Good evening, everyone. The Mountain and Plains Independent Booksellers Association announced the longlist for their annual Reading the West Awards today, and you can see all the books in eight categories at the link. I’m one of the judges in the Memoir and Biography category, and the books are piled up here on my desk. The awards are for books published last year, and there is only one of them in my category that I’ve reviewed here: Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden, by Camille T. Dungy, which was the subject of my Nonfiction Views back on May 9th. I also reviewed 100 Places to See After You Die: A Travel Guide to the Afterlife, by Ken Jennings, which is in the nonfiction category. That was my Nonfiction Views of June 13th. The awards are for books either about the region or written by authors who live in the region. The shortlist that we judges decide on will be announced May 1st. opening up a month-long period when the public can vote on the choices. The winners in each category will be announced June 13th.
THIS WEEK’S NOTABLE NEW NONFICTION
- Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House, by Jared Cohen. Former presidents have an unusual place in American life. Life After Power tells the stories of seven former presidents, from the Founding to today. Each changed history. Each offered lessons about how to decide what to do in the next chapter of life. Jared Cohen explores the untold stories in the final chapters of a diverse set of presidents--Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Grover Cleveland, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, and George W. Bush--offering a gripping and illuminating account of how they went from President of the United States one day, to ordinary citizens the next. He tells how they handled very human problems of ego, finances, and questions about their legacy and mortality. He shows how these men made history after they left the White House. "You know who'll NEVER be the subject of a book like Life After Power: Seven Presidents & Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House? Donald Trump, unless you define purpose as selling out to our enemies, grifting, undermining democracy, and endless whining. - The Literate Lizard
- A Dangerous Country: An American Elegy, by Ron Kovic.When eighteen-year-old Ron Kovic enlisted in the United States Marine Corps in 1964, he couldn’t foresee that he would return from Vietnam paralyzed and in a wheelchair for life. His best-selling 1976 memoir Born on the Fourth of July became an antiwar classic and was adapted into an Oscar-winning film starring Tom Cruise as Kovic. His follow-up, Hurricane Street, chronicled his advocacy for Vietnam veterans’ rights. A Dangerous Country: An American Elegy completes Kovic’s Vietnam Trilogy, delving deep into his long and often agonizing journey home from war and eventual healing, forgiveness, and spiritual redemption. "Ron Kovic is one of America's great voices on war and what it does to the body and soul. His story is as timeless and tragic as the country itself." — Bruce Springsteen
- Brought Forth on This Continent: Abraham Lincoln and American Immigration, by Harold Holzer. In the three decades before the Civil War, some ten million foreign-born people settled in the United States, forever altering the nation’s demographics, culture, and—perhaps most significantly—voting patterns. America’s newest residents fueled the national economy, but they also wrought enormous changes in the political landscape and exposed an ugly, at times violent, vein of nativist bigotry. "Harold Holzer has unwrapped yet another profoundly meaningful gift from Abraham Lincoln, as he has delved into Lincoln’s evolving views on immigration that reveal his unwavering moral character, as well as his pragmatism and enduring optimism for the United States. This deeply researched and beautifully written book not only breaks new ground, but the revelations come at a pivotal moment in American history when we must strive, like Lincoln, for a better future for Americans regardless of their race, religion or national origin.” —Doris Kearns Goodwin
- Wake Up America: Black Women on the Future of Democracy, by Keisha N. Blain. In 1968, civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer called for Americans to “wake up” if they wanted to “make democracy a reality.” Today, as Black communities continue to face challenges built on centuries of discrimination, her plea is increasingly urgent. In this exhilarating anthology of original essays, Keisha N. Blain brings together the voices of major progressive Black women politicians, grassroots activists, and intellectuals to offer critical insights on how we can create a more equitable political future.
- An American Dreamer: Life in a Divided Country, by David Finkel. As this powerful book begins, Brent Cummings finds himself coping with the feeling that the country he loves is fracturing in front of his eyes. An Iraq war veteran, raised to believe in a vision of America that values fairness, honesty, and respect for others, Cummings is increasingly surprised by the behavior and beliefs of others, and engulfed by the fear, anger, and confusion that is sweeping through his beloved country as he tries to hold on to his values and his hope for America’s future. “In a lovely Atlanta suburb, two neighbors, both decent yet damaged men, find themselves on opposite sides of the fault line in a fracturing America. Finkel’s account is poetic, profound, and irresistibly page turning. It’s The White Album for a new decade of division and dissolution.”—Geraldine Brooks. The Publisher’s Weekly review gives more details of what sounds like an interesting book, if you can bear also reading the point of view of a MAGA stalwart: “This is especially true of Cummings, who wrestles with the traumatic social upheaval he witnessed in Iraq and who believes that a similarly traumatic state of social conflict is besetting the country during the presidency of Donald Trump, whom Cummings opposes while living and working in a solidly pro-Trump community. Meanwhile, Cummings and his family face down a series of personal challenges, which Finkel casts against national events. For example, a late chapter recounts Cummings’s feelings of isolation and ruminations on political violence during a 2018 stint in Israel, where he worked training Palestinian Authority security forces; Finkel’s prosodic narration has Cummings reflecting on Trump’s calls for a U.S.-Mexico border wall in the shadow of the West Bank barrier wall. It’s an evocative contribution to the shelf on what ails America in the age of Trump.”
- 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed, by Eric Klinenberg. At the heart of 2020 are seven vivid profiles of ordinary New Yorkers—including an elementary school principal, a bar manager, a subway custodian, and a local political aide—whose experiences illuminate how Americans, and people across the globe, reckoned with 2020. Through these poignant stories, we revisit our own moments of hope and fear, the profound tragedies and losses in our communities, the mutual aid networks that brought us together, and the social movements that hinted at the possibilities of a better world. “Klinenberg’s narrative not only exposes the social fault lines that made 2020 epically traumatic but also shows how the legacy of that year continues to shape us, our politics and our personal lives.”
—Siddhartha Mukherjee
- True Believer: Hubert Humphrey's Quest for a More Just America, by James Traub. Hubert Humphrey was liberalism’s most dedicated defender, and its most public and tragic sacrifice. As a young politician in 1948, he defied segregationists and forced the Democratic Party to commit itself to civil rights. As a senator in 1964, he made good on that commitment by helping pass the Civil Rights Act. But as Lyndon B. Johnson’s vice president, his support for the war in Vietnam made him a target for both Right and Left, and he suffered a shattering loss in the presidential election of 1968. Though Humphrey’s defeat was widely seen as the end of America’s era of liberal optimism, he never gave up. Even after his humiliation on the most public stage, he crafted a new vision of economic justice to counter the yawning political divisions consuming American politics.
- All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women's Bodies and Why It Matters Today, by Elizabeth Comen. The history of women’s healthcare is a story in which women themselves have too often been voiceless—a narrative instead written from the perspective of men who styled themselves as authorities on the female of the species, yet uninformed by women’s own voices, thoughts, fears, pain and experiences. The result is a cultural and societal legacy that continues to shape the (mis)treatment and care of women. Memorial Sloan Kettering oncologist and medical historian Dr. Elizabeth Comen draws back the curtain on the collective medical history of women to reintroduce us to our whole bodies—how they work, the actual doctors and patients whose perspectives and experiences laid the foundation for today’s medical thought, and the many oversights that still remain unaddressed.
- The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor, by Hamilton Nolan. Inequality is America’s biggest problem. Unions are the single strongest tool that working people have to fix it. Organized labor has been in decline for decades. Yet it sits today at a moment of enormous opportunity. In the wake of the pandemic, a highly visible wave of strikes and new organizing campaigns have driven the popularity of unions to historic highs. The simmering battle inside of the labor movement over how to tap into its revolutionary potential—or allow it to be squandered—will determine the economic and social course of American life for years to come. “One of my favorite writers reports with passion and courage on one of the most pressing challenges America faces: saving our economy from plutocracy. We need more hammers like him.”—Rick Perlstein
- My Side of the River: A Memoir, by Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez.
Born to Mexican immigrants south of the Rillito River in Tucson, Arizona, Elizabeth had the world at her fingertips. She was preparing to enter her freshman year of high school as the number one student when suddenly, her own country took away the most important right a child has: the right to have a family. When her parents’ visas expired and they were forced to return to Mexico, Elizabeth was left responsible for her younger brother, as well as her education. Determined to break the cycle of being a “statistic,” she knew that even though her parents couldn’t stay, there was no way she could let go of the opportunities the U.S. could provide. Armed with only her passport and sheer teenage determination, Elizabeth became what her school would eventually describe as an unaccompanied homeless youth, one of thousands of underage victims affected by family separation due to broken immigration laws.
