Innholdsfortegnelse for December 19, 2019 i The New York Review of Books

JOAN ACOCELLA is a staff writer for The New Yorker. Her most recent book is Twenty-eight Artists and Two Saints. She is writing a biography of Mikhail Baryshnikov. RAE ARMANTROUT’s most recent collection of poems, Wobble, was a finalist for the National Book Award. NEAL ASCHERSON is the author of Black Sea, Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland and the novel Death of the Fronsac. He is an Honorary Professor at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. MATTHEW AUCOIN is a composer and conductor. He is the Artist-in-Residence at Los Angeles Opera and a 2018 MacArthur Fellow. His new opera, Eurydice, will have its world premiere in Los Angeles in February 2020. KEN BABSTOCK’s sixth collection of poems will be published next year. COLIN B. BAILEY is Director of…

Dora Maar Edited by Damarice Amao, Amanda Maddox, and Karolina Ziebinska-Lewandowska Richly illustrated with her enigmatic photographs and lesser-known paintings, this comprehensive exploration of Dora Maar’s career is the first to reveal her as an extraordinary and influential artist in her own right. J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM Hardcover $40.00 Book of Beasts The Bestiary in the Medieval World Edited by Elizabeth Morrison With Larisa Grollemond “Like the manuscripts it considers, the book is a feast for the eye and a breath-taking cache of knowledge, which offers a much-needed balance to pre-existing scholarship on the bestiary’s textual history.” —Times Higher Education J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM Hardcover $60.00 True Grit American Prints from 1900 to 1950 Stephanie Schrader, James Glisson, and Alexander Nemerov This engaging work examines a rich selection of early…

For the Literature Lovers The Lost Books of Jane Austen Janine Barchas Hardcore bibliography meets Antiques Roadshow in an illustrated exploration of the role that cheap reprints played in Jane Austen’s literary celebrity—and in changing the larger book world itself. $35.00 hardcover/ebook Nearly 100 full-color images Gertrude Stein Has Arrived The Homecoming of a Literary Legend Roy Morris Jr. The story behind the American book tour that catapulted Gertrude Stein from quirky artist to a household name. $24.95 hardcover/ebook Outsiders Five Women Writers Who Changed the World Lyndall Gordon “Literary biographer Gordon brilliantly ties together the biographies of five women writers who bravely embraced outsider status … Gordon seduces readers interested in all that these fascinating women had to offer.”—Publishers Weekly $29.95 hardcover/ebook The Making of Jane Austen Devoney Looser…

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World by Steve Brusatte. William Morrow, 404 pp., $29.99 Dinosaurs Rediscovered: The Scientific Revolution in Paleontology by Michael J. Benton. Thames and Hudson, 320 pp., $34.95 The World of Dinosaurs: An Illustrated Tour by Mark A. Norell. University of Chicago Press, 239 pp., $32.50 The Dinosaur Artist: Obsession, Betrayal and the Quest for Earth’s Ultimate Trophy by Paige Williams. Hachette, 410 pp., $28.00 Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle by Lukas Rieppel. Harvard University Press, 325 pp., $29.95 A few fossil bones in clay and limestone have opened a greater vista back into Time than the Indian imagination ventured upon for its Gods: and every day turns up something new.—Edward FitzGerald…

The Dolphin Letters, 1970–1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell, and Their Circle edited by Saskia Hamilton. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 504 pp., $50.00 The Dolphin: Two Versions, 1972–1973 by Robert Lowell, edited by Saskia Hamilton. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 195 pp., $18.00 (paper) What are a writer’s letters worth? The question, posed bluntly in dollars, plays out in one of the tangled subplots of The Dolphin Letters. In 1970 Robert Lowell was a visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, and Elizabeth Hardwick was at home in New York with their thirteen-year-old daughter, Harriet. Hardwick felt overwhelmed trying to manage the family’s affairs. “Cal,” she wrote to Lowell, “I can’t cope. I have gotten so that I simply cannot bear it. Each day’s mail and effort grows greater and greater.” Seeing…

DARRYL NYZNYK BOOKS/CROSS-DOVE PUBLISHING www.darrylnyznyk.com; (310) 699-3239 A BOOMER’S TALE by Darryl Nyznyk A unique new twist on the two-world, time-travel romantic adventure of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series. 9781733585606 • Paper, $18.99 320 Pages • Fantasy Adventure Available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble Author’s website: www.darrylnyznyk.com. MARY’S SON A Tale of Christmas by Darryl Nyznyk Troubled youths from opposite sides of the tracks discover the true magic and meaning of Christmas. 9780965651318 • Paper, $9.99 176 Pages • Young Adult; Holiday Available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble Author’s website: www.darrylnyznyk.com. HATHAWAY BARRY Hathbarry@gmail.com; (415) 663-1229 BOY A Woman Listening to Men and Boys by Hathaway Barry A collection of vulnerable interviews of men (age 9–94 years), conducted by a woman, about what it means to be male in…

“As Erika Lee brilliantly shows, xenophobia has forever been an integral part of American racism. Forcing us to confront this history as we confront its present, America for Americans is essential reading for anyone who wants to build a more inclusive society.” —IBR AM X. KENDI, author of How to Be an Antiracist “America for Americans is unflinching and powerful. Through extensive research and crystal-clear prose, Erika Lee has masterfully tracked the phenomenon of xenophobia and its devastating effects on this nation’s democracy and its people.” —CAROL ANDERSON, author of White Rage “The most comprehensive and chilling history of antiimmigrant sentiment in America ever written. With narrative authority and analytic precision, Erika Lee shows how xenophobia has shaped America more than the ideals embodied by the Statue of Liberty.” —GARY…

