Mlotek debuts with a frank combination of personal and social history that examines both her own divorce and shifting attitudes about the practice. Though Mlotek and her husband dated for 13 years before their wedding, they divorced after just one year of marriage. The experience led Mlotek to reexamine her lifelong comfort with the idea of divorce: her parents and grandparents got divorced; her mother worked as a certified divorce mediator; and when the author was 10, she casually suggested her mother leave her father. As Mlotek reflects on the signs that spelled danger for her relationship—she envied her peers, for example, who used postcollege breakups to help clarify their desires—she launches an inquiry into the history of divorce, tracking legal shifts and divorce rates across the 20th century while analyzing the divorces of such pop culture figures as Elizabeth Gilbert. What emerges is a shrewd testament to personal agency and self-definition, with Mlotek concluding that divorce “is the only way to find out who we are in those moments of pain, loss, and shame” after “standing up in front of the people you love and trust the most, only to say later that you hadn’t known what you were doing.” This raw and reflective account stands out in the crowded field of divorce memoirs. Agent: Marya Spence, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

Scottish chef Brunton debuts with a scattershot food manifesto inspired by her experience launching Inver, a restaurant on the shores of Scotland’s Loch Fyne. In 2015, Brunton and her partner bought a vacant cottage and turned it into a “modern Scottish” restaurant (dishes included “lamb-bone broth with mussels and turnip and seaweed”), winning rave reviews and awards, despite the initial doubts of old-timers who missed their fish and chips. Brunton celebrates Inver as a paragon of progressive food doctrine, serving traditional-ish dishes using organically grown ingredients from nearby farms, treating staff well, and forming close bonds with local farmers, fishermen, and cheesemakers. Brunton’s hymn to slow food and terroir leads to a meditation on “fusion cuisines,” then evolves into a critique of Western industrial agricultural practices that harm the environment and take advantage of farmers in developing nations. Brunton’s writing is best when she sticks to cooking (she describes the sound of a heating pan as “a frantic rattle, like panicked mice scrabbling at the sides of the pan, rising steeply to a seething hiss”). Her case against Big Food comes across more like sophomoric soapboxing, and her vision for a more equitable system of food production amounts to little more than vague truisms (“What if we understood that nothing is ever past at all, but rather living today is dependent on life having been lived before?”). There are some bright moments here, but they’re overwhelmed by stale dogma. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

PopMatters writer Volpert (Boss Broad) paints an idiosyncratic portrait of Alanis Morissette centered on her 1995 album Jagged Little Pill. The author contends that in contrast to the openly defiant feminist records of the riot grrrl movement, Morissette’s album reflected “what French feminists in the seventies called écriture feminine”—women “writing their way out of oppression” by eschewing classic stylistic approaches. In the case of Morissette, her lyrics subtly question “definitions of equal and balanced relationships,” social standards underpinning eating disorders, and even inequality in the recording industry, according to Volpert. She entertains and promptly refutes the idea that the album’s popularity—it’s sold about 33 million copies worldwide to date—makes it “an instrument of the system” it critiques, arguing that the record’s supposedly “commercialized form of Girl Power” allowed it to slip through the gates of the major label system and strike a chord with listeners. Personal musings form the backbone of the narrative; for example, the album’s “constant scream” on the radio helped the author, then a 14-year-old Midwestern kid with nascent feminist leanings, begin to believe “that my coven was powerful enough to survive high school.” This approach gives weight to Volpert’s claims about the extent of Morissette’s cultural influence, though it contributes to the narrative’s somewhat disorganized feel. Still, ardent Morissette fans will savor this. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this gripping debut history, Eicher, a former U.S. Treasury Department credit risk specialist, examines the heated debate over Allied war debt repayment that broke out between U.S. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and British Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill after WWI. Mellon, one of the richest men in America, believed Allied countries should pay their war debt as agreed, arguing it would help reduce postwar inflation (though Eicher notes that Mellon’s bank in Pittsburgh was deeply involved in financing the war, and he personally had purchased $1 million in war bonds). Churchill, meanwhile, believed that collecting the debt was unethical and boded poorly for America’s future as a global power, and urged for it to be forgiven. Churchill’s party fell out of power and Mellon’s plan triumphed; however, most Allied nations defaulted on their war debts not long after Germany reneged on its reparations payments in 1933. Eicher suggests that the debts caused economic fallout contributing to WWII just as clearly as Germany’s reparations did, and also notes that FDR opted for a differently structured, and more successful, lending system ahead of WWII at Churchill’s behest. Providing an enticing blow-by-blow of the debate, which spilled out into public, Eicher shows how it mixed with discussions about the proposed League of Nations and global unity (“Is the world all one,” or is it possible “to separate the world into little compartments?” one British official mused). It’s a fascinating perspective on the interwar period. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

This tedious inquiry from Miskovic and Lynn (50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology), former psychology professors at Binghamton University, explores what spiritualism and religious practices might teach scientists about the nature of consciousness and reality. The authors argue that “our head is itself a kind of ‘organic’ virtual-reality apparatus” that doesn’t perceive the world so much as it contains a set of perceptions that the external world selectively elicits, effectively “dream[ing] our lived reality into existence.” Unfortunately, their evidence is less than convincing. For instance, they suggest that similarities in the “primordial” geometric patterns hallucinated by LSD users, subjects of sensory deprivation experiments, and Buddhist practitioners of Tögal yoga constitute “irreducible building blocks of meaning” that shed light on a deeper reality. However, the authors don’t specify what that meaning is or address whether the shared hallucinations might instead stem from human perceptual anatomy. Additionally, the jargon is nearly impenetrable (“Neuronal oscillations of this frequency are putatively involved in the perceptual binding of experience into the unity of the conscious self-in-world that we experience subjectively”), and some of the authors’ claims are so mystical they veer on unfalsifiable (“An experience of the numinous seems much more likely to occur in the subtle and more interior layers of consciousness”). This is tough going. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

“The entire social, cultural, and athletic evolution of basketball can be traced through the slam dunk,” according to this energetic history. Philadelphia Inquirer sports columnist Sielski (The Rise) notes that in the early 20th century, basketball coaches considered dunking antithetical to the sport’s higher aspirations to improve young men’s moral character, believing the technique too ostentatious. Debates over dunking were inextricably entwined in midcentury basketball’s racial politics, Sielski contends, describing how the National Basketball Committee banned dunking in college and high school hoops in 1967 to stymie the success of UCLA center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was famed for his dunks, and other Black players pushing the sport forward in the late 1960s. Arguing that dunking played a crucial role in turning the NBA into a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, Sielski describes how the thrills of the American Basketball Association’s inaugural slam dunk contest in 1976 hastened the decision of the comparatively staid NBA to merge with its competitor later that year. Briskly told and grounded in observant portraits of famous dunkers (New York streetball legend Earl Manigault is portrayed as a tragic figure whose tireless pursuit of transcendence on the court was hampered by heroin addiction), this scores. Agent: Susan Canavan, Waxman Literary. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

Keep It! host Madison pairs personal reflection with cultural critique in his irreverent debut. As a Black, gay kid growing up in 1990s and early 2000s Wisconsin, Madison clung to TV, music, and movies as guides to help him understand how to live. In “Being Steve Urkel,” Madison explains his theory that “the sitcoms you watched in your formative years tended to mirror the family unit you wish you had.” In “Oprah Ruined My Life,” he divulges how the talk show host’s emphasis on weight loss exacerbated his own struggles with body image. Throughout, Madison hits familiar beats of millennial nostalgia—he finds common ground with his straight peers through The O.C., while Jerry Springer offers a surprisingly robust queer education—but freshens them up with sharp analysis, highlighting, for example, the catharsis Jerry offered in contrast to his buttoned-up Black family. Not everything works, however. Madison’s somewhat excessive reverence for his idols (he writes of hating Coldplay because Chuck Klosterman does, then coming to love them in secret, only to gain permission after Beyoncé collaborates with them, “because baby, if Beyoncé loves Coldplay, then I love Coldplay”) lend the proceedings a slightly glib undertone. Still, there’s enough cheeky humor and genuine passion on offer here to satisfy pop culture junkies. Agent: Erin Malone, WME. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this ingenious account, biographer Hamilton (War and Peace) surveys “the warring minds and hearts” of Abraham Lincoln and Confederate commander-in-chief Jefferson Davis during the first two years of the Civil War. Assessing the wartime management styles of both leaders (who were born one year and 100 miles apart in Kentucky, and even shared a physical resemblance), Hamilton argues that a defining aspect of the war’s early years—and the cause of much of the Union’s initial foundering on the battlefield—was Davis’s direct experience leading troops during the Mexican-American War pitted against Lincoln’s deficit of martial experience, which prevented Lincoln from “putting himself in Davis’s shoes as a soldier.” Hamilton intriguingly posits that Lincoln learning the fundamental art of perceiving the enemy’s point of view is what led him to evolve from a “vacillator in chief” to a confident tactician with emancipation as the cornerstone of his military strategy. It wasn’t until Lincoln understood how essential slave labor was to Davis that he understood how important it was to take it away, Hamilton suggests. He also fascinatingly proposes that part of Lincoln’s slow coming around on the issue stemmed from the Confederacy’s successful propaganda aimed at keeping slavery “sub rosa”—a critical move for gaining foreign aid—and instead presenting themselves as defending against “northern aggression.” It’s a penetrating and surprisingly fresh take on an oft-rehashed subject. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

A fulfilling life means embracing uncertainty, unpredictability, and adversity, according to this energetic guide from psychologist Oishi (The Psychological Wealth of Nations). Critiquing the idea that life should be measured exclusively by happiness (which fluctuates according to things beyond a person’s control) or meaning (which can promote an unhelpful single-mindedness), Oishi argues that accumulating positive and negative experiences builds “psychological richness,” which adds depth to one’s life by broadening their emotional and intellectual horizons. Readers can live such a life by embracing challenges, learning new things, and being spontaneous (examples of the latter range from taking a detour on the way home to having an unexpected encounter with a stranger). While the many case studies of people who’ve lived psychologically rich lives—among them Steve Jobs, economist Daniel Kahneman, and a taxi driver who donated a kidney to her ex husband—give the narrative a somewhat repetitive feel, Oishi lucidly explains his research and maintains an appealingly upbeat tone throughout. It’s a worthwhile reminder to take the road less traveled. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this informative debut, Heaphy shares what he learned about political violence from his unique position as the lead investigator of both the 2017 Unite the Right riot in Charlottesville and the January 6 insurrection. As the former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia, Heaphy was tapped to investigate Unite the Right, and the after-action report he and his team produced identified numerous law enforcement failures, including underestimating the size of the rally and lack of coordination between agencies. Heaphy’s success in that role led to his appointment as chief counsel for the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack. Recapping those findings, Heaphy highlights the similarities between the two episodes, especially the law enforcement failures of each; in both cases, he contends, there was adequate intelligence and appropriate resources available, but planning was deficient because of “striking” disconnects “between the intelligence and the operational plans.” He identifies several reasons for those disconnects—the lack of adequate information sharing, agencies ignoring “leads derived from open sources” (i.e., online postings), and racial bias, which led to the threat from white men being underestimated. Heaphy concludes by prescribing well-meaning remedies to political violence—like encouraging policies that promote civic engagement and strengthen community ties—that unfortunately seem inadequate to addressing the institutional problems he himself has diagnosed. Still, Heaphy offers valuable insights into how political violence turns deadly. (Feb.)

Reviewed on 11/29/2024 | Details & Permalink