Us v. Them: The Age of Indie Music and a Decade in New York (2004–2014)
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Ronen Givony. Abrams, $30 (368p) ISBN 978-1-41977-526-0
Music writer Givony (Not for You) pulls from interviews and personal experience for a vivid, nostalgic chronicle of Brooklyn’s DIY indie scene in the early aughts. Spanning from 2004 to 2014, the account spotlights lesser-known artists like Oneida, a band who “specialized in performances that went on as long as twelve hours”; Skeletons, whose “sound could veer from Afrobeat to indie pop to noise”; and Sea Ray, whose eclectic style set them apart “from their more fashion-forward peers.” All three groups helped build the indie scene and a network of “unconventional venues” where bands got their starts. The author also catalogs the music media that shaped the scene (including Pitchfork, once able to “lift an artist from obscurity at its whim”) and explains how the atmosphere of post-9/11 uncertainty, coupled with immense technological changes, pushed artists in new creative directions. The scene began to fizzle by the beginning of the 2010s, as bands were priced out of an increasingly gentrified Brooklyn and indie music leaked into the mainstream. Despite sometimes indulging in overlong tangents, Givony captures the era’s energy in vibrant prose (“that singular strip of Kent Avenue... was both a party and an experiment in self-governance every night”). The result is an effusive and intimate ode to a heady period of music history. (Mar.)
A Place Both Wonderful and Strange: The Extraordinary Untold History of ‘Twin Peaks’
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Scott Meslow. Running Press, $30 (272p) ISBN 979-8-89414-039-1
The short-lived 1990 TV series Twin Peaks cast a long cultural shadow, according to this energetic account from film critic Meslow (From Hollywood with Love). In 1988, filmmaker David Lynch and TV veteran Mark Frost brainstormed the project as a surrealist mystery centered on the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer. The premise left the show’s creators in something of a bind, Meslow explains, as they sought to “keep moving the mystery forward” without fully resolving the murder “because no one had any good ideas yet for what a post–Laura Palmer Twin Peaks might look like.” The show was canceled shortly after the killer was revealed in season two, though its cult popularity continued to grow thanks to buzz generated by its cliff-hanger ending and “hyper-serialized quality,” which made it an “irresistible prospect on DVD.” Frost and Lynch later returned to the material, with Lynch making a prequel film, 1992’s Fire Walk with Me, and the two teaming up for Twin Peaks: The Return, an 18-part miniseries released 25 years after the original show ended. Meslow interweaves his diligent account of the show’s cultural legacy with delightful peeks into its idiosyncratic production and the eccentric directorial style of Lynch, who advised Lara Flynn Boyle during one long, difficult-to-shoot scene to “think of how gently a deer has to move in the snow.” Fans will be riveted. (Feb.)
Traversal
Maria Popova. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $36 (624p) ISBN 978-0-374-61641-0
Popova (The Universe in Verse), creator of the blog The Marginalian, delivers a masterful exploration of life’s meaning by weaving together profiles of visionaries and discussions of science, art, and nature. She begins with Captain James Cook en route to Tahiti in 1769 to observe the Transit of Venus. Upon arrival, he documented a society startlingly unlike that of his native England, an anecdote that prompts Popova to reflect on humanity’s penchant to reject otherness (“the discomfort with which we recoil at cultural practices and personal choices different from our own... reveal[s] our own fears and insecurities”). Elsewhere, Popova discusses 18th-century chemist Antoine Lavoisier, who illuminated the nature of life by identifying oxygen and hydrogen; author Mary Shelley, whose novel Frankenstein reveals the power of social conditioning; abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who set out to prove one can “refuse to be made a monster by the world’s monstrosity”; and geologist Alfred Wegener, whose theory of continental drift forever altered humanity’s view of the planet. In Popova’s hands, their struggles and successes combine in a lyrical symphony of truth, made richer by reflections on the nature of the color blue, NASA’s Kepler mission, the 1815 eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Tambora, the invention of the bicycle, and more. “Every story is the story of the world,” Popova deftly reveals. This is multifaceted and marvelous. (Feb.)
Earth and Life: A Four Billion Year Conversation
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Andrew H. Knoll. Princeton Univ, $29.95 (288p) ISBN 978-0-691-18223-0
Geobiologist Knoll (A Brief History of Earth) offers a stimulating primer on how interactions between the planet’s physical environment and living beings have shaped the world throughout time. He argues that life has influenced Earth in big and small ways, just as the physical Earth has shaped ecology and evolution. He begins by explaining how carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, water, and oxygen cycle through organisms and the environment. But these cycles haven’t always existed; scientists believe, for example, that oxygen began accumulating in the atmosphere 2.4 billion years ago when cyanobacteria evolved to release the element as a waste product. This so-called “Great Oxygenation Event” transformed the planet, paving the way for the evolution of organisms that rely on oxygen. Elsewhere, Knoll reveals how sunlight, plate tectonics, ocean circulation, and organisms have interacted to enable the planet to be habitable for most of its history and discusses how humans have disrupted natural patterns through the burning of fossil fuels, resulting in climate change and other environmental maladies. Knoll does an impressive job of lucidly explaining both geological and biological processes, providing necessary background without being pedantic. Readers will be informed and entertained. Photos. (Mar.)
Adult Braces: Driving Myself Sane
Lindy West. Grand Central, $29 (336p) ISBN 978-0-306-83183-6
West (Shit, Actually) blends her signature sharp wit with endearing vulnerability in this luminous memoir of a cross-country road trip she took to rebuild herself and her marriage. Spurred by her love of the Beach Boys song “Kokomo,” West rented a van to drive from Seattle to Key West after learning that her husband, Aham, had another partner and wanted a polyamorous marriage. In between humorous missives from RV campgrounds (“I am self-actualized now! I’m not flirting with a city slicker who tried to light a campfire with just a log and a match!”), West writes candidly about her struggles with being a public face for the body positivity movement while sometimes “feel[ing] bad in my body.” With unblinking resolve, she also autopsies the effects of masking her feelings of inadequacy with humor and a suffocating dependency on her husband: “I want to be desirable, but I do not know how to be desired.” A defecating otter and a seven-year old in a Trump hat also make appearances, bumping up against indictments of comedy’s mistreatment of women and the bruising effects of skinny-worship. The result is a madcap, rewarding journey that demystifies the unsexy work of self-actualization. Agent: Gary Morris, David Black Literary. (Mar.)
The Voice in My Head Is God
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2 Chainz, with Derrick Harriell. Black Privilege, $28 (224p) ISBN 978-1-66803-115-5
Rapper 2 Chainz debuts with a middling mix of memoir and self-help about the value of listening to one’s intuition. The bulk of the book consists of formative episodes in which the author’s “inner voice” proved correct, in some cases saving his life or his career. He describes, for example, sensing that a stranger behaving oddly in public was a gunman, and intuiting that he needed to break a record deal to go solo, after which he built up enough leverage to return to the label and sign a four-album solo deal. Unfortunately, despite his promise to help readers tap into their intuition to live more authentically, the assorted examples don’t cohere into a clear program to follow. Banal observations (“It’s important to place a lot of thought into every decision, especially big decisions”) and stale advice (he references Malcolm Gladwell’s well-known 10,000 hour theory to underscore the importance of hard work) don’t help matters. All but the author’s most devoted fans can feel free to skip this. (Mar.)
Men at Work: The Empire State Building and the Untold Story of the Craftsmen Who Built It
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Glenn Kurtz. Seven Stories, $35 (352p) ISBN 978-1-64421-502-9
Guggenheim fellow Kurtz (Three Minutes in Poland) uncovers the identities of the construction workers immortalized in the Empire State Building photographs of Lewis Hines, who famously posed his subjects on steel beams dangling hundreds of feet above ground. Following a clue left behind in Hines’s own handwriting, Kurtz was able to connect the photographs to a long-overlooked plaque in the building’s lobby honoring skilled craftsmen involved in the skyscraper’s 1930–1931 construction. From there, Kurtz pieces together bare-bones but poignant accounts of the craftsmen, including 22-year-old stone setter James Patrick Kerr, whose father, a Northern Irish immigrant, was killed in a streetcar accident when he was three years old and who lived with his mother and stepfather in a $17-a-month apartment on Tenth Avenue when Hines snapped his portrait; and Ukrainian-born glazier Samuel Laginsky, father of five, who suffered a gruesome death on the job just two years after his photo was taken. Kurtz emphasizes how this reframing of the Hines snapshots as a planned photo shoot memorializing local craftsmen’s excellence puts a populist lens on a building that has more often served as a symbol of corporate might, while also puncturing the myth that the photos are somehow “documentary” records of the work itself. New York history buffs will be thrilled by Kurtz’s discovery. (Oct.)
Safe Passage: The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians by Sea During World War II
Evelyn Iritani. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $32 (480p) ISBN 978-0-374-26107-8
A little-discussed 1943 exchange of Japanese and American civilians gets a gripping and immersive treatment from Pulitzer winner Iritani (An Ocean Between Us). Delving into the behind-the-scenes diplomatic negotiations that culminated with two rescue ships embarking from each country and docking at ports around the world until they had gathered enough repatriates to meet quota, Iritani surfaces stories of individuals caught up in the sometimes lifesaving, sometimes cruel process. Among the repatriates from the U.S. to Japan were many interred, separated families who made the choice to repatriate under duress, as it was the only way for them to be reunited, while the repatriates from Japan’s territories to the U.S. were languishing in Japanese prisons, in danger of being arrested, or suffering through bombings and shortages. The plight of the Japanese-American repatriates, who were ostracized and faced wartime harships when they arrived in Japan, is particularly heart-wrenching, and Iritani brings depth to these events by showing how other countries with large Japanese immigrant populations, like Peru, used the rescue mission as an excuse to offload them, with the U.S. State Department’s blessing. As the rescue ship neared Japan, the repatriates were so anguished as to their fate that one passenger died by suicide, leading the rest to fret over what Japanese officials would do when they realized the ship did not meet quota. Such grim calculations abound in this quietly devastating account that spotlights how man’s inhumanity to man flourishes in wartime. (Mar.)
The Wanderers: A Story of Exile, Survival, and Unexpected Love in the Shadow of World War II
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Daniela Gerson. Grand Central, $30 (336p) ISBN 978-0306-83430-1
Journalist Gerson’s deeply felt debut braids her and her wife’s love story with an investigation into a lesser-known chapter of Jewish displacement during WWII. After Gerson met and fell for immigration attorney Talia Inlender, the pair discovered that their families both came from the same Polish village and fled to Ukraine as Nazi persecution intensified. The women’s romantic connection became a catalyst for Gerson to excavate their families’ lore, tracing the parallel journeys of their forebears while illuminating the fate of the roughly 200,000 Polish Jews who escaped the Nazis by fleeing to the Soviet Union. To construct her narrative, Gerson interviewed her own aging relatives and Inlender’s, some of whom died as the book was being researched and written. Along with tracing the two families’ paths from Poland to Ukraine to Israel, she elegantly interrogates the emotional and familial fractures created by forced migration, and the psychological toll of survival. In crisp, unadorned prose, Gerson restores a neglected history; notes its contemporary resonances, as people are uprooted by violence across the globe; and tenderly chronicles the relationship that brought this history to light. It’s a profoundly moving account. Agent: Andrea Blatt, WME. (Mar.)
The Last Kings of Hollywood: Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg—and the Battle for the Soul of American Cinema
Paul Fischer. Celadon, $32 (480p) ISBN 978-1-250-87872-4
Writer and film producer Fischer (The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures) explores in this entertaining group biography the lives and works of filmmakers Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg. He begins on the set of the 1968 film Finian’s Rainbow, one of the last gasps of Hollywood’s Golden Age. After winning a scholarship from Warner Bros., a young Lucas was tasked with observing the film’s director, the up-and-coming Coppola. The two had an instant connection and went on to start their own production company, American Zoetrope. Meanwhile, Spielberg, another promising young director, had landed a contract directing TV shows for Universal Studios but was eager to make movies. Fischer documents how the three ushered in a new era of film that rejected the old system of powerful studios controlling production and instead centered high-concept, director-driven blockbusters. Along the way, he chronicles how Coppola transformed The Godfather, a pulpy novel about the Mafia, into a film that “pushed the bounds of the medium”; follows Spielberg’s animatronic innovations in Jaws; and traces how Lucas turned his idea for a “sort of space opera thing” into the Star Wars franchise. Throughout, Fischer leverages a novelistic style that makes his extensive research and interviews a pleasure to read. This is a sure-fire hit for cinephiles. (Feb.)