Klotsvog MARGARITA KHEMLIN Translated by Lisa C. Hayden Foreword by Lara Vapnyar “[Khemlin’s] masterful debut novel, which was shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize … demonstrates just how unsuccessful love can be—particularly when it’s trapped in the antisemitic Soviet mechanism.” —The Times Literary Supplement Fandango and Other Stories ALEXANDER GRIN Translated by Bryan Karetnyk “Bryan Karetnyk’s sparkling translations bring out both the stylistic intricacy and the psychological depth of Grin’s tales … This expertly edited collection introduces, at long last, the full range of Grin’s gifts to the English-speaking world.” —Los Angeles Review of Books Cook, Taste, Learn How the Evolution of Science Transformed the Art of Cooking GUY CROSBY “As a foodie myself I was delighted to see all suspicions confirmed in Cook, Taste, Learn—that advances in the culinary…

Verrocchio, Il Maestro di Leonardo [Verrocchio, Master of Leonardo] an exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, March 9–July 14, 2019. Catalog of the exhibition by Francesco Caglioti and Andrea De Marchi. Venice: Marsilio, 353 pp., €53.00 Verrocchio: Sculptor and Painter of Renaissance Florence an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., September 15, 2019–January 12, 2020. Catalog of the exhibition edited by Andrew Butterfield. National Gallery of Art/Princeton University Press, 372 pp., $75.00 Bertoldo di Giovanni: The Renaissance of Sculpture in Medici Florence an exhibition at the Frick Collection, New York City, September 18, 2019–January 12, 2020. Catalog of the exhibition edited by Aimee Ng, Alexander J. Noelle, and Xavier F. Salomon. The Frick Collection/D Giles Limited, 496 pp., $84.95 In two sentences,…

The Evolution of Moral Progress: A Biocultural Theory by Allen Buchanan and Russell Powell. Oxford University Press, 422 pp., $39.95 Theories that link evolution with moral progress claim to illuminate changes in values in many different cultures over long stretches of time. In some such theories, the evolution of ethics is taken to be part of a cosmic process that encompasses the formation of galaxies and the emergence of life. The scope of a theory may include every human society that has ever existed, and often those of nonhuman animals as well. Yet the values these theories aim to explain and defend are always those of the time and place in which the theory has been created, while the view of moral progress they invoke is that which currently prevails…

DAVID PEARSON www.davidpearsonbooks.com; (305) 798-8446 JFK AND BOBBY, ARNIE AND JACK…AND DAVID! The Unusual PR Career of David Pearson by David Pearson This memoir opens with the riveting story of the author’s night at the White House on November 22, 1963, handling the press after the assassination of Prsident Kennedy. The book then takes the reader along through vignettes with JFK and Bobby, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, and other famous men in sports and politics. 9781480969810 • Paper, $15.00, eBook, $9.99 151 Pages • Memoir Available at Amazon and Books and Books Author’s website: www.davidpearsonbooks.com. EYEWEAR PUBLISHING LTD store.eyewearpublishing.com; info@eyewearpublishing.com A WOUNDED DEER LEAPS HIGHEST by C.P. Mangel “An impressive segregation tale—not comforting by a long shot but true to its era and an intriguing experiment in textual form.”—Kirkus…

All Politics Is Local: Why Progressives Must Fight for the States by Meaghan Winter. Bold Type, 293 pp., $28.00 American Resistance: From the Women’s March to the Blue Wave by Dana R. Fisher. Columbia University Press, 197 pp., $26.00 In the realm of state government, the Republican Party is wiping the floor with the Democrats. The 2016 elections are remembered for the presidential race, but they also gave the GOP control of sixty-eight state legislative chambers to the Democrats’ thirtyone. Amazingly, the lives of almost half of the national population came under the sway of a Republican trifecta—that is, a state government with all three branches controlled by the GOP. Even after the 2018 Blue Wave, the score was 61–37, Republican to Democrat. What’s salient here is that Republican dominance…

Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers by Andy Greenberg. Doubleday, 348 pp., $28.95 In mid-October, a cybersecurity researcher in the Netherlands demonstrated, online, as a warning,* the easy availability of the Internet protocol address and open, unsecured access points of the industrial control system—the ICS—of a wastewater treatment plant not far from my home in Vermont. Industrial control systems may sound inconsequential, but as the investigative journalist Andy Greenberg illustrates persuasively in Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers, they have become the preferred target of malicious actors aiming to undermine civil society. A wastewater plant, for example, removes contaminants from the water supply; if its controls were to be compromised, public health…

The Bookshop of the World: Making and Trading Books in the Dutch Golden Age by Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen. Yale University Press, 485 pp., $35.00 We commonly think of books as containers of ideas or wrapping for literature, but they can be understood in other ways—as if they were blood cells carrying oxygen through a body politic or data points as infinite as stars in the sky. Books lead lives of their own, and they intersect with our lives in ways we have only begun to understand. The president customarily assumes power by swearing the oath of office on a book. Ladies have hollowed out books to hide their jewelry. Books are presented as prizes, carried as companions into battle, kept at bedsides to induce sleep, exchanged as…

To the Editors: In my otherwise enthusiastic review of Christopher de Hamel’s Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts [NYR, December 5], I queried his interpretation of the upper register of the calendar illustrations in the Hours of Jeanne de Navarre. A kindly colleague has drawn my attention to the “Exposition” that accompanies the closely related calendar in the Belleville Breviary, in the French Bibliotheque Nationale. This contemporary commentary unequivocally identifies the crowned woman, whom I suggested represented “Ecclesia,” as the Virgin Mary, standing at the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the seated apostle at her feet (as de Hamel had suggested) as being indeed Saint Paul, expounding the twelve articles of the creed. It’s vexing to have overlooked this evidence, but a compensatory pleasure to acknowledge a further example of de…