photographer Paul Barbera got the idea for a cat-centric home design book while working on a previous project, Where They Create, and the result takes those “how they styled it” shots we’ve all seen while shopping online—a sofa, say, captured with the owner’s pet proudly lounging—to the next-next level. The homes featured here are mostly high-end and very modern, full of sharp angles and long lines. You might be inclined to call some of them cold, except how could you when fluffy Pud or Pippi or Gustov is lurking or perched or sprawled in their midst? As a cat lover, my only quibble with this purrfectly delightful book is that there are too few orange tabbies in the mix. I suppose we all, like our cats, have our own prefurences.

Wanderess

As I prepare for a solo journey to the Southwest, I’m happy to have in my pocket Wanderess: The Unearth Women Guide to Traveling Smart, Safe, and Solo, a guide for women, by women, and geared toward solo travelers. Whether you’re going it alone for the first time or planning a girls’ trip, the editors from Unearth Women have assembled in this colorful book all the resources, hacks and advice you could ask for, including tips for traveling while pregnant and specific recommendations for women of color and travelers who are trans, lesbian or queer. The writers also offer an outline for creating your own Feminist City Guide, which centers women-owned businesses; if you like, you can pitch your guide(s) to Unearth Women for possible publication.

From the humble bean to the high and mighty feline, the books in this month’s lifestyles column colorfully celebrate the joys of food, art and travel.
Religion & Spirituality

Review

Review by bookpagedev

On June 1, 1994, Joel Rothschild walked into the apartment of his close friend Albert Fleites and found him dead from suicide. Both men were HIV-positive and had seen many of their friends’ lives ended by AIDS. During the course of their friendship, the two had made a promise to give each other advance notice if either decided to take his own life. They had also promised that the first to die would try to signal the other from the other side. Albert didn’t keep the first promise, but he did the second.

In his debut book, Joel tells the moving story about his reaction to Albert’s death and the subtle and not so subtle signals that he began receiving shortly afterwards. It is a personal account of how his life was changed by the AIDS epidemic and his inner transformation that occurred as a result.

As Joel and Albert battled their illnesses and faced the deaths of many of their friends, they talked at length about their hopes and fears about dying. A visit to a hypnotherapist convinced Joel that no disease is 100 percent fatal and some survive because of inner strength.

As a distraught and betrayed Joel was leaving Albert’s apartment on the day of his suicide, Joel received the first signal from Albert in the form of an inner prompting from his deceased friend to look in the trash can outside. At the bottom of the can underneath the dirty garbage, Joel found a draft of a letter that Albert had written reassuring him that he was his dearest friend and would always love him. Joel considered suicide as a response to Albert’s death, but he was swayed by another visit from Albert’s presence which conveyed that he must not take his own life. During that visit, Albert told him that every moment is important, that events and situations are working themselves out in every second, and that all suffering is connected to a greater good.

Albert’s presence continued to make itself known in more subtle ways. Joel increased his receptivity to these events and began receiving messages from Albert and other presences. With the advent of protease inhibitors, Joel’s health did improve, and he began starting new projects and friendships. He also had a greater appreciation for life and a determination to help others.

Whether one accepts the events that Joel presents as signals from Albert or writes them off as mere coincidences, Signals is the inspiring story of a man who rebuilt his life in spite of a life-threatening illness and a great loss.

On June 1, 1994, Joel Rothschild walked into the apartment of his close friend Albert Fleites and found him dead from suicide. Both men were HIV-positive and had seen many of their friends' lives ended by AIDS. During the course of their friendship, the two…

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