In this stimulating study, Long (Prehistoric Australasia), a paleontology professor at Flinders University in Australia, explores “how over the course of 465 million years [sharks] were shaped and honed by a constantly changing world.” Emphasizing the predators’ resilience, Long explains that sharks survived the “Great Dying,” an era of “prolonged volcanic eruptions” 252 million years ago that wiped out around 87% of all marine species, by moving into deeper parts of the ocean that were less affected by the dramatic rise in water temperatures. Sharks have also shown a great capacity for adaptation, Long writes, suggesting their “superpower” is “the ability to craft and shape new tooth types with new tissues” (some species “developed flat crushing or grinding tooth plates” for cracking clams while other grew cladodont teeth, each of which has “three or more prominent pointed cusps”). The comprehensive overview of sharks’ evolutionary history highlights some of the stranger specimens to have prowled the oceans (one ancient species had “large wing-like pectoral fins emerging from near its neck like dystopian underwater butterflies”). Long also sheds light on how paleontologists draw conclusions from a limited fossil record, describing how “analyzing the isotopes of certain elements like nitrogen, carbon, and oxygen” in shark teeth reveals what kinds of prey the carnivores ate. Readers will want to sink their teeth into this. Photos. Agent: Jane von Mehren, Aevitas Creative Management. (July)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

Little House on the Prairie actor Butler delivers a sweet if superficial debut memoir about his early life and acting career. Born in British Columbia in 1956, Butler grew up in Northern California, where his first performances were in an elementary school show choir. He chalks up his eventual turn toward acting to a job announcing high school basketball games (“Everything that has happened since can be traced back to that moment when Mr. Cochran pointed me to the microphone”). The bulk of the book sheds light on Butler’s screen credits, beginning with the 1978 adaptation of Judy Blume’s Forever and focusing primarily on his five-year stint, from 1979 to 1983, as Almanzo Wilder in Little House on the Prairie. He shares regrets about his lack of sensitivity to the eight-year age difference between him and series lead Melissa Gilbert, who played his love interest (“Today that... difference is a tiny gap, but forty-five years ago, it was the Grand Canyon”), and muses on his complicated relationship with costar Michael Landon. Other behind-the-scenes sections, covering Butler’s work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and numerous documentaries, generate occasional interest, but there’s not a lot of substance. This is for die-hard Little House on the Prairie fans only. Agent: Danita Florace, AEF Talent. (June)

Reviewed on 05/03/2024 | Details & Permalink

Readers can learn the “secret language of the body” to heal depression, insomnia, and other ailments, according to this insightful debut guide. Functional movement therapist Mann and somatic experiencing practitioner Rabin describe the nervous system as a “foreign country” that responds to daily stressors (paying bills, sending an difficult email) with stress-inducing survival responses. They suggest that readers better “converse” with their nervous systems by noticing such stress symptoms as muscle tension and quelling them with “interruption techniques” (breathing exercises, intentionally smiling to “improve mood and mind state”). Eventually, readers can “redesign” their stress responses by using their impartial “observing self” to witness harmful thoughts and emotions without getting caught up in them. With plenty of theories and strategies on offer—for example, how to tend to the emotional wounds of one’s “inner child,” and how to tune into each of the five senses to switch from a stressed mind into a more embodied state of being—the authors provide a sturdy yet flexible framework for integrated mind-body healing. Those who feel “stressed, sick and stuck” would do well to check this out. (July)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Evolutionary biologist Grant (40 Years of Evolution) reflects in this inspiring memoir on the challenges she’s faced as a woman in science. She traces the origins of her vocation to her 1940s upbringing in Northern England, where she discovered fossils in Arnside’s “carboniferous limestone cliffs” and learned about birds from her family’s gardener. Though college entrance exam administrators initially denied Grant’s request to take the test (they claimed her tuition would be better spent on her brothers’ educations), they relented in the face of her persistence and she went on to study zoology and genetics at the University of Edinburgh. After marrying biologist Peter Grant in the early 1960s, she postponed her PhD studies to raise their two daughters. She never lost her passion for biology, however, and even hired a babysitter every Monday so she could catch up on research trends at the library. (She eventually earned her PhD from Sweden’s Uppsala University in 1985.) Grant provides a detailed account of her groundbreaking fieldwork on Darwin’s finches in the Galápagos, which revealed that interbreeding between species is a significant contributor to species differentiation, and the material on how she balanced motherhood and a pioneering scientific career uplifts. The result is an intimate look at a life spent in dogged pursuit of scientific knowledge. Photos. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Poet Gabbert (The Unreality of Memory) muses on the literary life in this invigorating collection. The opening essay celebrates libraries’ “recently returned” carts, which Gabbert enjoys perusing as an alternative to recommendation algorithms and cultural tastemakers. In “Somethingness (or, Why Write?),” Gabbert surveys how noted authors have answered the eponymous question (Vladimir Nabokov aimed to bridge reality and fantasy through fiction, while Franz Kafka wanted “to cast out invasive thoughts”) and concludes that she’s motivated to write by the desire to improve the quality of her thinking. The lively commentary offers fresh takes on classic literature, as when Gabbert quips that rereading The Bell Jar made her realize that “Sylvia Plath doesn’t understand how paragraphs work.” She found Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde more profound than expected after reading it for the first time, suggesting the novel works “as a metaphor for aging or addiction or illness, the approach of death as a loss of the self.” Elsewhere, Gabbert discusses how journaling shapes one’s identity, how class hierarchy plays out in various novels’ party scenes, and the relationship between truth and fiction. Gabbert is an original thinker, and the literary analysis is refreshingly unstuffy. Bookworms will appreciate these intelligent essays. Agent: Monika Woods, Triangle House. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

