American culture, politics, and technology have profoundly influenced Israeli society, according to this enlightening study. Historian Frankel (States of Inquiry) writes that Israeli culture began Americanizing in the 1950s; but after 1967, when the U.S. replaced France as Israel’s primary military supplier, “the meeting points between the two societies grew exponentially.” These points range, in Frankel’s telling, from the impact of American-style electioneering on the 1973 Tel Aviv mayoral race—which former Israel Defense Force major general Chich Lahat won by adopting such Americanized tactics as “pressing the flesh”—to the introduction of “Hasidic folklore” into Israeli pop culture via Fiddler on the Roof. Frankel pulls insight from quotidian details; looking at the 1968 arrival of Coca-Cola in Israel, he notes that the bottles, designed with leak-proof caps so they could be laid horizontally in Israelis’ smaller fridges, helped realize new U.S.-inspired consumerist notions that living in Israel should not require giving up luxuries. The most fascinating chapter profiles the Israeli Black Panther Party. Founded in 1971 to combat unequal treatment of Jewish immigrants from Africa and the Middle East, the movement’s imitation of American-style racial politics “scandalized Israeli society,” Frankel writes, since it “threatened to expose” that the country’s projected image of “social cohesion” wasn’t an on-the-ground reality. Readers will be rewarded by this perceptive history. (July)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this astute account, historian Feld (Nations Divided) demonstrates that criticism of Zionism by American Jews is not a recent phenomenon. Surveying the history of such dissent dating back to the 1880s and continuing through the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack, Feld persuasively shows that the post-WWII pro-Zionist consensus among American Jews was a facade projected by Zionist Jewish American leaders, who, after the Holocaust, believed that the state of Israel was “essential for Jewish survival.” In reality, Feld explains, American Jews have always had “a diverse array of perspectives” regarding Zionism. Before WWII, these included concerns over whether a Jewish state would subject Jews in the diaspora to accusations of dual loyalty, and whether resources would flow to Israel that were needed to sustain Jewish communities elsewhere. Following WWII, and especially after the 1967 Six-Day War, some American Jews worried about the fate of Palestinians in territory occupied by Israel. Apart from making clear that current dissent is not the outlier it’s often portrayed to be, Feld is especially effective at noting the negative consequences of a prevailing message of monolithic, unquestioning Jewish American support for Israel (“Many young Jews no longer see their worldviews.... reflected in mainstream Jewish communal organizations”). This meticulous study is a valuable contribution to ongoing debates over America’s relationship with Israel. (July)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

This arresting collection from the School of Life (On Confidence), an organization dedicated to helping people live more fulfilled lives, explores the complexities of family. Alongside color portraits, subjects consider what it feels like to be abandoned by a parent (“At 40 years old, I think, ‘What if I got home and he was just there?’ ” a woman named Eleanor says about the father who left when she was eight) and the effects of physical and emotional distance from loved ones (Joan details how her adult son’s move away from home reignited grief stemming from her mother’s death). Many of the entries detail a family’s sorrows, though they’re often woven through with threads of joy and resilience, as when one father reflects on how living on the opposite side of the world from his young daughter has taught him “strength, acceptance, and in a weird way, more love.” Such complexities are the strength of the collection, though an overlong introduction that provides questions to help readers investigate their own family dynamics feels discordant. Still, it’s a moving look at the ties that bind. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

Wark (Raving), a media studies professor at the New School, brings together trenchant essays by trans theorist Stryker (Transgender History). In “Perfect Day,” Stryker recounts realizing as a young child that she didn’t identify as a boy and laments that it took years for her to embrace the trans label because she didn’t see herself in the prevailing psychiatric descriptions of trans individuals as “deeply disturbed people who feared being homosexual.” Several pieces explore the San Francisco queer and kink communities in which Stryker has spent much of her life. For example, the essay “Dungeon Intimacies” reflects on how, in the 1990s, the city’s sadomasochism scene provided “a mechanism for dismembering and disarticulating received patterns of identification, affect, sensation, and appearance.” Stryker provides a bracing assessment of frictions within the LGBTQ movement, criticizing cis gay and lesbian individuals who seek to secure a place in mainstream society by excluding trans people. Some of the most powerful entries are the most personal, as when Stryker writes of the affinity she feels with Frankenstein’s monster: “Like that creature, I assert my worth as a monster in spite of the conditions my monstrosity requires me to face and redefine a life worth living.” The result is a striking introduction to the work of an essential queer thinker. (July)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this piquant compendium, Ball (The Economy of Religion in American Literature), the editor-in-chief of Screen Bodies, collects speeches by novelist and social reformer Gilman (1860–1935) that illustrate her philosophy and political commitments. Expounding on the need for progressive reform, Gilman argues in “Unnecessary Evils” that poverty, crime, and sickness are products of material deprivation and calls for the redistribution of wealth. Several selections explore how her Christian faith informed her socialist convictions, as when she suggests in an 1894 address that the fulfillment of humanity’s material and spiritual needs under socialism constitutes the fullest expression of Christian love for one’s neighbor. As Ball notes in his illuminating introductions to each lecture, Gilman’s thinking on women’s rights reflected the prejudices and intellectual currents of the time. For instance, the once-popular ideas of 18th-century evolutionary theorist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who believed that changes resulting from the refinement or neglect of one’s capacities over a lifetime were passed on to children, undergirds Gilman’s claim that the confinement of women to the domestic sphere had “stunted [their] development.” While the lectures are unquestionably dated (Gilman’s call for “quality” over “quantity” in childbearing foreshadowed her embrace of eugenics in the early 1900s), they provide an informative snapshot of late-19th-century progressive thought. Literary and feminist scholars will want to take a look. (July)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

This animated report from journalist Stoll (Unvarnished) explores how “female, queer, bi, and nonbinary humans” have made skateboarding culture more inclusive. She traces how Marbie Miller, Alana Smith, Victoria Taylor, and Vanessa Torres became professional skaters and discusses the difficulties each has faced in a sport dominated by cis men. Smith, who came out as nonbinary in their early 20s, had trouble focusing during qualifying rounds for Olympic skateboarding because they kept getting misgendered. Nonetheless, they secured a spot in the 2021 games and became the first openly trans Olympic athlete. Elsewhere, Stoll recounts Torres’s spats with her sponsor over not wearing their branded clothing during competitions (the articles, made for boys, were too ill-fitting to skate in). After retiring due to injury, Torres started judging skateboarding contests, providing tips and encouragement to female participants. Other sections cover how Miller found community in a queer Wisconsin skate collective and how Taylor learned to cope with sexist and demeaning comments on her popular Instagram account. Stoll’s finely observed portraits will have readers rooting for the four skaters as they reshape the sport in their own image. This sticks the landing with flair and poise. Agent: Rica Allannic, David Black Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

British singer-songwriter Hitchcock wistfully reflects on boarding school and the music that shaped him in this captivating chronicle of the year he credits with sculpting his artistic sensibility. “Maybe I will become real to me, before I finally disappear,” Hitchcock muses in one of the book’s five preludes, before plunging into his memories of being a 14-year-old “inmate” at Winchester College. He recalls being bowled over by artists including the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, and David Bowie, many of whom he encountered for the first time at Winchester. As he set about decoding the school’s social hierarchies—he especially admired the “groovers” (Beat-influenced music lovers) and “scholars” (upperclassman)—Hitchcock designed posters for shows he wasn’t old enough to attend and weaseled his way into late-night parties featuring jazz, incense, and the occasional performance by Brian Eno, who attended art school nearby. He also reflects on how time away from his family shifted their dynamics and recounts growing closer to his parents as they mourned the death of his grandmother. Hitchcock is loose, energetic company, writing with infectious enthusiasm about the liberatory sights and sounds that continue to inspire him. Readers need not be fans of Hitchcock’s music to find this enchanting. (July)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this enthusiastic account, journalist Fairbanks (Wizards) traces the roots of today’s alt-country music to the outlaw movement of the 1970s. In the mid-1970s, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Jessi Colter, and Tompall Glaser joined forces to record 1976’s Wanted: The Outlaws! which blended rock chords with hillbilly rhythms, eschewing the “slick” Nashville sound that characterized country music at the time. Inspired by the album’s success, Jennings, Nelson, and fellow Nashville “outsiders” Kris Kristofferson and Johnny Cash formed the Highwaymen in the mid-1980s. Their “outlaw” sound was “more ragged than the classic rock of the ’60s, and generally free of the Music Row polish that has doomed everyone before or since to the dollar bin,” Fairbanks writes. Outlaw country evolved through the 1990s and influenced such bands as Uncle Tupelo, who combined punk, rock, country, and “a certain DIY, antiestablishment ethos” to create what became known as alt-country. The style was later adopted by Brandi Carlile, Melissa Carper, and others who challenged mainstream country’s views on gender, race, and sexuality. Fairbanks paints a sprightly if familiar portrait of an important chapter in country music, though his tendency to rehash lengthy conversations between his subjects sometimes takes things offtrack. Still, it’s a diverting look at how a noteworthy strain of country music came to be. (June)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

Fashion writer MacDonell (The Classic Ten) delivers a colorful chronicle of the female journalists, designers, and retailers who revolutionized American style during WWII. American designers, who’d long deferred to French couturiers for inspiration, were at a loss after the Nazis invaded France in 1940, according to the author. Thankfully, with the “flow of ideas” from Paris cut off, a coterie of New York fashion innovators stepped up to the plate. They included designer Claire McCardell, who introduced comfortable ready-to-wear separates marketed to working women; Lord & Taylor vice president Dorothy Shaver, who spearheaded promotional campaigns spotlighting American designers; and Harper’s Bazaar editor Diana Vreeland and photographer Louise Dahl-Wolfe, who teamed up for fashion shoots that depicted the confident and athletic “modern American woman.” By the war’s end, the popularity of the “American Look” and the country’s supercharged mass production capabilities had elevated New York City to a fashion capital on par with Paris. MacDonnell’s fine-grained character studies (Dahl-Wolfe could be “huffy and thin-skinned, especially if she thought another photographer was infringing on her territory”) complement her fascinating insights into the political and cultural forces that ushered in a new era of American style. Fashionistas won’t be able to put this one down. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

Horn (Terms of Service) expands on her podcast of the same name in this lucid demystification of foot fetishes, BDSM, orgies, and other sexual kinks. Drawing on neuroscience, psychology, and her background as a dominatrix, Horn covers such practical matters as the best type of lubricant for anal fisting; what various hormones and neurotransmitters are up to during pain play; and how BDSM offers “a practical way to navigate power and pleasure in our reality as it exists right now.” Turning to sexual ethics, she argues that actor Armie Hammer’s text messages articulating cannibalistic fantasies were problematic not due to the fetishes themselves but the “presumptuous and coercive way” he broached them, which was compounded by his “enormous social power and privilege in comparison to his partners.” Readers will appreciate Horn’s graceful synthesis of cultural analysis and scientific fact, as well as her ability to broach taboo topics in nonjudgmental terms—sexual taste, she writes, is “no different from a preference for spicy or sweet food.” Curious readers will glean plenty. (July)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink