Falling Upwards
by Richard Holmes (Pantheon, $35)
The author of 2008’s The Age of Wonder clearly had fun writing his latest, said The Economist. As he weaves together giddy firsthand accounts of early hot air ballooning adventures, it’s “hard not to discern something similarly joyous” in his own attitude. Falling Upwards might be “a touch light on the technical aspects of ballooning,” and it barely mentions the French brothers credited as the pastime’s 1783 inventors. “That, though, seems a small price to pay for such a spirited work.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth
by Chris Hadfield (Little, Brown, $28)
Chris Hadfield is “pretty much a cynic’s worst nightmare,” said Nathan Whitlock in the Toronto Star. As the former astronaut tells his life story, “wholesomeness overload is never far off.” But as we watch him growing up on a family farm, braving the difficult path toward becoming the first Canadian to walk in space, and eventually recording a low-gravity YouTube music video that went viral, we can’t help liking him. Apparently, a story like his “simply can’t be made uninteresting.”
Levels of Life
by Julian Barnes (Knopf, $23)
Novelist Julian Barnes puts a portrait of early ballooning to a very different use in this “slim, stunning” volume, said Ellen Kanner in The Miami Herald. Like his breakout work, Flaubert’s Parrot, this book mixes fiction, history, and personal essay. Here, the exuberance of the early aeronauts is likened to falling in love, and that allows Barnes to convey the sense of loss he’s felt since the 2008 death of his wife. Like those early balloonists, “he has given us a perspective never seen before.”
The Aviators
by Winston Groom (National Geographic, $30)
Winston Groom’s “absorbing” 19th book returns us to an era when aviation pioneers were full-on celebrities, said Arthur Herman in The Wall Street Journal. Jimmy Doolittle was little known when the U.S. entered World War II, but he, Charles Lindbergh, and Eddie Rickenbacker all were air veterans when they leaped into the fight and contributed heroically to the Allied cause. Groom, the author of Forrest Gump, makes each man’s story riveting, but Lindbergh’s proves “the most trenchant.”
-
Israel: Losing the American publicFeature A recent poll finds American support for Israel's military action in Gaza has fallen from 50% to 32%
-
Unmaking AmericansFeature Trump is threatening to revoke the citizenship of foreign-born Americans. Could he do that?
-
EPA: A bonfire of climate change regulationsFeature The Environmental Protection Agency wants to roll back its 'endangerment finding,' a ruling that lets the agency regulate carbon emissions
-
Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
-
Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
-
The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
-
Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
-
Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
-
Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
-
You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
-
Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”