Overbeke, a theater professor at Columbia College Chicago, debuts with a spirited biography of Jean Carroll (1911–2010) that examines how the Jewish comic “sparked the creativity and humor of a generation” of female comedians, including Joan Rivers and Lily Tomlin. Born Celine Zeigman in Paris, Carroll moved with her family to New York City in 1912, where she endured a tumultuous childhood with an alcoholic father. Resolving at age eight to earn enough money to support her mother and siblings, she began performing in variety shows in 1922, adopted a “non-ethnic” name, and became the family’s primary breadwinner by the time she was a teenager. Shifting to stand-up comedy in 1944, Carroll eschewed the standard rapid-fire delivery popular at the time for a gossipy, conversational style that established an intimate relationship with her audience. Scrupulously dissecting the linguistic and thematic nuances of the comedian’s performances, Overbeke reveals how Carroll modeled a new type of funny Jewish woman “who had assimilated into American upper-middle-class, white, heterosexual, attractive, and even glamorous society,” yet whose persona “retained something markedly Jewish.” The result is a valuable addition to the history of female comedians and Jewish American entertainers. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 05/31/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this refreshing and earnest meditation, bestseller Brown (Emergent Strategy) draws on her work helping to reconcile differences in activist circles to ruminate on unhelpful patterns she has observed in those communities. These range from cannabis overuse and internet addiction to the heated debates that can break out when pro-Israel liberals are involved in organizations with anticolonial values. To disrupt these patterns and mediate conflict, Brown proposes a strategy of “loving correction”—a tactic of “checking in” rather than calling out or canceling, which she most saliently describes as “learning to attend to the quality of connection,” and most evocatively demonstrates via an extended transcript of a conversation between herself and her sisters as they resolve family conflict. Throughout, Brown both continues in her project of composing something like Robert’s Rules of Order for modern progressives and adds depth to her theory of emergent strategy, which posits a state of interdependence in humanity’s shared mental landscape (“In the same way we have lost so many precious and unique species... we are losing valuable cultural gifts and distinctions, losing our capacity to understand which differences are good and healthy for us, and which are too dangerous to tolerate”). Organizers should take note. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 05/31/2024 | Details & Permalink

Attorney Nimoy (My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life) holds nothing back in this raw look at his relationship with his father, Star Trek actor Leonard Nimoy (1931–2015). As a child, Adam struggled to connect with his increasingly famous father, whose emotional distance and alcoholism bred deep resentment in Adam. In 2006, after their relationship had essentially dissolved, Leonard wrote Adam an email lamenting that they “never had a relationship that was meaningful and satisfying,” then followed it up with a six-page letter listing his grievances with Adam. After the shock of the letter wore off, Adam reached out, on the advice of a friend, and admitted to many of his father’s accusations, including that he held grudges and could be abrasive. That broke the ice between them, leading Leonard to invite Adam to a Shabbat dinner, which they soon made a tradition. From there, Adam writes of the projects they collaborated on (including documentaries about Star Trek and Leonard’s Boston childhood), the meals they shared in the last nine years of Leonard’s life, and the personal struggles they bonded over; both were divorced, both dealt with substance abuse. Adam’s candor about his own shortcomings lends warmth and self-awareness to the account. Even non-Trekkies will be moved. (June)

Reviewed on 05/31/2024 | Details & Permalink

Twenty-two literary scholars each recount a different two-year span in the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) in this hit-or-miss attempt to capture a “plurality of perspectives” on the novelist. By devoting roughly equal space to each year of Fitzgerald’s life, Salmose, an English professor at Linnaeus University, and Rennie (American Writers and World War I), a high school English teacher, highlight how fleeting fame and happiness were for Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda. Walter Raubicheck’s account of how the couple became Jazz Age celebrities by partying with money earned from Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise, stands in stark contrast to the financial straits the couple found themselves in only a few years later, suffering under the strain of Fitzgerald’s alcoholism and Zelda’s declining mental health. Fitzgerald’s relatively uneventful early life is covered in as much depth as his adulthood, making for a slow first half that’s riddled with tenuous claims about the significance of incidents from the author’s youth. For instance, Philip McGowan overreaches in insinuating that President William McKinley’s 1901 assassination at Buffalo’s Pan-American Exposition, which a four-year-old Fitzgerald had visited earlier that year, echoes in the murder of Jay Gatsby. This experiment doesn’t quite pay off. Photos. (July)

Reviewed on 05/31/2024 | Details & Permalink

Espionage tactics can help salespeople up their game, according to this lackluster debut guide. Contending that spying and sales both depend on building relationships, Hurewitz, a former corporate spy, asserts that opening up about one’s life can motivate others to do the same and describes how one CIA veteran would mention his autistic son to encourage others to discuss their families. Spies will sometimes meet a “target” by embedding themselves in the target’s social circles, Hurewitz notes, suggesting that readers might earn an introduction to a potential client by volunteering for a charity they support. Unfortunately, this strategy is likely impractical for most rank-and-file salespeople, who would have to devote untold hours to the organization on the outside chance they could meet an individual who might not even agree to become their client. Other tricks of the espionage trade have only hazy relevance for salespeople. For instance, it’s not clear how someone trying to close a deal would benefit from the advice on convincing a person to reveal who leaked secret information. Additionally, a breakdown of how to read body language strains credulity (shaking one’s head while saying “no problem” is apparently an indication of deception). Unrealistic and unconvincing, this misses the mark. Agent: Michael Signorelli, Aevitas Creative Management. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 05/31/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this rewarding study, Cambridge University zoologist Kershenbaum (The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy) examines the meaning behind howls, screeches, and other calls of the wild. He explains that wolf howls can be heard over 10 kilometers away and help pack members keep in touch with one another while alerting outsiders that they’re in another pack’s territory. Each dolphin develops its own “signature whistle” to identify itself to others, Kershenbaum writes, noting that dolphins get excited when they hear the whistle of another dolphin they haven’t seen in a long time. Recounting his own work with African gray parrots at a Canary Islands zoo, Kershenbaum describes how male rivals attempt to establish social dominance by copying and embellishing one another’s calls in a “kind of avian dueling banjos.” Elsewhere, Kershenbaum discusses how gibbon couples bond by rehearsing complex vocal duets, and how male hyraxes (rabbit-like mammals) signal their strength by “singing,” hoping to intimidate other males who may pose competition for mates. The captivating science highlights the complexity of animal calls, and Kershenbaum takes pains not to overstate the findings, stressing that humans are likely the only species capable of understanding grammar. Animal lovers will want to give this a spin. Photos. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 05/31/2024 | Details & Permalink

Musings on art, marriage, and motherhood animate this beautifully written collection from Hofstra University English professor McMasters (Welcome to Shirley). In the opener, McMasters signals that her marriage is doomed. She then leaves that idea to simmer in the background as she covers her life before and after meeting her husband, R. She writes with humor about her first job out of college as an assistant at a Manhattan law firm (“I felt like Melanie Griffith in Working Girl”), and with palpable terror about barely surviving 9/11. Elsewhere, she discusses the “brutality” of “part-time country houses turned full-time residences” after she left New York City with R. and their two children for a farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania that brought her closer to the elements than she was used to. Their choice to leave the city marked the beginning of the end for McMasters, who grew restless as she ran a bookshop and cared for the children while R. painted and drifted away. Eventually, the couple divorced, and McMasters adjusted to life as a single mother. McMasters suffuses these essays with compassion and curiosity, neither pulling her punches nor succumbing to bitterness. The result is a powerfully candid ode to difficult endings. Agent: Anna Stein, CAA. (May)

