Innholdsfortegnelse for September 23, 2021 i The New York Review of Books

The Blues Dream of Billy Boy Arnold Billy Boy Arnold With Kim Field “The first two singles I ever played on were covers of Billy Boy Arnold tunes that I recorded with the Yardbirds. I’m very happy to see his amazing personal story finally appear in print.”—Eric Clapton Chicago Visions and Revisions CLOTH $30.00 Homer The Very Idea James I. Porter “Clear, intelligent, and filled with fascinating examples, this book is contemporary while reaching beyond the fashionable, and it will arouse a good deal of discussion.”—Simon Goldhill, author of Preposterous Poetics CLOTH $27.50 The Pocket Stoic John Sellars “Sellars’s book is an excellent starting point for anyone interested in experimenting with this approach to life.”—Five Books CLOTH $12.00 Now in Paperback A Decent Life Morality for the Rest of Us…

About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks by David Rooney. Norton, 271 pp., $28.95 Time is impassive, more animal than human. Time would not care if you fell out of it. It would continue on without you. It cannot see you; it has always been blind to the human and the things we do to stave it off, the taxonomies, the cleaning, the arranging, the ordering.—Lauren Groff And the clocks! The clocks, especially—they promise control, efficiency, or even power, but time doesn’t care. And don’t say time “marches on.” We march on. Time just is. When the first public sundial arrived in Rome, a trophy of war expropriated from Sicily in the third century BCE and mounted in the Forum for all to see, some Romans cursed it.…

Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World by Daniel Sherrell. Penguin, 260 pp., $17.00 (paper) On Infertile Ground: Population Control and Women’s Rights in the Era of Climate Change by Jade S. Sasser. New York University Press, 189 pp., $89.00; $27.00 (paper) Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race by Shanna H. Swan with Stacey Colino. Scribner, 292 pp., $28.00 In 1969, a year after Paul and Anne Ehrlich published a book predicting that a “population bomb” would set humankind on a path to widespread famine and political instability, twenty-year-old Stephanie Mills addressed her graduating class at Mills College in a bracing valedictory entitled “The Future is a Cruel Hoax.”…

Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal after World War II by Francine Hirsch. Oxford University Press, 536 pp., $34.95 It was surely a sign that the rule of law was finding its way into international relations when, after a world war of unmatched brutality during which new technologies of killing had claimed millions of lives, the victorious Allies decided to mount a public trial of Germany’s leaders. A special tribunal would weigh charges of “supreme offense against international morality and the sanctity of treaties” and then render its verdict. But Germany’s supreme leader had fled to the Netherlands and the Dutch refused to extradite him. The Allies, whose experiences of war and motives for holding a trial differed significantly, began to bicker among themselves…

Beethoven’s Lives: The Biographical Tradition by Lewis Lockwood. Boydell, 209 pp., $24.95 Early in E.M. Forster’s novel Howards End, the Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, attend a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. For Helen, the flighty younger sister, the music functions as the soundtrack to a story unfolding in her mind. She identifies the symphony’s themes with characters and events—heroes, shipwrecks, elephants dancing. Most important is the third movement, the Scherzo, whose main theme represents “a goblin walking quietly over the universe, from end to end.” The goblin theme insinuates to Helen that there is “no such thing as splendor or heroism in the world,” and the movement represents Beethoven’s struggle to vanquish this nihilistic thought. It is seemingly overcome by a new theme, a heroic recasting of the symphony’s…

Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth by Magda Teter. Harvard University Press, 539 pp., $41.00 The Accusation: Blood Libel in an American Town by Edward Berenson. Norton, 271 pp., $26.95 How can educated, functional adults swallow venomous and fantastical narratives about their neighbors and compatriots? Five years ago that question might have seemed quaint; widespread belief in demon-worshiping sects or malevolent secret societies presumably belonged to the pre-Enlightenment past. Today many of us are asking it on a regular basis. A daunting number of people living otherwise seemingly normal lives, including public figures in positions of power, are embracing toxic and bizarre claims—that political elites are members of a satanic pedophile cult; that cabals employ space lasers to spark fires; that a coalition of Jews, feminists, and…

These luxurious 71" x 22" scarves are beautifully made to the highest standards—the hems are hand rolled and sewn, not machine stitched. Because they are silk chiffon, they can easily be tied in a variety of ways; each is large enough to wear as a light shawl. RENAISSANCE MANUSCRIPT SILK CHIFFON SCARF The flower motifs on this beautiful scarf are taken from an exquisite Renaissance manuscript. The blossoms cover the central area of the scarf; on each end is a wide border of flowers, buds, leaves, and berries, in saturated shades of blue, pink, and green. In Europe during the Renaissance, the faithful looked to nature for spiritual enlightenment and to guide their contemplation of the divine. In illuminated manuscripts made during the period, intricately painted flora was often represented…

