Buck
by MK Asante (Spiegel & Grau, $25)
The city that MK Asante’s childhood friends dubbed “Killadelphia” comes across as the star of this “frequently brilliant” memoir, said Héctor Tobar in the Los Angeles Times. “Philly’s skateboarders, its street-corner philosophers, and its tattoo artists are all brought vividly to life here,” as the 30-year-old filmmaker and writing professor recounts a chaotic upbringing touched by both crime and lofty family ambitions. The ending feels “too conventionally uplifting,” but this book “contains multitudes.”
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.
The Daughters of Mars
by Thomas Keneally (Atria, $28)
The otherwise complex heroines of Thomas Keneally’s “bludgeoningly powerful” novel face the horrors of World War I with uncomplicated valor, said Steve Donoghue in The Washington Post. “In a series of meaty, masterfully orchestrated chapters,” Keneally follows two Australian nurses who venture into the conflict and end up on the front lines. All the while, the author deftly leavens the tale’s grimmest moments with “pitch-perfect” dark humor and “glimmers of stubborn hope.”
The Love-charm of Bombs
by Lara Feigel (Bloomsbury, $35)
When German bombs fell on London, the city’s literati “made love with reckless abandon, and not only with their spouses,” said Miranda Seymour in The New York Times. This “lovingly researched” book focuses on the escapades of Graham Greene, Elizabeth Bowen, and three other literary figures of the time to give us a portrait of a city that appeared to have been seized in its moment of crisis by a “febrile, impulsive, and mildly crazy spirit.” It’s an “enterprising, lively, and original” work.
Brief Encounters With the Enemy
by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh (Dial, $25)
This unusual collection of eight interlinked stories is “as fulfilling as any novel you’re likely to read,” said Alex Gilvarry in The Boston Globe. Each tale is set in the same Rust Belt city during a near future dominated by a foreign war, and each features a “cynical, perhaps emotionally stunted” male narrator. Some of these men join the fight, but most simply commute, work at unsatisfying jobs, and try to chat up their crushes. Their voices “bleed into each other,” effectively so.
-
Helsinki's year of zero road fatalitiesUnder the Radar Finland's 'Vision Zero' safety strategy 'shifts responsibility for crashes from road users to the designers of the road system'
-
Critics' choice: Outstanding new Japanese restaurantsFeature An all-women sushi team, a 15-seat listening bar, and more
-
Why do Dana White and Donald Trump keep pushing for a White House UFC match?TODAY'S BIG QUESTION The president and the sports mogul each have their own reasons for wanting a White House spectacle
-
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.”