Dwight Eisenhower’s steady wartime leadership is limned in this meticulous account of the planning of D-Day. Historian Paradis (Last Mission to Tokyo) tracks Eisenhower’s tactful navigation of tricky problems and personalities involved in orchestrating the Allied invasion of occupied Europe. These include his overseeing of multiple countries’ land, sea, and air forces, a finely tuned combination of which Eisenhower theorized would make possible a successful amphibious invasion of heavily defended beaches (a feat military experts had deemed foolhardy since the failure of the British invasion of Gallipoli during WWI) and dealings with Winston Churchill, whose “great literary imagination” made his military calculations unrealistic. Making matters even more complicated were tensions arising from the influx of U.S. troops stationed in Britain, especially outrage among the British public over segregation in the American military and harsher penalties for Black troops accused of rape (Eisenhower commuted one such death sentence when he learned the evidence was nonexistent). Paradis peppers his narrative with glimpses of Eisenhower’s sly humor in letters to his wife, building a sharp portrait of a man whose suspicion of extravagance led to his ascendance on the world stage as a trustworthy figure. The result is a discerning examination of Eisenhower’s personal hand in establishing America’s reputation as levelheaded “leader of the free world.” (June)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

Enormous yachts embody the sins of capitalism, according to this caustic debut polemic. University of Lille sociologist Salle indicts superyachts, defined as yachts more than 80 feet long, for their wasteful excess (one yacht designer offers showers that spray champagne); exhausting work regimens for employees; heedless mobility, which allows their wealthy owners to dodge taxes and sail away from social obligations; collective carbon footprint, which exceeds those of some small countries; and other environmental ravages, such as damaging beds of ecologically important seagrass off the southern coast of France. Above all, Salle argues, superyachts bear out an “eco-socialist” critique of “the entire fabric of fossil-industrial capitalism” by making manifest the connection between soaring inequality and “climaticide.” Salle writes in a sardonic, jokey style, occasionally lapsing into the preening first-person voice of a yacht (“I’ve been accused of looking like a submarine, but we’ll let that pass. What I have found less easy to accept is that people jeer at my bar made of Baccarat crystal”). Unfortunately, his critique, which never amounts to more than that superyachts are another way for rich people to act obnoxiously rich, founders under so many layers of interpretive weight. It’s a belabored denouncement of a gaudy but rather marginal example of class privilege. (Apr.)

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

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

In Ofori’s chilling debut, the recognition of the Ghanaian Year of Return—commemorating the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans reaching the colony of Virginia—heralds the mass manifestation of the ghosts of those who did not survive the journey. Ghana-born journalist Adwapa, who’s traveled home from the United States for the occasion, is on hand to observe and document this phenomenon. The spirits he dubs Coasters appear in the ocean before making landfall and ultimately possessing select living individuals, bringing with them an overwhelming sense of depression and despair. As society reacts with confusion, fear, and lockdowns, Adwapa strives to record and understand the restless ghosts, especially after a girl named Gyebiwaa possesses his mother. Ofori brings the setting to vivid life, but her narrator is more observer than protagonist, which keeps the reader somewhat at arm’s length. Still, this stark tale impressively probes the complex emotions surrounding the history of the slave trade, exploring guilt, trauma, and culpability. It’s a powerful, unflinching ghost story that feels as though it’s only scratched the surface of Ofori’s talent. Agent: Bieke van Aggelen, African Literary. (May)

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

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

Journalist Heglar’s spirited debut novel layers a story of climate change activism in 2014 Mississippi with a parallel narrative of the 1950s civil rights movement. Corrine, a 20-year-old Oberlin undergrad from historic Port Gibson, Miss., is unnerved by scientists’ predictions of global catastrophe due to climate change. After Corrine’s older brother, Cameron, dies in an accident aboard an oil tanker on the Mississippi River, she grows disenchanted with campus climate demonstrations and wishes she could do something meaningful to honor his memory. A direct action would risk upsetting her grandmother, Cora, who’s not only grieving her grandson’s death but also nursing wounds from her girlhood, when she was at the center of protests over the integration of the Nashville Public School System. When Cora learns Corrine is plotting to trespass on a bridge and mount a protest banner, memories of death threats, school bombings, and hostile classmates come flooding back. Though the characters are underdeveloped, Heglar writes intriguingly of the long trail of injustice faced by subsequent generations of Americans. Readers of message-driven fiction will appreciate this. (May)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink

In Ward’s engrossing latest (after The Lifeguards), three American sisters confront their family’s complicated dynamics on the eve of the youngest’s second wedding. Miami school librarian Sylvie Peacock has been on her own since her husband died 10 years earlier, but when she meets wealthy Englishman Simon Rampling on an app for book lovers, she’s charmed by his kindness and passion for bird photography, and swept off her feet by stories of his family castle in northern England. Though part of her feels like she’s betraying her late husband, she accepts his marriage proposal after a mere three months of dating. Her glamorous oldest sister, Cleo, learns shortly before traveling to England for the wedding that Simon derived his wealth from a divorce, and itches to tell Sylvie the truth. Another narrative thread involves middle sister Emma, who’s risked her own family’s well-being by sinking their savings into a pyramid scheme. Much drama ensues at Simon’s castle when the sisters converge along with their narcissistic mother, Donna. Ward’s character work is top-notch, conveying Cleo’s savior complex and Donna’s negative impact on her children. This is a cut above the standard for women’s fiction. Agent: Michelle Tessler, Tessler Literary. (May)

Reviewed on 05/10/2024 | Details & Permalink