Readers can embrace their quiet side to live happier and more fulfilled lives, according to this savvy debut guide from career coach Thompson. Plagued since childhood by a stutter and debilitating social anxiety, the author pursued a career in sales to challenge those fears and rose through the ranks once he reframed his “perceived” weaknesses as strengths. Sharing lessons gleaned along the way, Thompson recommends that readers stop faking “bullet-proof confidence” and instead approach others with kindness and honesty; expand personal and professional networks by strengthening ties with acquaintances and colleagues; and learn from others’ communication styles and strategies. Thompson gears the advice largely toward professional development, with much talk of “optimizing” connections that might eventually yield career opportunities, and he strikes an effective balance between empowering readers to embrace their shyness and encouraging them to venture outside their comfort zones. It’s a solid resource for young professionals looking to break out of their shells. (July)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

This excellent debut investigation from Somerstein, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, explores the history of and controversies surrounding the C-section. She explains that the operation emerged in the 500s and was usually performed on “dead or dying women in an effort to save,” or at least baptize, their babies, few of whom survived. The operation was still considered controversial for imperiling mothers’ lives in the 1800s, when American physicians began testing how to reduce its mortality rate by experimenting on enslaved Black women, who received no anesthesia and were said to “not feel pain as deeply as civilized, white women.” C-sections became safer by the end of the century and doctors started marketing them to upper-class white women, who “were believed to be delicate and constitutionally unable to withstand” labor pains. Today, C-sections comprise about one in three births in the U.S., despite research showing they’re 80% more likely than vaginal births to cause serious complications. According to Somerstein, hospitals overuse the procedure because it’s faster and allows more patients to be seen (and charged) per day. The damning history highlights how sexism and racism have shaped women’s healthcare for centuries, and Somerstein includes her own harrowing account of having an unplanned C-section while insufficiently anesthetized, an experience that left her with PTSD. This is a must-read. Agent: Veronica Goldstein, Fletcher & Company. (June)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

Poet Laux (Only as the Day Is Long) sets forth an edifying meditation on the craft of poetry. Each chapter highlights a literary technique used by a well-known author and provides exercises helping readers incorporate them into their own work. For instance, Laux examines how Larry Levis uses tree imagery to anchor the “discursive narrative” in his poem “Adolescence” and encourages readers to choose an image that speaks to them (“Is it a knife, is it a wheel?”) and write about it until one discovers the “metaphorical, mystical, [or] mythical” reason it resonates. Studying how poets create meaning through contrast, Laux contends that Li-Young Lee’s “One Heart” emphasizes its final couplet by including a three-syllable word in a poem otherwise dominated by single-syllable words. To practice Lee’s technique, Laux suggests readers compose an eight-line poem exclusively from brief words, except for a single three- or four-syllable word that draws attention to the poem’s emotional crux. Other chapters on Sappho, T.S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, and Kwame Dawes, among others, expound on writing political poetry, discovering “new ways of looking at everyday things,” and moving between the literal and metaphorical. Laux’s close readings of celebrated poems, most of which are reproduced in full, reveal what makes them tick, and the exercises will help get the creative juices flowing. Aspiring poets would do well to check this out. (July)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

Eliason debuts with a conflicted memoir recounting his efforts to get rich quick with cryptocurrency. In 2021, Eliason was unemployed and worried about providing for his first child, who was due by the end of the year. Dazzled by acquaintances who had won big on crypto, he began day-trading Dogecoin and writing code for a video game based around crypto tokens. He describes how his anxiety over the possibility that his increasingly valuable holdings would lose their worth or get hacked kept him glued to his devices and left his wife feeling isolated. Though Eliason aims to position his story as a cautionary tale, the takeaway is complicated by the fact that he made a healthy sum after selling most of his crypto assets in early 2022, even if his unspecified final profit was significantly less than the $10 million his holdings were nominally worth at their peak. Further confusing the volume’s stance are interstitial chapters offering tips on investing in crypto (“You can create a simple rule, like: if [a cryptocurrency one has invested in] goes down 50 percent, sell; if it doubles, sell half to cover the initial investment”). This is a head-scratcher. Agent: David Fugate, LaunchBooks Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

Rushdie follows Victory City with a forceful and surprisingly good-humored account of the 2022 knife attack that nearly killed him. At a speaking engagement in Chautaqua, N.Y., a 24-year-old man Rushdie refers to only as “A” rushed the stage where he was speaking and stabbed him multiple times, including in the eye. Authorities swiftly connected the assault to the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini after Rushdie published The Satanic Verses in 1988. Rushdie chronicles the year following the attack, during which he recovered from liver damage, the removal of part of his small intestine, and the loss of his right eye. Though he writes of being plagued by nightmares and gory memories of the assault, Rushdie’s wit shines through (“Let me offer this piece of advice to you, gentle reader: if you can avoid having your eyelid sewn shut... avoid it”). Just as arresting is an imagined conversation with A, which sees Rushdie trying to parse his attacker’s religious convictions. By the time the narrative comes full circle, with Rushdie speaking on the same Chautaqua stage a year later, he’s opened a fascinating window into perhaps the most vulnerable period of his life. It’s a rewarding tale of resilience. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

Charlamagne (Black Privilege), cohost of the Breakfast Club radio show, opines on mental health, social media, and the power of comedy in these punchy if occasionally clichéd essays. The most successful selections showcase Charlamagne’s comic chops and idiosyncratic thinking, as when he argues that delivering big ideas in a humorous way can encourage people to engage in difficult debates with “the same level of focus you acquire with post-nut clarity” (the alleged lucidity of mind that follows an orgasm). Serving up frank personal reflection, Charlamagne discusses straining to keep his ego in check as his career took off in the mid-2010s and recounts how writing a book about his mental health struggles led his father to open up for the first time about living with depression. Other essays offer tired takes on how social media is allegedly ruining society. For example, he contends that unrealistic lifestyle standards set by influencers have created a generation of entitled brats who lack the hustle that he displayed during his rise to fame (“Kids today really believe that they should receive the fruits of one’s labor without having to do one’s labor”). The author’s charisma and candor buoy the selections, even as they’re sometimes dragged down by finger-wagging platitudes. Still, Charlamagne’s listeners will find much to enjoy. Agent: Jan Miller, Dupree Miller & Assoc. (May)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

This sensible debut from Chen, CEO of the communications training agency Soulcast Media, explores how people from “quiet cultures” (which privilege humility, listening, and avoiding conflict) can thrive in workplaces with a “loud culture” (which values outspokenness, directness, and open ambition). Chen describes how her Taiwanese immigrant parents raised her to value “ ‘quiet’ traits,” which led bosses to overlook her during her former career as a TV news reporter. Her “quiet capital framework” offers advice on how more reserved employees can garner recognition for their work, encouraging readers to establish a “career brand,” or reputation, by identifying what tasks they excel at and pitching projects that allow them to demonstrate those strengths. Anecdotes from Chen’s career illustrate the guidance, as when she emphasizes the importance of advocating for oneself by recounting how she successfully petitioned her boss to let her fill in for the news station’s usual anchor whenever they called in sick. Useful suggestions for improving one’s communication skills dig into the nitty-gritty components of speech, entreating readers to talk “at a higher pitch when showing enthusiasm” and a lower pitch when “we want to convey authority and seriousness.” Introverts will appreciate the guidance on standing out. Agent: Rachel Ekstrom Courage, Courage Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

This stimulating if daunting study from science writer Baggott (Quantum Reality) and UC Berkeley historian Heilbron (The Incomparable Monsignor) recaps the origins of the ongoing scientific disagreement over the nature of quantum physics. Starting in the 1920s, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and other physicists argued that the uncertainties inherent in quantum mechanics meant that physics as a discipline could only hope to calculate statistical probabilities, rather than elucidate rigid laws that produce certain outcomes. This embrace of indeterminacy led to mind-bending ideas, such as the notions that objective reality doesn’t exist and that light and matter are simultaneously discrete particles and diffuse waves. Among the dissidents who pushed back against this scientific consensus were Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger, who insisted that science should seek out deterministic theories and criticized the bizarre implications of Bohr’s ideas. (The famous “Schrödinger’s cat” thought experiment aimed to highlight the absurdity that, according to quantum physics, a feline test subject could be simultaneously alive and dead.) Baggott and Heilbron provide astute historical context, suggesting that quantum mechanics’s “emphasis on the uncontrollable, acausal... behaviour of the microworld” reflected the uncertainties of a generation still reeling from WWI, though the substantial doses of math and arcane detail on scientific experiments will be heavy going for casual readers. It’s an enlightening if dense overview of an open-ended scientific dispute. Photos. (July)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this poignant debut, filmmaker Baum tracks 80 years of U.S. government subsidized housing policy and draws on memories of her own childhood, when her family benefited from a government-built affordable home. In 1967, Baum’s parents purchased an apartment in a limited-equity, racially integrated, cooperative building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. They joined a diverse community of owners that together managed the building, where everyday experiences were defined by a sense of “collective action,” and where daily existence was characterized by diverse friendships, political talk, and spontaneous encounters. After Baum moved away from the city in the late 1970s, New Yorkers’ relationship to housing began to shift. As restrictions on the resale of coop apartments expired, many cooperatives allowed their buildings to become privately owned; meanwhile public housing for the poor was starved of funds and open-market rents soared. The result, according to Baum, was that regular people no longer were custodians of their own housing, and the ultra-rich took over the city, replacing local color and collective decision-making with “chain stores and banks.” Baum excels at capturing the allure of interdependent, close-knit communities, and affectingly joins her lament over their decline in New York City with her grief over the deaths of her parents. Informative and nostalgic, this makes for a bittersweet look at a time when America’s cities were affordable. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this high-spirited account, historian Ankeny (The Girl and the Bombardier) profiles Hazel Ying Lee, the first Chinese American woman to fly for the U.S. military. Born in 1912 Portland, Ore., young Hazel was athletic, adventuresome, eager to break down social barriers for Asian American women, and restless in the menial jobs open to her. Shortly after falling in love with flying during a 1932 plane ride, she learned of a local flight school that was training Chinese Americans for China’s war effort against Japan. To raise money to attend (as the only woman trainee), Hazel finessed herself a job as an elevator operator at a department store where Asian workers had not previously been allowed in customer-facing roles. Once in China, due to her gender Hazel was relegated to desk work in Guangzhou. During Japan’s 1938 invasion of that city, friends credited her preternatural calm for saving their lives by facilitating their escape. Back in America, she became one of the first women pilots to fly combat aircraft domestically. Her service, which featured many risky missions, was cut short in 1944, when safety missteps by others led to Hazel’s death in a midair collision. Arkeny’s cinematic storytelling is buoyed by her zestful portrait of Hazel, who comes across as remarkably unfazed by her era’s rampant discrimination. It’s a compulsively readable tale of odds-defying derring-do. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink