Historian Donovan (Shoot for the Moon) provides a straight-shooting account of how parachutists and gliders from the 82nd Airborne slipped behind Axis lines in Normandy just before the start of the D-Day invasion in June 1944. Citing interviews with survivors and their kin, he chronicles how the mission—which had been labeled suicidal by the British—secured key roadways and the La Fière Bridge, preventing German reinforcements from arriving to rebuff the Allies’ amphibious attack. Donovan spotlights dozens involved, including mission leader Gen. Matthew Ridgway, whom he describes as “smart, charismatic,” and possessing “a hawklike visage often likened to a Roman emperor’s.” With one of the few working radios and a jeep that had been sent in on a glider, Ridgway set up headquarters in a farmhouse surrounded by the enemy. His men were scattered, many having missed their landing points: one group of parachutists descended to their deaths in a French town that was entirely aflame; others were shot by German guns while still in the air or were taken prisoner as soon as they landed. Donovan’s terse style recreates the sheer chaos as German tanks advanced, “mortar shells continued to fall,” and “57 percent of the 82nd’s combat personnel” were wounded or killed over 33 days of fighting. This plunges readers into the thick of battle. (May)

Reviewed on 04/18/2025 | Details & Permalink

Rubens, a former BBC Radio producer, investigates how wireless listening touched “every home” across the U.K. in this affable debut study. She begins by explaining late Victorian technological developments that laid the groundwork for radio’s ascendance, including the birth of the phonograph and both wired and wireless telegraphy. Guglielmo Marconi first patented wireless communication in 1896, but it took decades for radio to grow from a technology used primarily by hobbyists to a mass communication system that, by 1938, was accessible to 34 million people in the U.K. out of a population of 47.5 million. Radio’s shift from something enjoyed in public to something heard in private is what defined its “first era” from 1922 to 1939, when everything that “listeners now take for granted was novel” and experienced as a cultural sea change, like the 1936 broadcasting of King George V’s death. Rubens also spotlights how the medium had an outsized cultural impact on women first, as they often made up the majority of listeners due to their being at home. Stuffed with insights, quotes, and anecdotes, from Bristol locals reminiscing about their first encounters with the radio to profiles of famous early BBC presenters, Rubens’s account can occasionally meander. Still, Anglophiles and BBC regulars will find it worth tuning in. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/18/2025 | Details & Permalink

During the 20th century, artists, industrialists, politicians, bureaucrats, and executives all “came to understand a set of previously unrelated concepts” like “beauty, function, problem-solving,” and “experience” as “components of one single megaconcept” called design, according to this impressive debut from historian Gram. She profiles individuals at the center of design history, most strikingly Eva Striker Zeisel. Born in 1906 in Budapest to a family of left-wing intellectuals, as a journeyman potter Zeisel pioneered the creation of “molds for mass production.” Though she was primarily focused on the “beautification” of goods, she made clever innovations to the logistics of mechanized production itself. In addition to Zeisel’s story (which eventually takes her to Moscow and New York, shedding light on design’s evolution on both sides of the Iron Curtain), Gram also traces the American postwar rise of think tanks, which attempted to apply design principles developed for mass production to the “optimizing” of society itself. It wasn’t until the 1980s and the human-oriented design of Apple home computers that design instead came to be widely understood as “optimizing” user experience, Gram suggests. Today, she notes, design is entangled in virtually everything, from school lunches to “the vote.” Sweeping and superbly researched, Gram’s account makes an intriguing case that design “helped people imagine” that society was governed by “rational” forces at a time when mass industrialization was tearing apart the social fabric. It’s a riveting intellectual history. (June)