- A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging, by Lauren Markham. In 2021, Lauren Markham went to Greece, in search of her own Greek heritage and to cover the aftermath of a fire that burned down the largest refugee camp in Europe. Almost no one had wanted the camp—not activists, not the country’s growing neo-fascist movement, not even the government. But almost immediately, on scant evidence, six young Afghan refugees were arrested for the crime. Markham soon saw that she was tracing a broader narrative, rooted not only in centuries of global history but also in myth. A mesmerizing, trailblazing synthesis of reporting, history, memoir, and essay, A Map of Future Ruins helps us see that the stories we tell about migration don’t just explain what happened. They are oracles: they predict the future. “A remarkable, unnerving, and cautionary portrait of a global immigration crisis.” —Kirkus Reviews
- Beverly Hills Spy: The Double-Agent War Hero Who Helped Japan Attack Pearl Harbor, by Ronald Drabkin. I fully expect future historians will be writing books like this about Trump. The untold story of the World War I hero who became a fixture of high society in Golden Age Hollywood—all while acting as a double agent for the Japanese Empire as it prepared to attack Pearl Harbor. Based on recently declassified FBI files and until-now untranslated documents from Japanese intelligence, Ronald Drabkin brings the scope of this unforgettable tale into full focus for the first time. Frederick Rutland hides in plain sight, rubbing elbows with Amelia Earhart and hosting galas and fundraisers with superstars like Charlie Chaplin and Boris Karloff, while simultaneously passing information to Japan through spy networks across North and Central America. Countless opportunities to catch Rutland in the act are squandered by the FBI, British Intelligence, and US Naval Intelligence alike as he uses his cunning and charm to misdirect and cast shadows of doubt over his business dealings, allowing him to operate largely unfettered for years.
- Bitter Crop: The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday's Last Year, by Paul Alexander.
This first biography of Billie Holiday in more than two decades gives us an unconventional portrait of arguably America’s most eminent jazz singer. The author shrewdly focuses on the last year of her life—with relevant flashbacks to provide context—to evoke and examine the persistent magnificence of Holiday’s artistry when it was supposed to have declined. During her lifetime and after her death, Billie Holiday was often depicted as a down-on-her-luck junkie severely lacking in self-esteem. Relying on interviews with people who knew her, and new material unearthed in private collections and institutional archives, Bitter Crop limns Holiday as a powerful, ambitious woman who overcame her flaws to triumph as a vital figure of American popular music.
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Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, by Philip Gefter. From its debut in 1962, Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was a wild success and a cultural lightning rod. The play transpires over one long, boozy night, laying bare the lies, compromises, and scalding love that have sustained a middle-aged couple through decades of marriage. It scandalized critics but magnetized audiences. Across 644 sold-out Broadway performances, the drama demolished the wall between what could and couldn't be said on the American stage and marked a definitive end to the I Love Lucy 1950s. Then, Hollywood took a colossal gamble on Albee's sophisticated play-and won. Costarring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, the sensational 1966 film minted first-time director Mike Nichols as industry royalty and won five Oscars. How this scorching play became a movie classic-surviving censorship attempts, its director's inexperience, and its stars' own tumultuous marriage-is one of the most riveting stories in all of cinema.
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I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition, by Lucy Sante. I recall some of those great books like Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York from the 1991, but was not aware of this change in the author’s life. For a long time, Lucy Sante felt unsure of her place. Born in Belgium, the only child of conservative working-class Catholic parents who transplanted their little family to the United States, she felt at home only when she moved to New York City in the early 1970s and found her people among a band of fellow bohemians. Some would die young, to drugs and AIDS, and some would become jarringly famous. Sante flirted with both fates, on her way to building an estimable career as a writer. But she still felt like her life a performance. She was presenting a façade, even to herself. Sante’s memoir braids together two threads of personal narrative: the arc of her life, and her recent step-by-step transition to a place of inner and outer alignment. Sante brings a loving irony to her account of her unsteady first steps; there was much she found she still needed to learn about being a woman after some sixty years cloaked in a man’s identity, in a man’s world.
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Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories, by Amitav Ghosh. Smoke and Ashes is at once a travelogue, a memoir, and an essay in history, drawing on decades of archival research. In it, Ghosh traces the transformative effect the opium trade had on Britain, India, and China, as well as the world at large. The trade was engineered by the British Empire, which exported Indian opium to sell to China to redress their great trade imbalance, and its revenues were essential to the empire’s financial survival. Following the profits further, Ghosh finds opium central to the origins of some of the world’s biggest corporations, of America’s most powerful families and prestigious institutions (from the Astors and Coolidges to the Ivy League), and of contemporary globalism itself.
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