Reviewed on 05/31/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this eye-opening account, journalist Mithers (Mighty Be Our Powers) profiles L.A.-based animal welfare advocate Lori Weise, presenting her compassionate activism since the 1990s in evocative juxtaposition with an examination of how classist undertones have since emerged in the very movement Weise spearheaded. Now largely led by wealthy donor-activists, today’s rescue movement seeks to remove animals from “undeserving” homes, according to Mithers’s well-researched history, which spotlights other prominent figures like Hollywood philanthropist Gillian Lange, whose organization instituted the first background checks for pet adopters. But when Weise first became active in the movement, “rescue” meant saving animals from euthanasia in shelters—not “unsafe” homes—and keeping them united with their owners, most of whom had fallen on hard times. Indeed, Weise first began promoting “no kill” policies because of her work with homeless people. As an employee at a factory on L.A.’s Skid Row, she got to know the area’s homeless population, and she was drawn into the no-kill battle as a means of bolstering the emotional health of those living on the street, whose relationships with animals strengthened their spirit. Mithers’s finely crafted narrative applauds Weise’s work but doesn’t cut corners; it unflinchingly depicts the harrowing conditions pets face in homeless encampments. The result is a provocative challenge to contemporary mores regarding animal welfare. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 05/31/2024 | Details & Permalink

Lobbyists have cemented corporate control over the federal government, according to this savvy debut from Wall Street Journal reporter Brody Mullins and his brother, Luke, a writer for Politico. The account begins in the 1970s, when corporations began pouring vast resources into lobbying firms that steered federal policy in a business-friendly direction. The authors then survey lobbying milestones of the last 50 years, including Paul Manafort’s Reagan-era efforts promoting oil interests, as well as lesser-known episodes like Tommy Boggs’s 1978 quashing of an FTC initiative to limit TV advertising of sugary foods to kids and Evan Morris’s 2010 insertion of extra patent protection for Genentech drugs into Obamacare legislation. The narrative unfolds as a soap opera starring colorful lobbyists who fit the cigar-chomping, champagne-swilling, secretary-harassing stereotype, and who reveled in petty corruption until it brought many of them down. (Morris, for example, embezzled millions from Genentech, then shot himself at his country club when federal investigations closed in.) It’s also a canny study of the evolution of political corruption, as influence-peddling advanced from surreptitious envelopes of cash to meticulously coordinated PAC bundling to the subtle orchestration of far-reaching PR campaigns aimed at swaying public opinion rather than bribing legislators. Deeply reported and punchily written, this is an entertaining—and disturbing—account of the devious subversion of democracy. (May)

Reviewed on 05/31/2024 | Details & Permalink

Historian Wilford (America’s Great Game) argues in this vibrant account that the CIA came into being as a continuation of European imperial ambition. The CIA’s early, Ivy League–educated leadership “shared British values,” Wilford writes, and fancied themselves adventurers in the mold of T.E. Lawrence and Kim, Rudyard Kipling’s romantic portrait of the British Raj. (A bizarre number of early CIA agents were nicknamed “Kim.”) Founded in 1947 and freed from the wartime goals of its predecessor the OSS, the CIA latched onto fighting communism as its raison d’être—a so-called anti-imperialist effort that was carried out with supreme imperialist flair, Wilford contends, as the agency sought to prove America was “the rightful heir to European modernity.” Wilford structures his argument around profiles of prominent agents, including Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt, architect of the CIA’s 1953 Iranian coup, who constantly played “Luck Be a Lady Tonight” from Guys and Dolls in the lead-up to the operation, and James Angleton, an obsessive orchid-growing loner and modernist literary scholar who went nearly insane trying to shake out the agency’s communist moles. The book is full of such striking character portraits, as Wilford evocatively suggests that the CIA’s tendency to overthrow foreign governments emerged from paranoia and personality defects among its leadership. This eye-opening slice of American history should not be missed. (June)

Reviewed on 05/31/2024 | Details & Permalink