Reviewed on 04/18/2025 | Details & Permalink

Essayist Stratis debuts with a stirring collection focused on the music that inspired her to embrace her trans identity. Born in a remote area of northern Canada, the author grew up seeking refuge from her community’s rigid gender norms in her dad’s record collection. Searching for “some secret path to understanding myself,” she found solace in the brooding yet hopeful “grocery store rock” of the Wallflowers; Radiohead’s commentaries on “the falseness of the world”; and the Replacements’ ahead-of-their-times portrayal of queerness as a “portent of possibility.” Ultimately, so called “dad rock” saved her, serving as a framework through which to examine her emotions, feel less alone, and eventually come out to family and friends. While some instances of excessive sentimentality distract, they’re mostly made up for by the author’s appealing blend of emotional honesty and self-aware humor. The result is a poignant ode to music’s power to change lives. (May)

Reviewed on 04/18/2025 | Details & Permalink

Well-intentioned idealists misstep by making choices based on values alone, according to this thought-provoking study. Sloman (The Knowledge Illusion), a professor of cognitive science at Brown University, argues that those making decisions draw on two different frameworks—the first rooted in acting on one’s values or principles, the other on balancing the rewards or drawbacks their actions might cause. The values framework, he contends, promotes absolutism because it removes the impetus to make trade-offs and reduces critical thinking. Furthermore, he notes that while communities that share the same values work well, more diverse societies, such as the U.S., are less hospitable to values-based frameworks. As an alternative, Sloman envisions a society where policies are rooted in facts, research, and analysis, and where people more willingly engage in critical thinking and admit their ignorance (for which he provides reframing techniques, like considering the roots of the other person’s viewpoint during an argument). Fluidly translating cognitive science and philosophical concepts into accessible prose, Sloman persuasively reveals how a well-meaning yet myopic focus on principles alone oversimplifies discourse and promotes identity politics. Readers will be edified. (May)

Reviewed on 04/18/2025 | Details & Permalink

Essayist Blaxell debuts with an astonishing seven-part “essay” that blends memoir, criticism, speculative fiction, and reportage. While ranging across subjects as varied as religion, motherhood, and her own gender transition, Blaxell remains a confident, nimble narrator, pulling together disparate threads to form something greater than the sum of its parts. In “Disappointments,” Blaxell reflects on her postvaginoplasty doldrums, and quotes a friend who told her, “There are better things to be disappointed about than vagina. Some people are disappointed with God... why don’t you try that?” “Mouse Eats Communion Wafer” imagines Nietzsche in the afterlife, sipping lattes and carrying on conversations with David Bowie and Maria Callas. Blaxell dedicates significant space to the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, attempting to wrap her mind around the horrors of its 200,000-plus casualties before describing a darkly whimsical vision of phosphorescent cats “dancing among the pre-dawn trees and pulsing green each time they waltz close to radioisotopes decaying reluctantly in the dark soil.” Teeming with wonder and wicked humor, Blaxell’s dispatches offer a boisterous trip through a formidable intellect. At one point, quoting Voltaire, she asks, “What is the purpose of beauty if it’s not shared?” Readers craving a break from the mundane will be grateful Blaxell has shared these stunning explorations. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/18/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this eccentric memoir, poet and MacArthur fellow Hirsch (Stranger by Night) shares memories of his Illinois upbringing in fragmentary bursts. The first entry, “All Sales Are Final,” is a quote from Hirsch’s grandfather: “God is like my old boss on Maxwell Street. You may get home and discover that your new shirt doesn’t have a back, but you’re still not going to get a refund.” It’s followed by brief entries about all four of Hirsch’s grandparents, then discursive anecdotes about his parents’ childhoods. Readers should know by this point whether they’re willing to go along for the ride: the rest of the book moves along similar lines, juxtaposing witticisms (“A watched kettle never boils. An unwatched kettle blows its top”) with more concrete bits of narrative—about Hirsch’s mother falling out with her friends, his father serving in the Army in Guam, and his days playing football, basketball, and baseball—that form a mosaic of the author’s coming-of-age among a large Jewish family in the 1950s and ’60s. Those who prize linearity and concrete detail might be left wanting, but poetry fans and more adventurous readers will be rewarded by this evocative family portrait. Photos. Agent: Liz Darhansoff, Darhansoff & Verrill Literary. (June)

