Betches Media cofounder Sage and lawyer Amick debut with a smart, pop culture–inflected guide to civic engagement. Citing factors—the erosion of the “public square,” the proliferation of internet echo chambers—that have rendered voting, participating in political advocacy groups, and other forms of political engagement more arduous while also increasing polarization, the authors counsel readers on how to break from the “hopeless spiral.” Suggestions include consulting news sources that prioritize issues about which one is passionate; creating a “civic network” by joining advocacy groups and forming friendships based on political interests; and having challenging political conversations with friends and family (suggested phrases to de-escalate chats that get too heated include “I hear you” and “Tell me more”). Most valuably, the authors frame political participation as a form of self-expression that must be rewarding to be sustainable. While the tone is geared toward millennial women—there’s more than one Real Housewives reference here—the pragmatic advice applies across the board. It’s a solid guide for those who already feel overwhelmed by the 2024 presidential election news cycle. (July)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

Art critic Peppiatt (Francis Bacon) excerpts documents, letters, transcripts, and other ephemera to present a revealing window into the mind of the famously private painter (1909–1992). For an artist who professed to have “little interest in or talent for” writing, Bacon provides plenty to chew on here, from stained and creased studio notes to jottings to friends and artist’s statements in which he spends as much time expounding on the human condition as on his work (“Man now realizes that he is an accident, a completely futile being, that he has to play out the game without reason”). Selected interviews shed light on Bacon’s artistic vision and its juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane, though an excess of brusque “could you possibly lend me” letters to friends, patrons, and gallery owners becomes tedious. While the sheer wealth of material obscures some gems, the intimate portrait that emerges—of Bacon apologetic over drunken escapades, occasionally desperate for money, and determined, in the face of “the great wave of abstraction... unfurling over the Western world,” to keep “the human figure as his central focus”—captivates. For Bacon aficionados, this is a must. Illus. (June)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

“There’s no single way to grieve,” according to this surprisingly upbeat debut guide to mourning customs across the globe. Among other traditions, Isalska overviews New Orleans funeral jazz processions (“a celebration of the departed’s life—and of life itself”); Ghana’s fantasy coffins (the dead are transported to the afterlife in caskets shaped “like ships, chilli peppers or airplanes”); and Balinese Hindu cremation ceremonies intended to “free the soul from earthly ties and ensure a serene afterlife.” Paid mourners rend their clothes and wail across the globe, and festivals to honor ancestors take place across cultures, from China’s Hungry Ghost Festival (where ritual feasts for the dead are held in Buddhist temples) to India’s Pitru Paksha (during which families perform rites in hopes of helping their ancestors achieve enlightenment). Throughout, Isalska calls for normalizing discussions around death, and makes the case that awareness of one’s mortality can provide wisdom for the here and now. Isalska’s upbeat tone and insight into the nitty-gritty of death rituals (including whether travelers may participate in them) result in an eye-opening tour of the varied ways cultures grapple with what lies beyond. Readers will be glad to take the trip. (July)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

A young man leaves his fraying suburban family to find a new one among New York City’s gay demimonde in this fascinating memoir from New York Times style reporter Trebay (In the Place to Be). Trebay opens the narrative with an account of his family’s disintegration in the 1960s and ’70s under a variety of pressures, including his parents’ marital problems, which the children responded to by developing a taste for drugs and petty theft. It all fell apart in 1975, when Trebay’s mother died of cancer and the family house on Long Island burned down due to an electrical fire. The 22-year-old author fled to Manhattan, where he fell in among the city’s rebels and outcasts, including queer Downtown figures Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, and drag queen Dorian Corey. Trebay chronicles his salad days busing tables and posing for illustrators before he found his place as an editor at the Village Voice (“If you ever change a comma of mine again, I’ll throw you out the window,” one writer raged after Trebay’s edits). The rambling anecdotes don’t always move the narrative forward, but they coalesce into a rich portrait of the city and its characters. The result is an engrossing story of family dysfunction redeemed by self-reinvention. Photos. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (July)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

Cartoonist Eckstein (Footnotes from the World’s Greatest Bookstores) explains that the 72 institutions included in his affectionate tour of North American museums are not intended as a definitive ranking (“Otherwise I would have taken into account the three things travelers are most interested in: the museum cafe, the gift shop, and the bathrooms”). Instead, the idiosyncrasy of his “most fascinating” criteria produces a charming juxtaposition of lauded (the Met; the Smithsonian) and obscure institutions (Boston’s Museum of Bad Art, which displays paintings plucked from the trash). While Eckstein’s ample facts occasionally strain for significance (the Whitney contains “New York City’s largest column-free exhibition spaces”), the book’s true strengths are its role as a kind of communal scrapbook, with piquant anecdotes relayed from others—like poet Sharon Messmer, who, recalling a break-up with a boyfriend at the Art Institute of Chicago, blames the museum’s proximity to bars—and Eckstein’s illustrations. Many of those, including a depiction of a gargantuan James Turrell light installation at Mass MoCA with minuscule humans crowded before it, communicate a sense of being dwarfed and stunned, suggesting such feelings stem from both great art and great museums’ showcasing of it. The result is a touching rumination on public art’s potential to provoke personal epiphany. (May)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

