Friday, September 15, 2017

Books We Recommend

BOOK REVIEW | EDITORS' CHOICE

11 New Books We Recommend This Week

SEPT. 14, 2017

Mikhail Gorbachev was one of the most influential leaders of the 20th century, and William Taubman’s new biography of him is essential reading for the 21st, as we trace the arc from the fall of the Soviet Union to the rise of Putin’s Russia. Kurt Andersen digs up the roots of alternative facts in American culture (hint: it starts with the Pilgrims) in “Fantasyland”; and Ben Blum investigates a cousin’s inexplicable crime in “Ranger Games.” In fiction, new works by the acclaimed novelists Jesmyn Ward and Claire Messud encompass themes of childhood and loss. And Margaret Wilkerson Sexton makes a luminous debut with her novel set in New Orleans, “A Kind of Freedom.”

Radhika Jones
Editorial Director, Books

RANGER GAMES: A Story of Soldiers, Family and an Inexplicable Crime, by Ben Blum. (Doubleday, $28.95.) On Aug. 7, 2006, Ben Blum’s cousin Alex, an Army Ranger, drove four fellow soldiers to a bank, which they robbed by gunpoint. When Alex was arrested, he insisted the robbery was simply an elaborate Ranger training exercise. Was it? Our critic Jennifer Senior says “Ranger Games” is “a memorable, novelistic account” about the unlikely bond between two very different cousins, as well as a “fascinating tutorial on the psychology of modern warfare and social coercion.”

SING, UNBURIED, SING, by Jesmyn Ward. (Scribner, $26.) Our critic Parul Sehgal writes that Jesmyn Ward’s books “reach for the sweep, force and sense of inevitability of the Greek myths, but as translated to the small, mostly poor, mostly black town in Mississippi where she grew up and where she still lives.” Ward’s latest novel, which carries echoes of Faulkner and of Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” is both timeless and perfectly poised for the moment. It combines aspects of the American road novel and the ghost story with an exploration of the long aftershocks of a hurricane and the opioid epidemic devouring rural America.

FANTASYLAND: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History, by Kurt Andersen. (Random House, $30.) This romp through American history, from Anne Hutchinson to Donald Trump, contains a powerful message: For centuries the country has nurtured a “promiscuous devotion to the untrue.” Andersen, a host of public radio’s Studio 360, a best-selling novelist and a cultural omnivore, explores the deep roots of American unreason in all its seductive forms.

CAREERS FOR WOMEN, by Joanna Scott. (Little, Brown, $26.) This novel’s craftily arranged narrative involves plot twists, publicists and real estate in midcentury New York City. Scott borrows the best aspects of crime fiction (pacing, stakes, excitement) and avoids its worst (gore, stilted dialogue, clumsy foreshadowing). Look for walk-on roles by the urban activist Jane Jacobs, former mayor John Lindsay and the high-wire artist Philippe Petit.

BLACK DETROIT: A People’s History of Self-Determination, by Herb Boyd. (Amistad/HarperCollins, $27.99.) In 29 chapters, spanning more than three centuries, Boyd celebrates the black men and women of Detroit who would otherwise remain on history’s margins. We meet breakthrough figures ranging from Detroit’s first black congressman to Michigan’s first African-American obstetrician to the country’s first black auto dealer. There are a lot of reasons to despair about the city’s future. But Boyd remains hopeful, and his song of praise emphasizes Detroiters’ values of optimism and resolve.

THE LIGHTHOUSE, by Alison Moore. (Biblioasis, paper, $14.95.) This suspenseful novel, a finalist for the Man Booker Prize in 2012, follows a lonely British hiker, recently separated from his wife, through an increasingly troubled, possibly dangerous, trek across the German countryside. Moore’s imagery is vivid, and her taut sentences vibrate with tension; in this psychological drama, she keeps all our senses on constant alert.

A DISAPPEARANCE IN DAMASCUS: A Story of Friendship and Survival in the Shadow of War, by Deborah Campbell. (Picador, $27.) In the mid-2000s, when Campbell was an undercover journalist in Syria, her fixer, a woman named Ahlam, was grabbed by the authorities and vanished. This searing account presents an unusual perspective on the horror of the police state — that of the outsider trying to navigate its treacherous shoals. It reads in equal parts as memoir, history and mystery story, with piercing imagery and flashes of humor, even in its darkest moments.

THE BURNING GIRL, by Claire Messud. (Norton, $25.95.) The teenage girls in Messud’s novel have always been best friends. Now they’re getting older and growing apart. The consequences could be dangerous for one of them, and life-changing for both. “The Burning Girl” is a story about the power, necessity and inevitable artifice of stories — those we are told, and those we tell ourselves.

GORBACHEV: His Life and Times, by William Taubman. (Norton, $39.95.) Taubman, the author of an award-winning biography of Nikita Khrushchev, has written what will surely be the definitive English-language study of the Russian leader who opened up the Soviet Union — and was hated for it by his compatriots. To understand today’s Russia, it is necessary to understand what Gorbachev accomplished and what he failed to do; the book’s timing is especially fortuitous as Americans consider Russia’s role and influence in the world.

A KIND OF FREEDOM, by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton. (Counterpoint, $26.) This assured first novel shines an unflinching, compassionate light on three generations of a black family in New Orleans, emphasizing endurance more than damage. Sexton is a New Orleans native, and one of the great pleasures of this novel is its feel for the local language, texture and taste.

WISHTREE, by Katherine Applegate. (Feiwel & Friends, $17.99; ages 8 to 12.) Red, the character at the center of Applegate’s beautiful and morally bracing parable, is a city tree who witnesses a neighborhood boy’s cruelty toward a family of Muslim immigrants. Applegate’s quirky imagination and deft touch help make Red and her mission both engaging and believable.