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

Career coach Hellerer’s savvy first book is aimed at “underfulfilled overachievers” who are living “great-on-paper lives... but still find themselves secretly dissatisfied.” After obtaining a prestigious position at Google by age 29, the author was riddled with anxiety about her inability to appreciate her success. Upon quitting, she set out to discover “what the fuck I was meant to do with my life” and found fulfillment as a life coach. Drawing lessons from her own experience, she encourages readers to move in their “own personal right direction” without worrying about the outcome. To do so, they must strip fear-based thoughts away from their “true self,” which she describes as a type of intuition that “lives in the body” as “a sense of warmth and alignment.” As an example of how accessing one’s true self can help with decision-making, she describes how a medical student deciding between specialties found that imagining a future in neurosurgery made her “feel hot and nauseous,” while psychiatry “resonated in her body.” Throughout, Hellerer debunks myths that undergird a success-driven society, including that difficulty has inherent moral value (“There’s no gold star or fulfillment bonus for extra struggle”), while outlining a positive, individual-focused approach that prioritizes happiness over certainty. It’s a smart, refreshing look at what it means to build a satisfying life. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 05/31/2024 | Details & Permalink

Actor and playwright Kingston delivers a knockout debut about coming to terms with her mother’s death. When Kingston was seven years old, her mother, Kristina, revealed that her once-manageable cancer had become terminal. Four years later, Kristina died, leaving behind a chest of letters and gifts for Kingston to open on birthdays and other milestones, including her first period and her high school graduation. Those missives taught the teenager things about Kristina she’d never known, including her professional achievements and family history, and kept Kingston feeling that “my mother anticipated what I needed before I knew it myself.” When, shortly after Kingston left for college, tragedy struck her family again, she clung to her mother’s letters harder than ever, relying on them and her surviving relatives to make it to graduation. Kingston shares many memorable moments, including how she tried to forestall her parents from sharing news of her mother’s diagnosis by cracking jokes, without allowing the proceedings to become maudlin. This gorgeous, openhearted meditation on grief and family deserves a wide readership. Agent: Brettne Bloom, Book Group. (May)

Reviewed on 05/31/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this rollicking memoir debut, Smith reflects on the crime spree that led a judge to label her “a threat to the United States of America.” As a preteen in 1970s Minneapolis, Smith was so infatuated with Michael Jackson that she tracked down his grandfather’s phone number. Wanting more, she called the phone company and got transferred between departments enough times that her call appeared to be coming from the billing division, at which point she pumped employees for Jackson’s home address. Using the same method, Smith conned utility companies, pretending to pay off bills for family and friends, and eventually learned to fake bank transfers and pocket millions of dollars. Her purchases of diamonds and luxury cars caught the attention of the FBI, who started investigating Smith when she was in her teens but refused to believe a young Black woman could organize such a sophisticated scheme. Her run of luck first ended in 1986, when she was arrested and sentenced to 13 years in prison—then again in the early 1990s, after she’d escaped from prison and was arrested on new charges. Smith is deliriously entertaining company, keeping her foot on the gas all the way through. It’s a gripping real-life caper from a charismatic antihero. Agent: Christy Fletcher, Fletcher & Co. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 05/31/2024 | Details & Permalink