In this rousing biography, historian Jones (Powers and Thrones) departs from Shakespeare’s portrait of Prince Hal as a wild, roistering youth. In Jones’s telling, Henry even in adolescence was a determined military leader, upholder of the faith, and dominant figure in the court of his father, Henry IV. His own orderly reign brought stability to England, allowing him to (barely) finance his conquest of much of France. Bookish and artistic, he meticulously stage-managed his public image, but was also on occasion barbarically cruel: he first ordered men to be drawn and quartered at 14; refused to let starving women and children pass through his siege lines at Rouen; and beheaded a soldier for playing irritating trumpet solos. Jones’s colorful narrative reads like House of Dragons minus the dragons; it’s full of pageantry and tumult and betrayal (like an incident during the chaotic civil wars in France, when the son of mad King Charles VI invited John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, to an unarmed parley and then had the too-fearless duke stabbed in the back). While he admires Henry, Jones dispels glamorous myths—Shakespeare’s grandiloquent “St. Crispin’s Day” speech probably sounded more like, “Fellas, let’s go”—and reveals the prosaic realities of his wars: constant money-grubbing and pointless suffering. This stimulating portrait of an iconic ruler roots his glorious deeds in sordid reality. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/09/2024 | Details & Permalink

Bestseller Harari (Homo Deus) offers an ambitious but muddled meditation on the past and future of information technology. Positing all human history as a history of information—and defining information as “something that creates new realities”—Harari ends up telling a cautionary tale about the power of stories. He argues that prehistoric humans’ harnessing of information technologies led to the emergence of a new “[level] of reality”—the realm of shared belief—and that manipulations of this realm via new information technologies account for both advancements in human civilization and sweeping social ills (for example, the ancient invention of the written document led to bureaucracy, while the 20th century’s overabundance of the written document enabled totalitarianism). Harari sees the rise of artificial intelligence as an inflection point, one that leads either to unprecedented opportunity or to humanity’s obsolescence. Harari’s historical arguments are vague and prone to circular logic, and though his discussion of AI is more focused, he confusingly levels sharp critiques of tech gurus’ utopian claims (raising salient points about the dangerous role algorithms have already begun playing in policing, for example) while still taking their dystopian ones at face value (prognosticating on a rise-of-the-machines scenario in which “AI will just grab power to itself”). Readers who enjoy Harari as a kind of freewheeling conversation partner will find food for thought here. But take this with a heaping dose of salt. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 08/09/2024 | Details & Permalink

In these sharp essays, novelist Hedva (Your Love Is Not Good) reflects on living with chronic illness. In “Sick Woman Theory,” Hedva discusses how flareups of their fibromyalgia and chronic shingles cause searing pain that leaves them bedridden for months at a time. They push back against misogynistic associations between illness and a concept of femininity defined by weakness and fragility, instead asserting that “you don’t need to be fixed, my queens—it’s the world that needs the fixing.” This focus on the social construction of disability recurs throughout, as when Hedva laments in “Letter to a Young Doctor” that “wellness” is often functionally synonymous with an individual’s capacity to contribute to capitalist enterprise. “She, Etcetera” praises Susan Sontag’s perceptive writings on illness even as it critiques Sontag’s personal view that “if she was not healed, even completely cured, she had failed,” an outlook Hedva decries as founded in the ableist assumption that illness constitutes an aberration from a “normal” state of health. Hedva’s philosophical takes on disability are consistently illuminating, even if the subject matter makes for heavy reading (“Can I Hit You?” explores the complex connections between the physical abuse Hedva endured from their mother as a child, the pain from their illness, and their preference for masochistic sex). Probing and sophisticated, this is worth seeking out. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 08/09/2024 | Details & Permalink

Waltz (Warrior Diplomat), a former Green Beret and current Republican congressman from Florida, cooks up a fanatical political treatise flimsily disguised as a leadership guide. He claims that the skills he honed in the military and Congress can help readers get ahead in their own lives, but the prescriptive angle is little more than an afterthought. For instance, Waltz recounts how after a sniper squad failed to take down a Taliban commander, he concocted a successful plan to lure the commander out by setting up a free health clinic, a story he boils down to the trite recommendation to stay flexible. Demonstrating a tenuous grasp of history, Waltz commends the restraint shown by Ulysses S. Grant to surrendering Confederates for preventing “years of horrific guerilla warfare across the South,” brushing aside the fact that that’s exactly what happened as unreconstructed whites violently resisted multiracial democracy well into the 20th century. Such ignorance of the post-emancipation oppression of Black Americans takes on insidious overtones as Waltz goes on meandering rants against the alleged infiltration of critical race theory into West Point. The author pads out the book with familiar attacks on Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and some requisite kowtowing to Donald Trump, whom Waltz praises for resisting Covid lockdowns. Shoddily argued and dully predictable, this mishmash of conservative talking points flops. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/09/2024 | Details & Permalink

MacDonald (The Bombardier Story), a columnist for the Globe and Mail, offers a listless history of Shopify, the Canadian company that provides digital infrastructure for businesses to sell their wares online. Focusing his account on cofounder Tobias Lütke, MacDonald describes how the German-born programmer moved to Ottawa in 2002 to live near his future wife, Fiona McKean, whom he’d met through an online game. Though Lütke didn’t have a work visa, there were no laws against starting a business, so in 2004 he partnered with a McKean family friend to launch a company selling snowboards online. They abandoned the venture after a year but used the software they’d created as the basis for Shopify, which was founded in 2006. MacDonald peppers in insights about what drove Shopify’s success (he highlights how Lütke continually injected fresh perspectives into the company by acquiring startups and absorbing their employees) and offers a dutiful chronicle of the company’s major milestones, including its 2015 IPO, its efforts to make its mobile interface more user-friendly, and the decision to go completely remote in 2020 so the company could “recruit talent from anywhere in the world.” Unfortunately, MacDonald’s writing has little character and the narrative little drama, making for a rather dry account. This fulfills its purpose but will struggle to hold readers’ attention. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/09/2024 | Details & Permalink

Psychologist Maschke debunks perceptions of ADHD as a “male-centric disorder” in this valuable debut. Sketching out a brief history of the disorder—which was first conceptualized in 1952 but long went unstudied in women—she points to a profound gender gap in ADHD diagnoses stemming from lack of research, gendered stereotypes (that women “have it all together”), and differences in symptom presentations. As a corrective she breaks down how ADHD subtypes (hyperactive-impulsive, inattentive, and combined) manifest in women in often internalized ways; how ADHD intersects with depression, anxiety, and eating disorders, to which women are especially vulnerable; and how women with ADHD can manage their symptoms by creating routines, spending time in nature, and improving sleep hygiene. Though some of that information feels stale, Maschke provides specific, useful background on how hormonal fluctuations often experienced by cis women impact symptoms—increased levels of progesterone during the premenstrual phase, for example, can reduce stimulant medication efficacy and worsen emotional volatility—and her lucid blend of scientific know-how and anecdotes of her own experiences with ADHD make her a credible, relatable guide. Cis women grappling with new ADHD diagnoses will find this an especially solid starting point. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/09/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this boisterous study, husband-and-wife team Hare and Woods (Survival of the Friendliest) reflect on what they’ve learned training service dogs at the Duke University Canine Cognition Center. They recount devising tests to determine which Labrador retriever puppies are most likely to be successful service dogs as adults: one involved placing two bowls in front of a puppy and pointing at the bowl with a treat in it, which revealed that the most promising pups can select the correct bowl, and thus make basic inferences about human intentions, around eight weeks of age. A surprising predictor of success is when dogs eat their own poop, the authors write, explaining that Labradors are susceptible to a genetic mutation that gives them an insatiable appetite; this makes them exceptionally responsive to being rewarded with treats, even as it drives them to eat feces. Hare and Woods are more interested in discussing their work than in detailing how to raise a dog, though they do outline a few broad principles, urging readers to be patient as puppies gradually develop self-control and to expose dogs to the people and experiences they’ll regularly encounter before they reach 18 weeks of age. Though this volume is short on advice, dog lovers curious about what’s going on in their pups’ heads will be enlightened. Photos. Agent: Max Brockman, Brockman, Inc. (Aug.)