Spies, Lies, and Exile: The Extraordinary Story of Russian Double Agent George Blake by Simon Kuper. New Press, 278 pp., $27.99 Of all the many British and American spies who served the Soviet Union, George Blake was arguably the most intriguing and certainly one of the most effective: he betrayed hundreds of agents in the 1950s, including many working for the West in East Germany. Sentenced to forty-two years behind bars after his exposure in 1961, he escaped from a London prison five years later and spent the rest of his life in Moscow, dying there only last year, on Boxing Day, aged ninety-eight. He was also one of the least fathomable and least well known of Soviet spies, especially compared with the Cambridge Five, who still fascinate a wider…

JOHN BANVILLE’s novel April in Spain will be published in October. DAVID A. BELL is the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor in the History Department at Princeton. His latest book is Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution. ELAINE BLAIR is a regular contributor to The New York Review. GEOFFREY BROCK is the author of three books of poetry, the editor of The FSG Book of Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry, and the translator, most recently, of Giuseppe Ungaretti’s Allegria. He is the Roper Professor of Creative Writing and Translation at the University of Arkansas. DAN CHIASSON’s fifth book of poetry, The Math Campers, was published last year. He teaches at Wellesley. LINDA COLLEY is the Shelby M.C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton. Her latest…

“Lively, thought-provoking, grounded in facts, and resolutely optimistic—these essays grapple with the big questions of our time, from the rise of Trumpism and Brexit, to gender inequality and wealth taxation.”—Gabriel Zucman, University of California, Berkeley “A snappy, welcome addition to any trivia buff’s collection.”—mentalfloss.com “Sumana Roy has written—grown—a radiant and wondrous book, which roots and branches in complex, provocative ways, helping us recognize trees for the ‘strange strangers’ they are, companion-citizens with which we think and remember, yes, but also alien beings that draw love, hate, indifference, and even lust from us humans.”—Robert Macfarlane, author of The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot “An exceptional gem is hereby added to the Jewish Lives crown. With charm and élan—and heroic erudition—Arthur Lubow captures the elusive, protean Man Ray.”—Benjamin Taylor, author of…

“[Mary Beard’s book] will have that distinctive focus of hers: not just who the emperors were and what they did, but how we think about them. In her work, the consumption of classical culture is as revealing as the culture itself.”—Josh Spero, Financial Times “A marvelous guide to the afterlife. Written with the vivid curiosity of an anthropologist and the talent of a storyteller, this tale is a prompt to thealready rich imagination of the disposition of the American body.”—Andrei Codrescu, coeditor of Thus Spake the Corpse “[A] dynamic collection.… The pieces make a convincing case that Thoreau’s work is ever-relevant and deserving of continued wide readership.… Thoreau fans will be delighted.”—Publisher’s Weekly “A powerful story of leadership and transformation, with lessons for making significant positive impact on the world.”—Reid…

The Shadowy Third: Love, Letters, and Elizabeth Bowen by Julia Parry. London: Duckworth, 374 pp., ?16.99 The story sounds almost too good to be true. Its ingredients are a boxful of old letters stored in the attic of his house by a bookish and kindly uncle, his sudden death, and a niece who inherits the epistolary bounty. Elizabeth Bowen herself would have hesitated to use something so improbable as the plot for a story, despite her tendency occasionally toward melodrama and always toward the uncanny. Even Henry James, busily stirring the boiling pot, might have balked at the beautiful elaborations of the thing. But Julia Parry could hardly believe her good fortune. Out of her serendipitous heritage, and despite the odd shiver of doubt, she has wrought The Shadowy Third,…

The Other Name: Septology I–II by Jon Fosse, translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls. Transit, 336 pp., $17.95 (paper) I Is Another: Septology III–V by Jon Fosse, translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searls. Transit, 247 pp., $17.95 (paper) In the 2018 Winter Olympics, Norway wiped the snow with its competition, racking up thirty-nine medals—the most of any nation. (Germany, which has a population sixteen times larger, was second, winning thirty-one.) Something similar has been happening in Norwegian literature in recent years, with a concentration of writers so vibrant and assured that they are finally spilling onto the international stage. But just as downhill and cross-country skiing have always been a central part of Norwegian culture, so have its literary paragons. Singular among them today is Jon Fosse, an…

The Sun Also Rises and Other Writings, 1918–1926 by Ernest Hemingway, edited by Robert W. Trogdon. Library of America, 850 pp., $35.00 Hemingway a documentary film directed and produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick 1. “Hemingway will be the best known of you all,” the Parisian bookseller Adrienne Monnier told a gathering of mostly Anglophone writers and literary people in Paris in the early 1920s. This crowd all knew Hemingway from the Dome and other Latin Quarter cafes. He was working on the stories that would form his first collection, In Our Time. A few of his stories had appeared in magazines, but to most readers his name was unfamiliar. Monnier’s prophecy about Hemingway is recalled by the British novelist Bryher in her memoir The Heart to Artemis (1962).…

