Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted
by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong (Simon & Schuster, $26)
This book “makes a persuasive case that The Mary Tyler Moore Show came along at just the right time,” said Glenn C. Altschuler in the Tulsa World. Jennifer Keishin Armstrong’s “charming” account of the sitcom’s seven-year run smartly highlights that the show’s portrait of a fashionable, single career woman tapped an affluent viewership no other show had courted. Even so, countless women idolized “Mary,” and Armstrong clearly was one of them.
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The Friedkin Connection
by William Friedkin (Harper, $30)
William Friedkin’s look back on his filmmaking career is “filled with memorably salty confrontations,” said Peter Tonguette in The Wall Street Journal. The director’s habit of resisting studio demands occasionally led to triumphs, like The French Connection and The Exorcist. Yet his attempts to play film artiste come off as misguided. “It cannot be a coincidence that this memoir is at its most engrossing when describing the solid, unpretentious entertainments its author once made so well.”
Flip
by Kevin Cook (Viking, $27)
The Flip Wilson Show ran only four years, but its host was “one of the great comic voices of the 20th century,” said Robert Lloyd in the Los Angeles Times. Though this overdue biography is short on analysis, it “flows easily” as it follows Wilson’s rise from a childhood in foster homes to the pinnacle of prime-time television. The comic’s easygoing stage persona belied a complicated private life, but he was essentially able to walk away at 40 on his own terms into a long, secure semi-retirement.
I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp
by Richard Hell (Ecco, $26)
Richard Hell is a Zelig-like character in the history of New York punk, said Eric Allen Been in The Boston Globe. A founding member of the band Television and thus of the entire CBGB scene, the Kentucky native claims to have pioneered the spiked hair and safety-pin look that circled the globe almost before he recorded his 1977 anthem, “Blank Generation.” This “valuable” book brims with boasts and put-downs, but also offers “clear-eyed” self-examination from a near-burnout.
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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.”