Reviewed on 08/09/2024 | Details & Permalink

Novelist and playwright Cixous (The Laugh of the Medusa) serves up a surreal, unclassifiable meditation on isolation and resilience centered around the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing parallels between herself and her Jewish ancestors, Cixous likens the “sensation of moving in place, within the turbulence, as if we were on a ship midocean” that she felt while stuck inside her home to Exodus, when “the Jews felt the same mummification of time, an ongoing incarceration.” Interwoven throughout is dreamlike dialogue between Cixous and her mother, whose voice is always “perched on my left shoulder” and who reminisces about the difficulties of surviving two wars. Elsewhere, Cixous turns to literary forebears for answers about how to produce art in times of tragedy, finding inspiration in Franz Kafka’s ability to write even as Europe descended into WWI and concluding that writing is an act of self-preservation. The highly experimental style introduces paragraph breaks in the middle of sentences, resists the strictures of linear narrative, and utilizes fragmentary prose as mesmerizing as it is mysterious (“how long is it going to last this dying, the unkind irony of wished-for death, silent siren, follow me darling, no matter how often you try to drop the soul’s leash, it doesn’t want liberty”). Evocative and enigmatic, this intoxicates. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/09/2024 | Details & Permalink

Jenks, editor and cofounder of Narrative magazine, debuts with a thorough close reading of James Baldwin’s 1957 short story “Sonny’s Blues,” which follows a Harlem algebra teacher as he struggles to reconnect with his estranged brother, a heroin user and gifted jazz pianist. Moving sentence by sentence through the story, Jenks highlights the musicality of the diction, as when he breaks down the phrase “God knows why”: “God its glottal G exhaling the short o sounding ah/awe into the commanding palatal d is a bass note springing to and holding under the bright round opening of knows.” Dissecting the story’s motifs, Jenks contends that Baldwin uses windows both literally as “stage blocking” and metaphorically as “portals of vision” that provide “occasions of perception and perspective, greater or lesser degrees of clarity.” Elsewhere, Jenks explores the story’s ambivalent portrayal of faith, dramatized by the contrast between Sonny’s devout mother and her skeptical sons, and contends that Sonny’s climactic piano performance, in which he falters early on before finding his groove, echoes Baldwin’s evolution as a writer. Jenks’s reverence for the story and for Baldwin’s gift with language enlivens the admittedly granular analysis, imparting the feeling of sitting in on a beloved professor’s lecture. It’s an erudite testament to the pleasures of savoring a text. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/09/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this richly layered account, Call Me by Your Name author Aciman recalls the loneliness and beauty of coming of age while his family was exiled in Rome. Against a backdrop of rising antisemitism in Egypt (covered in Aciman’s previous memoir, Out of Egypt), the author’s once-prosperous Jewish family fled from their Alexandria mansion in the mid-1960s with only the possessions they could fit in their suitcases. Teenage Aciman, his younger brother, and their deaf mother were installed in a shabby apartment owned by an ill-tempered uncle in a working-class Roman neighborhood: “I wanted the Rome of movies, of grand monuments, of beautiful women turning their heads to smile... but that Rome is nowhere in sight.” While Aciman’s parents argued about the family’s future (his father wanted them to join him in Paris), Aciman retreated to his bedroom with classic literature. Then, after an unencumbered solo bike ride through the city, he gradually began to fall in love with his surroundings. In rapturous prose, Aciman captures the shocks of beauty he experienced (“Like music, it opened a universe of wonderful things, but I couldn’t name a single one,” he writes of smelling bergamot for the first time) during what amounted to a brief interlude on his way to the U.S. His poetic exploration of place and probing of what constitutes a home makes for exquisitely moving reading. Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 08/09/2024 | Details & Permalink