Year Zero
by Ian Buruma (Penguin, $30)
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What You Want Is in the Limo
by Michael Walker (Spiegel & Grau, $26)
Michael Walker’s new book about a bygone rock era zips by so quickly “you feel like holding up a Bic lighter and clapping for an encore,” said Robert Philpot in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The author doesn’t entirely prove his subtitle’s claim that 1973 was “the Year the Sixties Died and the Modern Rock Star Was Born.” But once the reader gets out on the road with Led Zeppelin, Alice Cooper, and the Who, Walker’s account has “a rock ’n’ roll looseness” that fits the material well.
Year of the Jungle
by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, $18)
Suzanne Collins never talks down to even her youngest readers, said Danielle Trussoni in The New York Times. This picture book by the author of The Hunger Games re-creates her experience of having a father leave for the battlefields of Vietnam, and she never suggests the waiting was easy. Collins’s redheaded protagonist is named Sue, and “the mixture of anxiety, excitement, fear, boredom, and confusion Sue experiences will be sadly familiar to many children.”
Very Recent History
by Choire Sicha (Harper, $25)
Very Recent History would be a first-rate satire “if only every word weren’t true,” said Kira Henehan in GQ.com. “A brave new amalgam of reportage and story,” this first book by the co-founder of TheAwl.com tracks the lives of several young New Yorkers struggling to get by in the wake of 2008’s financial crisis, using notes the author took in real time. Student-loan bills, dating by text message—here, every mundane detail “takes on the hyper-real gloss of an E! True Hollywood Story.”
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'A symbol of the faceless corporate desire'Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
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Say farewell to summer at these underrated US lakesThe Week Recommends Have one last blast
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Truck drivers are questioning the Trump administration's English mandateTalking Points Some have praised the rules, others are concerned they could lead to profiling
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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
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Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
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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.
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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.”
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Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
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Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
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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.”
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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.”