The New York City neighborhood that nourished the 1960s folk explosion is celebrated—and its lapse into upscale sterility mourned—in this colorful account. Rolling Stone journalist Browne (So Many Roads) traces four decades of music-making in Greenwich Village, starting in the 1950s, when a modern folk style—pioneered by the likes of Dave Van Ronk—took shape in coffeehouses, nightclubs, and Washington Square Park’s informal concerts. From there, Browne explores the 1960s scene that incubated such superstars as Bob Dylan and Judy Collins and transformed the Village from a working-class enclave into a hippie tourist destination, and chronicles the scene’s decline in the 1980s as soaring rents displaced artists and musicians. The author paints a vivid portrait of infectious creativity and socioeconomic volatility, highlighting the neighborhood’s fashions (“Milling about outside of clubs like the Night Owl, the young men, with their long hair, flowered shirts, pinstriped bell bottoms, and chinos, wanted desperately to resemble a Beatle or a Rolling Stone”) and turf battles between white residents and the racially integrated crowds the folkies brought in. Evocative prose enlivens this captivating ode to a storied chapter of pop culture history. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

Novelist and essayist Ugrešić (The Culture of Lies), who died in 2023, delivers an incisive critique of the nationalist and patriarchal literary establishment that arose in Croatia following the 1992 dissolution of Yugoslavia. Presented as an interview with critic Merima Omeragić , the treatise tackles such subjects as the subversiveness of children’s fiction. Ugrešić argues that the absurdity and irony found throughout young people’s literature undermine the “pomposity” and “imprimatur of the grand” associated with national literary canons. She excoriates former Croatian president Franjo Tuđman , who spearheaded the post-Yugoslav “cultural libricide” in which non-Croatian literature was purged from libraries, and refutes the belief held by “cultural conservatives” that “only through one’s national literature is it possible to come to world literature,” explaining how she instead paved her own path to the international stage through defiance and subversion. (Ugrešić ’s insistence on identifying as Yugoslav rather than Croatian, as well as her feminist novels, caused the media to brand her as a “witch.”) Ugrešić expresses a refreshing commitment to the “invisible” space of literature where the participation of one great reader is enough to provide fulfillment. Lovers of international literature will be energized by this bracing tonic. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, Wylie Agency. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

This niche collection chronicles the 30-year friendship of novelist Shirley Hazzard (1931–2016) and Japanese literature scholar Donald Keene (1922–2019), who met at a memorial for a mutual friend in 1977. The two bonded over their itinerant lifestyles (Hazzard was an Australian living between New York and Italy and Keene a New Yorker who traveled frequently to Japan), with Keene contending that “rootless cosmopolitanism... is the only way we can avoid the madness of nationalism.” The vagaries of the writing life feature prominently, with Keene recounting his squabbles with a copy editor he claimed didn’t understand the purpose of his manuscript about Japanese diaries throughout history, and Hazzard complaining that “in twenty years of producing books, I’ve yet to hear from a publisher that it was ‘a good time’ to publish.” The letters include some insights into Hazzard’s creative process. For instance, messages from Hazzard asking Keene for historical details about the U.S. occupation of Japan after WWII shed light on the research process for her 2003 National Book Award winner, The Great Fire. Unfortunately, frequent discussion of such mundane details as the weather and the logistics of meeting up make for dry reading. This is for Hazzard completists only. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

The quirky humor of comedian Slate (Little Weirds) lights up these odd yet endearing essays, which trace her path to becoming a mother in the years after divorcing her first husband. Reflecting on the early days of dating her second husband, she recounts worrying whenever they were apart that he would lose interest in her, a feeling she gradually overcame through the strength of their connection. Two entries offer psychedelic accounts of her recurring dreams about a stork with “straw-like legs... strobing with filaments, threads of metallic light”; she interprets the creature’s often gruesome deaths as symbolizing her anxieties about becoming a mother. Other selections send-up postpartum life, as when Slate writes in a faux letter to her doctor that her breasts were “dripping like mutant grapes from outer space.” Another entry is styled as an obituary marking the death of Slate’s former self, featuring the headline, “Woman dies of going the extra mile.” Though Slate’s eccentric comedy is a constant, she’s not afraid to get heartfelt, as in the moving “Swan,” where she meditates on losing her grandmother to dementia while raising her baby: “There is no way for us to have our loves without breathtaking pain, not because we love brutally but because we lose each other at different times.” Funny, lyrical, and sometimes strange, these essays pulse with life. Agent: Claudia Ballard, WME. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

Journalist Spicer debuts with a captivating memoir of her quest to uncover her mother’s wartime secrets. Agnes Spicer, who was born in 1922 Russia as Rosa Butorina, arrived in Canada in 1948, having married a soldier who freed her from Nazi internment. Spicer recalls how her mother’s adventuresome war stories (e.g., dodging mines while swimming across the Rhine) never jibed with darker memories (“Forced marches. Eating bark from the trees”) that came out during late-night vodka sessions with “the Red Army Choir on the hi-fi.” Spicer narrates her “journalistic effort to piece it all together,” which included a 1991 meetup with a Russian aunt who revealed Agnes had eloped to Ukraine in 1941 with an abusive secret police officer but quickly fled him to join the Red Army. Further research trips take a surprise turn, as Spicer discovers Agnes likely served as a translator in the Nazi camps where she was interred, and was sought for decades afterward by the KGB as a traitor. Spicer unravels her tale at a tantalizing pace, building a kaleidoscopic portrait of her enigmatic mother (who never sits with her back to the door and is revealed to be an expert knife-thrower during moments of PTSD-like hypervigilance). The result is both a wrenching depiction of a woman determined to bury her past and an eye-opening exploration of the fate of WWII’s Soviet POWs. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

Canadian poet Wayman (If You’re Not Free at Work, Where Are You Free?) reflects on his move from the city to the country in this evocative memoir. After fumbling through couples therapy with his longtime partner, Bea, in the late 1980s, Wayman embarked on a trial separation that took him out of Vancouver and into the small, rural community of Winlaw, in British Columbia’s Slocan Valley. The mishaps began immediately—his transmission gave out while transporting his belongings out of Vancouver—but over time, Wayman adjusted to a slower speed of life and regular animal intrusions (including a young bear bursting into his kitchen in search of food). In sparkling prose (“Robins bobbed along the grass trying their luck for worms, while above, a raven traveled wing-stroke by wing-stroke”), Wayman recalls how the distance from urban living gave him clarity on his relationship with Bea and got him back in touch with the “pure enjoyment of just being alive.” For Wayman, the experience was so restorative that he never left—but even contented city dwellers will take pleasure from this enchanting account. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

Tepper (The Untold Stories of Broadway), creative director at 54 Below, a nonprofit cabaret club, provides an exhaustive tribute to women whose contributions to Broadway musical history have often been overlooked. Spanning from the 18th century to the present, the brief profiles feature such figures as Ann Julia Hatton, “the first woman to write a libretto” (for 1794’s Tammany); Elsie Janis, who starred in and wrote the lyrics for 1919’s Elsie Janis and Her Gang on Broadway, which featured out-of-work WWI veterans; and the all-female creative team behind 1922’s Just Because. Carolyn Leigh’s lyrics to the mid-20th-century musicals Peter Pan and Little Me helped to make her one of the first “female musical theatre writers to enter the permanent canon of the art form,” while Quiara Alegría Hudes wrote the book to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit musical In the Heights, helping to break new ground by “paint[ing] a portrait of real modern-day Latinx people and their everyday struggles.” Tepper is thorough in her research and well-intentioned in her attempt to right historical wrongs, though stiff prose and the sheer number of profiles makes this best suited for scholars and devoted fans of the genre. It’s a valuable if occasionally dry accounting of a lesser-known corner of Broadway history. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

In the face of widespread ecological damage, the threat of nuclear war, and other human-wrought ills, might the world “be better off without us,” muses philosopher May (A Decent Life) in this stimulating treatise. He begins by tallying up the positives humankind brings to the table, including happiness and “important experiences” that only humans can have with the world (such as appreciating things that are “good” in and of themselves, like a beautiful painting). On the other side of the equation are “the misery we create over and against the experiences of truth, beauty, and the good life” and widespread ecological damages incurred by industrial farming and deforestation. May briefly entertains then debunks several solutions, such as humanity continuing to exist on a smaller scale—though even less-populated, more dispersed communities would eventually find one another and balloon to today’s unsustainable population size, he theorizes—before suggesting sensible initiatives, like curtailing factory farming. While the author leaves his central question unanswered and generally refrains from connecting his proposals to concrete action steps, curious readers will appreciate May’s ability to translate weighty philosophical concepts with surprising ease and clarity. The result is a lucid treatment of a provocative thought experiment. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

FashionTelevision host Beker recalls her childhood fascinations, dishes on her celebrity interviews, and dispenses valuable style advice in her intimate debut. She begins by tracing her love of fashion to Betsy, a paper doll she cut out from the pages of McCall’s magazine while growing up in 1950s Toronto, because her Holocaust survivor parents couldn’t afford to buy her a Barbie. The experience of dressing Betsy “taught me the power of original style and the importance of self-expression through wardrobe,” Beker writes. From there, Beker balances chatty passages about her conversations with fashion luminaries—including Oscar de la Renta, who told her, during their final interview before his death, that “life was all about” being happy, and knowing Beker made him happy—with more ruminative sections, including several about her 2022 breast cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment. Her prose is endearingly conversational, if occasionally glib (“Fashion itself may not make the world go round, but... it brings color and attitude to life’s big ride”), as she catalogs her favorite wardrobe pieces (a Chanel maternity dress from Karl Lagerfeld stands out) and paints memorable portraits of her family and friends. It’s a pleasure to spend time in Beker’s company. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/02/2024 | Details & Permalink

Mohseni discusses founding and running Afghanistan’s largest independent media company in this engrossing memoir. When Mohseni was 12, he and his family fled Afghanistan for Japan after the 1978 Saur Revolution. In 2002, after an interim government was established following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Mohseni abandoned his banking career to return home with his three siblings. While the four initially considered launching an almond exporting business, a meeting with a former colleague of their father’s convinced them to start a radio station instead. In 2003, Mohseni and his siblings launched Arman FM, which played pop music banned during Taliban rule, then parlayed its success into a media company called the Moby Group that included TV networks airing news programs and soap operas. While running down Moby’s programming, including hit man-on-the-street radio show Cleaning up the City, Mohseni highlights the issues facing average Afghans, ranging from garbage collection to concerns about corruption in the country’s post-Taliban government. In 2022, after U.S. troops withdrew and the Taliban regained control, Moby was forced to curtail its news coverage. Throughout, Mohseni nimbly balances moving reflections on his connection to his homeland with fascinating insider information on running a media empire. It’s a fascinating firsthand lens on 21st-century Afghanistan. Agent: Amanda Urban, CAA. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 07/26/2024 | Details & Permalink