THE END OF TRAUMA How the New Science of Resilience Is Changing How We Think About PTSD “Everything you know about trauma—about how human beings deal with the worst things that can possibly happen to them—is probably wrong. One book can fix that, and this is the one.”—DANIEL GILBERT, New York Times–bestselling author of Stumbling on Happiness “George Bonanno has hit a home run. With a blend of page-turning stories, illuminating examples, and cutting-edge science, The End of Trauma is guaranteed to change your mind about the sources and prevalence of trauma”—SONJA LYUBOMIRSK Y, author of The How of Happiness “A remarkable book. With the narrative drive of a gifted novelist, Bonanno tells the dramatic, inspiring stories of survivors of accidents, war, and terrorism who triumphed over trauma, and shows…

He wanted to meet as soon as possible, Desperately wanted me to collaborate with him to fulfillA years-overdue commission he had from the State of Israel.He had in mind some sort of Ban-the-Bomb oratorio Which would have its premier at the Knesset.We met in summertime Central ParkIn green glorious New York,But was I interested? And afterward he kissed me good-bye on the mouth,Shock to a St. Louis boyThe maestro bursting with genius and joyWhile putting me into a Checker cab. I was twenty-six,The perfect age for vast ambition.We were there to save civilization!Robert Lowell had told him I might be interested. The piece, but without me, became eventuallyThe Kaddish Symphony, but by thenIsrael already probably (certainly) had the bomb.Shalom. Lowell had told him I was the best.Once he heard that,…

Rubens in Repeat The Logic of the Copy in Colonial Latin America Aaron M. Hyman This book examines the reception of Peter Paul Rubens in Latin America, showing how colonial artists used his prints to forge new frameworks for artistic creativity. Rubens Picturing Antiquity Edited by Anne T. Woollett, Davide Gasparotto, and Jeffrey Spier This catalogue is the first study devoted to classical art’s vital creative impact on the work of the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens. Luisa Roldán Catherine Hall-van den Elsen This beautifully illustrated book is the first English-language monograph on Luisa Roldán, a Spanish Baroque artist known for her exquisitely crafted and painted sculpture. Holbein Capturing Character Edited by Anne T. Woollett Best known for his stunning portraits of nobles, ladies, scholars, and merchants, this catalogue explores…

CUP.COLUMBIA.EDU Philip Payton The Father of Black Harlem KEVIN MCGRUDER “[A] poignant and revealing portrait of one of Black America’s pioneering entrepreneurs… This timely and important biography brings to life the limits of trying to achieve racial justice by playing by the capitalist rules of a segregated economy.” —Khalil Gibran Muhammad, author of The Condemnation of Blackness Speculation A Cultural History from Aristotle to AI GAYLE ROGERS “Like the finest lens makers, Rogers has reflected, refracted, magnified and generally brought into focus two millennia of thought and culture, all around the perfectly tempered curvature of a single term. Speculation, I suspect, will stand on the ridge of contemporary critical inquiry like a specula, a watchtower, for years to come.” —Tom McCarthy, author of Satin Island: A Novel A Revolution in…

White Freedom: The Racial History of an Idea by Tyler Stovall. Princeton University Press, 435 pp., $29.95 Last fall the student council at the University of Wisconsin unanimously voted to demand the removal of a statue of Abraham Lincoln from the campus, on the grounds that despite his opposition to slavery, Lincoln was anti-Black and anti-Native. The president of the university’s Black Student Union called it a “symbol of white supremacy.” On October 11 protesters in Portland, Oregon, tore down a Lincoln statue and painted the words “Dakota 38” on its pedestal—a reference to thirty-eight Dakota Indians whose executions Lincoln approved in 1862. In January, citing those executions, the San Francisco school board voted to rename Abraham Lincoln High School, as well as forty-three other schools named after figures judged…

SHARE INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION www.share-international.org/books; (510) 883-1848 THE REAPPEARANCE OF THE CHRIST AND THE MASTERS OF WISDOM by Benjamin Creme Creme reveals that the Christ, as World Teacher for the coming age, is already among us, gradually emerging into full public recognition. And further, that this great Teacher, known as Maitreya, is the one expected by many religions, although under different names. Along with his group of enlightened spiritual teachers, known as the Masters of Wisdom, Maitreya will inspire the most profound changes in history, ushering humanity into a new age of sharing and justice for all. 978-90-71484-32-2 • Paper, $16.00 • 287 Pages • Spiritual Available on: Share-ecart.com and Amazon. BOOK BABY bookbaby.com; (877) 961-6878 THE GIRL FROM TAM HIEP A Novel from the War John W. Conroy This is…

A YOUNGER ROBERT PENN WARREN To the Editors: Fintan O’Toole in his review of Louis Menand’s The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War [NYR, July 22] makes some remarks that cannot go unchallenged, well quite a few, but the most offensive to me concern Robert Penn Warren, whom he lumps with Cleanth Brooks, John Crowe Ransom, and Allen Tate as a Southern Agrarian who “remained a very public and active white supremacist, ‘detached … from politics.’” O’Toole quotes Warren as having written that the “‘Southern negro’ could find only ‘in agricultural and domestic pursuits the happiness that his good nature and easy ways incline him to.’” This is a gross distortion either by O’Toole or Menand of the author of the book Who Speaks for the Negro?…