The jubilant latest from MacNicol (No One Tells You This) details her transformative summer in the City of Light. After spending the height of the Covid-19 pandemic anxious and alone in her New York City apartment, a 47-year-old MacNicol jumped at the opportunity to sublet a friend’s Paris apartment in 2021. She was eager for a change of scenery and an opportunity to live as “a woman who wasn’t required to ask permission. Who could do as she pleased.” In Paris, MacNicol ate indulgently, found lovers via dating apps, made new friends, and eventually came to view the city as “a mirror that has allowed me to see my entire self and... tak[e] enormous pleasure in the wholeness of that person.” By and large, MacNicol’s escapades come across as empowering, though some may wince at her shallow description of the app-facilitated dating world as a “meat market.” She’s especially incisive when comparing dating at midlife to gaslighting—no matter how good one actually feels, she argues, “everyone and everything” insists that getting older means feeling worse. It adds up to an exhilarating account of finding a new lease of life. Agent: Lucy Carson, Friedrich Agency. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Historian Holstein elegantly interweaves academic inquiry and autobiography in this lush debut memoir about her love affair with Italy. Inspired to pursue a PhD on 14th-century Italian history by a high school teacher who introduced her to Dante, Holstein studs her recollections of trips to Rome—for research and pleasure—with stimulating tidbits on medieval literature, 14th-century religious squabbles, and Dante’s life and work. There are also episodes highlighting her occasional cluelessness as a tourist and underscoring her passion for the city’s aesthetic beauty. After completing her PhD and teaching for a few years, Holstein got married, had children, and founded a baby supply company in Rhode Island, which pulled her away from her academic pursuits. While casual readers may find the scholarly references tough sledding, serious Italophiles are a shoo-in for Holstein’s lovingly rendered tribute to one of the world’s greatest cities. This sings. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Political analyst Cowan (Border Nation) makes an impassioned case for U.K. feminists to take up the cause of police abolition and overthrow “carceral feminism.” She traces the history of the latter—a “pro-police and prison-forward” approach to women’s issues—through 19th-century colonialism and upper-class suffragism, and into more contemporary manifestations like 1990s “stranger danger,” the #MeToo movement (which was dominated by calls for punishment), and recent advocacy for prosecution-based solutions to sexual assault. As an alternative, Cowan spotlights a “non-carceral” feminism spearheaded by women of color in the U.K.’s Caribbean and Asian communities throughout the 20th century; these efforts—mainly comprising mutual aid groups—bolstered women’s power rather than seeking punishment or extra policing. Delving into the recent fracturing of U.K. feminism along ideological lines relating to women’s need for protection (including high-profile debates around the rights of trans people, whom prominent right-leaning feminists portray as a threat to women), Cowan makes a strong case that “carceral feminism” promotes fear for women’s safety in order to drum up support for law enforcement, which, when the experiences of trans women and women of color are taken into account, actually harms more women than it helps. It’s a persuasive call for feminists everywhere to reconsider how women’s well-being is used to justify oppression. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

The recent success of the romance genre can be traced back to the early efforts of the Romance Writers of America, a professional association founded in the 1970s, according to this enlightening account. Journalist Larson (Influence) argues that the RWA’s “unusually inclusive community” of mostly women writers was markedly generous compared to male-dominated author organizations; members swapped book industry intel and aided one another’s careers. This cooperativeness was crucial for bolstering work that was “mocked... and mistreated” within the publishing industry, writes Larson, who tracks how strategy-sharing among members resulted in the genre’s rewarding early adoption of self-publishing (“Romance authors’ median income... grew an astounding 73 percent between 2009 and 2014”). However, the RWA’s long-standing “color-blind” approach (Larson writes that for decades the organization “tolerated” relationships with “overtly racist editors” and had chapters that were “hostile to authors of color”) brought about the organization’s dramatic fracturing in 2019 with the expulsion of Courtney Milan, a champion of diversity within the RWA who was ousted for calling another member’s book racist; her removal led to mass resignations and the organization’s loss of prestige. Larson’s eye-opening “cautionary tale” about the importance of inclusivity and cooperation is built around tantalizing peaks into tense chapter meetings and informal hotel room parties. It’s a rewarding deep dive into an influential corner of the publishing industry. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink

Sex testing of athletes has its roots in the Nazi influence on the 1936 Olympic games, according to this revelatory debut investigation. Journalist Waters recaps the early years of the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF), a subdivision of the International Olympic Committee established in 1913 to settle such “technical debates” as “how to... draw track lines.” When the Olympics sought to absorb the Women’s World Games in the 1920s, the IAAF got involved in its regulatory capacity; ostensibly concerned about women’s “health,” IAAF officials suggested shutting down the Women’s Games’ “masculine” sports like track and field. Other narrative strands trace the German Olympic Committee’s 1932 takeover by the Nazis and the early 1930s female-to-male medical transitions of several record-holding European athletes in women’s track and field. All this comes to a head with the 1936 Berlin games, when paranoia over men participating in women’s sports, promulgated by Nazi propagandists railing against the high-profile athletes’ gender transitions, prompted the IAAF to require female Olympians to “prove” their gender by being physically examined, a policy which continued until the 1990s and was succeeded by genetic and hormone testing. Waters’s propulsive storytelling is bursting with insight, especially into the lives of trans men during the interwar period. It’s an eye-opening look at how fascist philosophy undergirds gender regulatory regimes in sports. (June)

Reviewed on 04/26/2024 | Details & Permalink