The war that brought independence to the world’s fourth-largest country plays out on a resonantly human scale in this captivating chronicle of the 1945–1949 Indonesian revolution. Historian Van Reybrouck (Congo) paints a rich portrait of a stratified pre-WWII colonial society in the Dutch East Indies, then recaps the upheavals that demolished Dutch authority: the Japanese occupation during WWII that destroyed the colonial administration while giving Indonesians experience in military resistance, the dramatic 1945 declaration of an independent republic, and the chaotic conflict that pitted young republican firebrands against Dutch and pro-Dutch Indonesian forces and later devolved into civil war among Islamist, communist, and nationalist Republican factions. Van Reybrouck’s sweeping narrative situates the revolution as the prototype for the rest of the 20th century’s decolonization struggles, but he keeps the focus on individual experiences gleaned from interviews with participants, bringing to life their youthful enthusiasm (“I was fourteen. I left with friends. That way I was able to get away from my mean stepmother too!”)and trauma (“They shot [my cousin] six times. In his right foot, his left foot, his right knee, his left knee, the right side of his chest, the left side of his chest”). The result is a vivid recreation of a watershed event in world history. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

The fresh perspective and distinctive voice of poet Villarreal (Beast Meridian) drive this smart collection. The power of fantasy stories looms large in these essays, as in “After the World-Breaking, World-Building,” where Villarreal argues that the genre acts as a conduit for conceiving of more equitable ways to organize society. Picking up this theme in “The Fantasy of Healing,” Villareal contends that in the video game Witcher 3, the option to use “feminized folk practices to heal victims, homes, and communities” in lieu of enacting violent retribution on wrongdoers raises the possibility of alternative forms of justice rooted in healing rather than punishment. “In the Shadow of the Wolf” suggests that Nordic mythology’s ascendant popularity during the Obama era can be attributed to a “cultural desire” for “the return of white male dominance, free from colonial baggage or accountability.” Other selections are more personal, as when Villarreal recounts how in high school her white boyfriend’s mother sought to drive a wedge in their relationship by hiring her as a maid. The sharp commentary on Assassin’s Creed, Horizon Zero Dawn, and other video games prove the under-analyzed medium is ripe for rigorous intellectual engagement, and the meditations on fantasy narratives incisively probe how fictional worlds reflect and intersect with the real one. Readers will be spellbound. Agent: Amanda Orozco, Transatlantic Agency. (May)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

This disappointing guide from Beer (Oscar Charleston), cofounder of the consulting firm AmPhil, expounds on how conservative nonprofits can improve their fundraising efforts. Encouraging organizations to “put a name and a face” on the individuals they help in communications with donors, Beer describes how a Catholic hospital system used uplifting patient stories when raising funds. To maintain relationships with major donors, Beer urges nonprofits to meet at least once per year with every individual who gives more than $1,000 and to bond with potential benefactors by accompanying them to church. Unfortunately, Beer often drifts off subject, as when he claims, without evidence, that declining marriage rates have increased disconnectedness and decries the alleged stinginess of “snotty” socialists. Throughout, he wears his conservatism on his sleeve and draws examples from such right-leaning organizations as the National Review and Hillsdale College, limiting the volume’s appeal beyond right-wing circles. Additionally, a significant proportion of the “effective nonprofit leaders” profiled work at Beer’s firm, giving the proceedings a self-congratulatory feel. This is best suited for those who share Beer’s politics. (July)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this stimulating study, Long (Prehistoric Australasia), a paleontology professor at Flinders University in Australia, explores “how over the course of 465 million years [sharks] were shaped and honed by a constantly changing world.” Emphasizing the predators’ resilience, Long explains that sharks survived the “Great Dying,” an era of “prolonged volcanic eruptions” 252 million years ago that wiped out around 87% of all marine species, by moving into deeper parts of the ocean that were less affected by the dramatic rise in water temperatures. Sharks have also shown a great capacity for adaptation, Long writes, suggesting their “superpower” is “the ability to craft and shape new tooth types with new tissues” (some species “developed flat crushing or grinding tooth plates” for cracking clams while other grew cladodont teeth, each of which has “three or more prominent pointed cusps”). The comprehensive overview of sharks’ evolutionary history highlights some of the stranger specimens to have prowled the oceans (one ancient species had “large wing-like pectoral fins emerging from near its neck like dystopian underwater butterflies”). Long also sheds light on how paleontologists draw conclusions from a limited fossil record, describing how “analyzing the isotopes of certain elements like nitrogen, carbon, and oxygen” in shark teeth reveals what kinds of prey the carnivores ate. Readers will want to sink their teeth into this. Photos. Agent: Jane von Mehren, Aevitas Creative Management. (July)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

Little House on the Prairie actor Butler delivers a sweet if superficial debut memoir about his early life and acting career. Born in British Columbia in 1956, Butler grew up in Northern California, where his first performances were in an elementary school show choir. He chalks up his eventual turn toward acting to a job announcing high school basketball games (“Everything that has happened since can be traced back to that moment when Mr. Cochran pointed me to the microphone”). The bulk of the book sheds light on Butler’s screen credits, beginning with the 1978 adaptation of Judy Blume’s Forever and focusing primarily on his five-year stint, from 1979 to 1983, as Almanzo Wilder in Little House on the Prairie. He shares regrets about his lack of sensitivity to the eight-year age difference between him and series lead Melissa Gilbert, who played his love interest (“Today that... difference is a tiny gap, but forty-five years ago, it was the Grand Canyon”), and muses on his complicated relationship with costar Michael Landon. Other behind-the-scenes sections, covering Butler’s work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and numerous documentaries, generate occasional interest, but there’s not a lot of substance. This is for die-hard Little House on the Prairie fans only. Agent: Danita Florace, AEF Talent. (June)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink