Here’s the list for this week, a fairly short one. Two books of interest to Three Body Problem fans, coming from different angles: one one the possibility of life on other planets, the other a memoir of the Cultural Revolution. Salman Rushdie grapples with the on-stage knife attack that nearly killed him. A look back at the Sixties by Doris Kearns Goodwin. And more!
THIS WEEK’S NOTABLE NEW NONFICTION
- An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. one of America’s most beloved historians, artfully weaves together biography, memoir, and history. She takes you along on the emotional journey she and her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin embarked upon in the last years of his life.
Dick and Doris Goodwin were married for forty-two years and married to American history even longer. In his twenties, Dick was one of the brilliant young men of John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier. In his thirties he both named and helped design Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and was a speechwriter and close advisor to Robert Kennedy. Doris Kearns was a twenty-four-year-old graduate student when selected as a White House Fellow. She worked directly for Lyndon Johnson and later assisted on his memoir. The Goodwins’ last great adventure involved finally opening the more than three hundred boxes of letters, diaries, documents, and memorabilia that Dick had saved for more than fifty years. They soon realized they had before them an unparalleled personal time capsule of the 1960s, illuminating public and private moments of a decade when individuals were powered by the conviction they could make a difference; a time, like today, marked by struggles for racial and economic justice, a time when lines were drawn and loyalties tested.
- Gaia's Web: How Digital Environmentalism Can Combat Climate Change, Restore Biodiversity, Cultivate Empathy, and Regenerate the Earth, by Karen Bakker. A new generation of innovators is deploying digital technology to come to the aid of the planet, using spy satellites to track down environmental criminals, inviting animals to the Metaverse, and biohacking Frankenstein-like biobots as environmental sentinels. But will they end up doing more harm than good? In an engaging take on conservation technology, Bakker looks at the digital tech applications to environmental issues from predatory harvesting of environmental data to human bycatch and eco-surveillance capitalism. If we address these issues and mobilize digitally mediated forms of citizen science, she argues, digital tech could help reverse environmental harms and advance environmental sustainability. And in the process, Big Tech might be transformed for the better. "While remaining clear-eyed about the risks of more digitalization in our era of mass surveillance and concentrated capital and grappling deeply with thorny ethical challenges, Bakker nonetheless chooses an inspiring path of hope. Her enthusiasm about the life-enhancing potential of a 'digital green agenda' is contagious, even for a techno-skeptic like me. This posthumously published text is a bittersweet gift, a reminder that our discipline lost a true visionary."--Naomi Klein
- The Museum of Other People: From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions, by Adam Kuper. In this deeply researched, immersive history, Adam Kuper tells the story of how foreign and prehistoric peoples and cultures were represented in Western museums of anthropology. Originally created as colonial enterprises, their halls were populated by displays of plundered art, artifacts, dioramas, bones, and relics. Kuper reveals the politics and struggles of trying to build these museums in Germany, France, and England in the mid-19th century, and the dramatic encounters between the very colorful and eccentric collectors, curators, political figures, and high members of the church who founded them. He also details the creation of contemporary museums and exhibitions, including the Smithsonian and Harvard’s Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology.
Despite the widespread popularity and cultural importance of these institutions, there also lies a murky legacy of imperialism, colonialism, and scientific racism in their creation. Kuper tackles difficult questions of repatriation and justice, and how best to ensure that the future of these museums is an ethical, appreciative one that promotes learning and cultural exchange. "Kuper’s deeply researched history. . . . advocates for cosmopolitan museums that can transcend ‘ethnic and national identities’ and ‘challenge boundaries.’ A vibrant cultural history.”—Kirkus Reviews
- Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, by Salman Rushdie. Thirty-three years after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa ordering Salman Rushdie’s death of over his 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses, Rushdie remembers thinking “So it’s you,” on the morning of Aug. 12, 2022, as a black-clad man, a “squat missile,” sprinted toward him on an auditorium stage in Chautauqua, N.Y. “Here you are,” he thought, as he was stabbed 15 times in 27 seconds in the right eye, neck, left hand, liver, abdomen, face, forehead, cheeks, mouth and chest. Speaking out for the first time, and in unforgettable detail, about the traumatic events of that day, Salman Rushdie answers violence with art, and reminds us of the power of words to make sense of the unthinkable. Knife is a gripping, intimate, and ultimately life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art—and finding the strength to stand up again.
- The Book of Secrets: A Personal History of Betrayal in Red China, by Xinran Xue.
Following the lives of military intelligence officer Jie and his wife Moon, The Book of Secrets weaves recently found material into a narrative that not only illuminates the shadowy world of intelligence in China, but also the emotional tragedies that political extremism inflicted on those working within. Drawing on Jie's own vivid biography of his youth, Xinran pieces together his trajectory as he joins the great hope of the Chinese young – the Communist Party – and becomes a loyal cadre until the late 1970s when, as a chief in the security forces, he makes a decision that will poison his family against him. This is a totally unique behind-the-scenes account of a family torn apart by the Tiananmen Square massacre and the attempts of Jie to finally open up the Chinese system to the people, pieced together from an extraordinary archive of personal diaries and letters. “No one has done more than Xinran to tell the truth about the lives of ordinary people in twentieth-century China. Her Book of Secrets is a tale of horror, redeemed as always by the story-teller's warmth, grace and narrative grip.” —Hilary Spurling
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The Secret Mind of Bertha Pappenheim: The Woman Who Invented Freud's Talking Cure, by Gabriel Brownstein. In 1880, young Bertha Pappenheim got strangely ill—she lost her ability to control her voice and her body. She was treated by Sigmund Freud’s mentor, Josef Breuer, who diagnosed her with “hysteria.” Together, Pappenheim and Breuer developed what she called “the talking cure”—talking out memories to eliminate symptoms. Freud renamed her “Anna O” and appropriated her ideas to form the theory of psychoanalysis. All his life, he told lies about her. For over a century, writers have argued about her illness and cure. In this unusual work of science, history, and psychology, Brownstein does more than describe the controversies surrounding this extraordinary woman. He brings Pappenheim to life—a brilliant feminist thinker, a crusader against human trafficking, and a pioneer—in the hustling and heady world of nineteenth-century Vienna. At the same time, he tells a parallel story that is playing out in leading medical centers today, about patients who suffer symptoms very much like Pappenheim’s, and about the doctors who are trying to cure them—the story of the neuroscience of a condition now called FND. "In his much-anticipated book, Gabriel Brownstein excavates Bertha Pappenheim’s life, finally telling the full story of this extraordinary feminist whose work continues to impact countless patients today."—Lilith Magazine
- Everest, Inc.: The Renegades and Rogues Who Built an Industry at the Top of the World, by Will Cockrell. Anyone who has read Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air or has seen a recent photo of climbers standing in line to get to the top of Everest may think they have the mountain pretty well figured out. It’s an extreme landscape where bad weather and incredible altitude can occasionally kill, but more so an overcrowded, trashed-out recreation destination where rich clients pad their egos—and social media feeds—while exploiting local Sherpas.
There’s some truth to these clichés, but they’re a sliver of the story. Unlike any book to date, Everest, Inc. gets to the heart of the mountain through the definitive story of its greatest invention: the Himalayan guiding industry. It all began in the 1980s with a few boot-strapping entrepreneurs who paired raw courage and naked ambition with a new style of expedition planning. Many of them are still living and climbing today, and as a result of their astonishing success, ninety percent of the people now on Everest are clients or employees of guided expeditions. “Cockrell chronicles the simultaneous democratization and commercialization of high adventure in his deeply researched debut account of the guided climbing industry on Mt. Everest ”— Publishers Weekly
- Alien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos, by Dr. Lisa Kaltenegger. For thousands of years, humans have wondered whether we're alone in the cosmos. Now, for the first time, we have the technology to investigate. But once you look for life elsewhere, you realize it is not so simple. How do you find it over cosmic distances? What actually is life?
As founding director of Cornell University's Carl Sagan Institute, astrophysicist Lisa Kaltenegger has built a team of tenacious scientists from many disciplines to create a specialized toolkit to find life on faraway worlds. In Alien Earths, she demonstrates how we can use our homeworld as a Rosetta Stone, creatively analyzing Earth's history and its astonishing biosphere to inform this search. With infectious enthusiasm, she takes us on an eye-opening journey to the most unusual exoplanets that have shaken our worldview - planets covered in oceans of lava, lonely wanderers lost in space, and others with more than one sun in their sky! And the best contenders for Alien Earths. We also see the imagined worlds of science fiction and how close they come to reality. "Do you want to prepare yourself for the next 'Copernican revolution'? Then read Lisa Kaltenegger's book! Fascinating."—Michel Mayor
- The Gravity of Math: How Geometry Rules the Universe, by Steve Nadis and Shing-Tung Yau. Mathematics is far more than just the language of science. It is a critical underpinning of nature. The famed physicist Albert Einstein demonstrated this in 1915 when he showed that gravity—long considered an attractive force between massive objects—was actually a manifestation of the curvature, or geometry, of space and time. But in making this towering intellectual leap, Einstein needed the help of several mathematicians, including Marcel Grossmann, who introduced him to the geometrical framework upon which his theory rest.
In The Gravity of Math, Steve Nadis and Shing-Tung Yau consider how math can drive and sometimes even anticipate discoveries in physics. Examining phenomena like black holes, gravitational waves, and the Big Bang, Nadis and Yau ask: Why do mathematical statements, derived solely from logic, provide the best descriptions of our physical world? “With superb technical explanations and polished prose, this book illustrates how real mathematical physics can give even the most imaginative science fiction some pretty stiff competition for excitement.”—Paul Nahin
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