Reviewed on 04/18/2025 | Details & Permalink

Music journalists Porter and Goggin debut with a colorful chronicle of the first 13 years of the Record Plant recording studio. Founded in 1968 New York City by studio engineer Gary Kellgren with help from Chris Stone, a regional sales manager at Revlon who persuaded Revlon’s founder’s ex-wife to invest, Record Plant was the first living-room-style studio where rock stars weary from touring could relax while recording. The studio grew quickly thanks to Kellgren’s knack for luring in superstars (he often left the recording itself to assistants, allowing youngsters—like Roy Cicala and now-legendary producer Jimmy Iovine—to move up quickly). Meanwhile, Stone ensured a steady revenue stream by booking studio time 24-7, making multiple backup recordings, and padding invoices sent to artists’ record companies, in part to pay for the endless supply of drugs that kept performers coming back to the studio and engineers working well past exhaustion. In 1969, the studio expanded to Los Angeles, and then opened a location in Sausalito, reflecting Kellgren’s desire to get artists away from record label scrutiny and corporate influence. Stitching together meticulous research, interviews with industry insiders and engineers, and ephemera (including album covers, studio posters, and even invitations to Record Plant parties), the authors provide an exuberant account of a chaotic studio culture that fed some of the artists’ worst impulses while creating some of the 1970s’ most memorable music, including records by Aerosmith and Bruce Springsteen. Rock fans will find this irresistible. Photos. (June)

Reviewed on 04/18/2025 | Details & Permalink

Art historian O’Neill-Butler (Let’s Have a Talk) explores the interplay of activism and art in these thought-provoking case studies. Aiming to break through the “cultural amnesia” that prevents contemporary artist-activists from building on their forerunners’ successes, she considers such groundbreaking artworks as the wheatfield conceptual artist Agnes Denes planted in Lower Manhattan in 1982, as a critique of globalized agriculture, and Project Row Houses, a form of “social practice art” spearheaded by an artist collective in the 1990s to restore abandoned properties in Houston’s Third Ward. Other artists interrogated the sometimes-cozy relationship between industry and art. For example, beginning in the late 2010s, Nan Goldin’s Prescription Addiction Intervention Now (P.A.I.N.) organized “die-ins” in the Louvre and other museums to protest their ties to the Sackler family (whose pharmaceutical company developed Oxycontin), spurring the removal of the family’s name from some museums’ exhibits. O’Neill-Butler succeeds in cataloging the broad array of strategies artists have used to agitate for change, and she offers measured critiques of their works, which often reflected positions of privilege. Art historians will find much to chew on here. (June)

Reviewed on 04/18/2025 | Details & Permalink

In 1879, while the Great Powers were scrambling to carve up Africa, Belgian king Leopold II came up with the “bizarre idea” that sending four Indian elephants to the continent would give him a competitive edge, explains journalist Roberts (Pianos for Siberia) in this riveting, sumptuously written account. Leopold, today well-known for his cruel reign over Congo, believed that if African elephants could be trained to work in the manner of Indian elephants—which bore huge loads and carried out much labor in the Indian subcontinent—it would speed up the extraction of Africa’s resources. For this task Leopold dispatched Irish sea captain Frederick Carter, who had little experience with Africa, or with elephants for that matter. Throughout Roberts’s reporting, which takes her from the archives in Brussels where Leopold’s records can be found to Carter’s trail in Zanzibar, she is attentive to the lure of permitting the colonizers’ “fantasy” of Africa to dominate her own impressions. The reality, Roberts shows, was instead riven with maniacal avarice and both human and animal suffering (Carter obscenely loaded the elephants with seven times the amount they were supposed to carry). In Roberts’s artful telling, the folly and brute madness of subjugating the African elephant serves as a searing symbol for the conquest of the continent itself. It’s a tour de force. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 04/18/2025 | Details & Permalink