In this endearing autobiography, cowritten with journalist McCarter (Hamilton: The Revolution), Crazy Rich Asians filmmaker Chu digs into his childhood, influences, and struggles to define himself. Growing up in Silicon Valley in the 1980s and ’90s, Chu—the youngest of five children—worked at his Chinese immigrant parents’ restaurant and learned early to “fade into the background and simply observe, then get what I want without the drama.” As he became enamored with theater and cinema, Chu took advantage of the rapid development of digital technology, running a “mini movie studio” out of his bedroom by the time he was 18, complete with high-tech cameras and top-shelf editing software. He followed his passion through film school at USC and the production of a short film that caught the attention of Steven Spielberg and led Sony to tap Chu for a remake of Bye Bye Birdie. Dizzied by the sudden success, Chu felt both devastated and relieved when the project collapsed, allowing him to regroup before breaking through with Step Up 2 the Streets in 2008. Chu and McCarter enliven the standard-issue celeb memoir beats with bits of wisdom aimed at aspiring filmmakers (“Stock Your Pantry”; “Check the Projector”) and welcome humor. Film fans—especially those with hopes of working in the business—will enjoy this. Photos. Agent: Lacy Lalene Lynch, Dupree/Miller & Assoc. (July)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

Journalist Lawson (War Dogs) examines disgraced financial adviser Marty Blazer’s role in exposing NCAA corruption in this propulsive true crime narrative. Lawson begins the account in 2013, when Blazer was arrested for stealing $2 million from his NFL clients. While Blazer had little defense for that crime, he sought lighter sentencing for it by pointing the FBI and SEC toward a college basketball scandal he was privy to, and occasionally participated in: it was common practice, he claimed, for coaches and sports companies to bribe athletes and their families and steer them toward particular schools or sponsors. Blazer went undercover to prove his allegations, and Lawson corroborates his account by reviewing transcripts, parsing secretly recorded conversations with coaches at Penn State and LSU, and conducting extensive interviews with Blazer himself. The case resulted in the arrests of multiple coaches and Adidas employees; for his own crimes, Blazer got a year’s probation. Lawson carefully balances Blazer’s self-aggrandizement with details of his fraudulent activities, and convincingly argues that the case “held up a mirror to important American institutions... reaping huge profits on the backs of kids playing the sports they love.” This thoroughly reported deep dive impresses. Agent: Robert Guinsler, Sterling Lord Literistic. (June)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this striking account, historian Purvis (Ragged Coast, Rugged Coves) surveys Alaskan Native communities’ resistance to environmental interference by outsiders since the 19th century. Beginning with the U.S. purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867, she traces how over subsequent decades, Native Alaskans fought back when their rights to their land and their way of life were threatened by government and corporate efforts to exploit Alaska’s resources. Such efforts included government physicist Edward Teller’s 1950s Project Chariot plan to conduct nuclear tests on the Alaskan coast and President John F. Kennedy’s proposed hydroelectric dam on the Yukon River in the 1960s. Both projects, deceptively billed as having no environmental downsides, were thwarted by organized resistance from Native Alaskans, who had to overcame racism and crude stereotyping to succeed. The campaign against Project Chariot was later deemed as a milestone in the fight for environmental justice, Purvis explains, as was Native organizers’ response to the disastrous 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in the Prince William Sound. By placing these and other episodes into one cohesive narrative, Purvis paints a rousing and Native-focused picture of Alaska’s past that emphasizes how the battle over land use and environmental health is a central force in U.S. history. Purvis’s unique perspective is worth checking out for environmentalist activists, legal minds, and American history buffs alike. (May)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

CNN correspondent Reeve draws on a decade’s worth of her own reporting to offer a riveting debut chronicle of the rise of the alt-right. Tracing the movement from its beginnings on such message boards as 8chan to the January 6 Capitol attack, Reeve depicts the alt-right as more organized than is commonly believed and urges for more mainstream news coverage, arguing that a policy of “deplatforming” has not quelled the movement but instead allowed it to fester in the shadows. Through in-depth interviews with key players, including 8chan founder Fred Brennan, who helped inculcate the internet’s “incel” subculture, and neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, who organized the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Va., she gives a fine-grained account of the movement’s philosophical and sociological origins online, where young men “disillusioned” with life, especially their relationships with women, developed fascistic worldviews that they could “try on... without risk” in anonymous forums. Though different wings of the movement have risen and fallen (Brennan and Spencer now both partly repudiate their pasts; Spencer gained media attention in 2022 for listing his politics as “moderate” on the dating app Bumble), Reeve warns that the movement’s core of “dark but gleeful nihilism,” which promotes violence as justifiable under a corrupt and imminently collapsing regime, has only grown stronger. This immersive political history will captivate readers concerned about the future of democracy. (July)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

TV producer Janetti (Start Without Me) takes a delightful and sharp-witted tour through a lifetime’s worth of travel exploits and misadventures. In essays that range from the family cruises he took as a kid (his father worked in sales for a ship line) to the present day, Janetti good-naturedly bemoans the discomforts of staying in friends’ spare rooms (“The cost of being a perfect guest is your sanity”), juxtaposes the petty annoyances (including a foghorn’s nonstop blaring) of a cruise taken with extended family with the moments of connection it afforded, and wistfully recalls meeting and falling in love with his husband Brad during a trip to Mykonos. Janetti’s irresistible blend of deadpan humor (“Whether you were scammed by a ticket broker or your husband was knifed in Hell’s Kitchen, a shrug and a ‘This is New York’ would fit the bill,” he writes of how he’d deal with dissatisfied guests while working at a Manhattan hotel in his 20s) and earnest reflections on how travel has shaped his life mostly makes up for the book’s more flatly diaristic descriptions of meals and disappointing cruise ship performances. Readers are bound to catch the travel bug. (July)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

This pragmatic debut from Tipler, a college admissions consultant, details how high schoolers can stand out during the college admissions process with strong personal and supplemental essays. The bulk of the guidance is devoted to crafting the personal essay, which Tipler suggests should present a narrative that ties the application together and focus on events from one’s high school years (“Admissions officers want to know about who you are now”). Describing how to tackle the most common supplemental essay topics, Tipler contends that “Why Our School essays” should explain why specific programs and opportunities make the university a good fit. Elsewhere, Tipler breaks down the application review process, noting that an admissions officer will read through one’s materials and then present them to the rest of the committee before the group votes on whether to admit the student. Exercises for brainstorming personal essay topics will help students get their creative juices flowing (one suggests choosing five words to describe oneself and recalling stories that demonstrate those qualities), and guidance on whether to discuss one’s racial background or use ChatGPT gives this an edge over older guides. (Tipler contends that though ChatGPT can be useful for generating ideas, no text should ever be copied directly from the site.) High schoolers will find this a boon. Agent: Karen Murgolo, Aevitas Creative Management. (June)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

Vondriska, whose X account @MenWriteWomen skewers sexist literature, provides an irreverent guide purporting to help women authors emulate the misogynistic literary stylings that propel male writers to the top of bestseller lists. The “basic bro code for writing women” includes such tenets as “women are breasts” and “thou must never portray a woman as having both brains and beauty.” A breakdown of female stock characters used to “advance the story of the male hero” explains that secretaries should be oblivious to their own sexiness and that nagging wives should drive their husbands to drink. Lampooning the excuses male authors use to dismiss critics, Vondriska recommends that readers accused of writing flat female characters blame “where you grew up,” “what books you read as a child,” or “the character. They’re meant to be an asshole!” The mordant commentary bites, but exercises interspersed throughout come across as filler, as when Vondriska provides a “manly Madlib” prompting readers to supply sexually charged adjectives, as well as blank pages for writing an objectifying description of a woman’s corpse in the style of a male mystery writer. Still, it’s a raucous send-up of the male gaze. Agent: Justin Brouckaert, Aevitas Creative Management. (July)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

Fortune journalist Kahn expounds in his shrewd first book on how AI is likely to change art, education, and the workplace. AI can serve as an educational resource for disadvantaged students who might not otherwise have access to help outside the classroom, Kahn contends, describing how the online education platform Khan Academy built an AI tutor designed to emulate the Socratic method. Kahn is levelheaded in his assessment of AI’s abilities and shortcomings, suggesting that while the software might assist artists with generating ideas (“The British crime novelist Ajay Chowdhury uses ChatGPT as a brainstorming partner”), it’s designed to conform to examples it has previously encountered and thus can’t produce anything novel without extensive human input. Addressing AI’s limitations in the design and implementation process is critical, Kahn argues. For instance, he details how algorithms built for identifying crime hot spots reflected racial biases in the data the programs were trained on and asserts that such software “must be engineered to explicitly compensate for past racism by specifying equality as a goal alongside predictive accuracy.” Striking a balance between bullishness and caution, Kahn sets out a helpful roadmap for harnessing the promise of AI while navigating its perils. The result is one of the more convincing assessments of how AI will transform society. Agent: Todd Shuster, Aevitas Creative Management. (July)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

Insecure actor Ellis recounts amusing anecdotes from his “behaviorally challenged” childhood in this briskly funny debut memoir-in-essays. After posting an ode to his mischievous imaginary friend, Mikey, on Instagram at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Ellis received a flood of responses, confirming his suspicion that “the most creative people on the planet probably all had imaginary friends growing up.” Using Mikey’s unconditional encouragement as a jumping-off point, Ellis shares freewheeling stories from his early life in the 1980s and ’90s, which saw his family move regularly across the South and Southwest due to his father’s Air Force career. He covers family road trips, the time he threw his Magic Johnson Converse sneakers in a rain gutter to prove they could “float like Jordans,” and an afternoon when Mikey encouraged him to ask his third grade homeroom teacher to be his girlfriend. Throughout, Ellis underlines how Mikey’s confidence helped him navigate an “uncontrollable and often unsafe” world, lending depth to an otherwise riotously funny series of self-reflections. Even readers unfamiliar with Ellis’s acting work will be delighted. Agent: Albert Lee, UTA. (July)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink

Finley, a stand-up comedian and assistant professor of Africana Studies at Pomona College, debuts with a nuanced and creative analysis of how Black women use sass as a means of “deflection and humanization.” Comprising rhetorical (appraisal, questioning, and provoking) and gestural components (eye-rolling, teeth-sucking, and finger-snapping), sass, which the author characterizes as “a dialogic, intelligible pattern of address... to an assumed superior in institutional or interpersonal settings,” pushes back against power structures and the pressures Black women receive to “stay in one’s place.” Among other topics, Finley analyzes how raunchy humor “functions in the framework of sass” to interrogate white patriarchy, citing a group of protestors who sang Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP”—a “raunchy... Black feminist credo”—outside the White House following Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential defeat and how butch female comics use sass to “deal with their butchness onstage” and compel audiences to “expand their ideas of what Black womanhood means.” Mining a rich trove of examples, including the character Topsy from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, comedian Jackie “Moms” Mabley, singer Gladys Bentley, and contemporary figures including Michelle Obama and Jada Pinkett Smith, as well as her own experiences as a Black comedian, Finley provides an enlightening and rigorous examination of sass as a means of asserting one’s power in an oppressive world. It’s an insightful study of the politics of humor. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 05/24/2024 | Details & Permalink