Tombstone
by Yang Jisheng (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $35)
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Chinese Characters
Angilee Shah & Jeffrey Wasserstrom (editors)(Univ. of Calif., $35)
This collection of 15 profiles of Chinese citizens provides a portrait of China built “from the ground up,” said Julie Makinen in the Los Angeles Times. Subjects range from a migrant scrap-yard worker to an environmental scientist challenging the government, and “some entries are more compelling than others.” Still, readers will come away with a better understanding of “how individuals make their way in this topsy-turvy, fast-paced society.”
This Generation
by Han Han (Simon & Schuster, $24)
If you’re looking for the voice of today’s China, look no further, said Ian Johnson in The New York Review of Books. Han Han, a 30-year-old Shanghai-based racecar driver, is one of China’s most famous bloggers. This collection of some of Han’s “most interesting and politically relevant” essays showcases his “brilliant” use of ironic humor to comment on officialdom while avoiding hot water. Though he often pokes fun at party officials, he’s careful not to risk being labeled a dissident.
Mao: The Real Story
by Alexander V. Pantsov & Steven I. Levine (Simon & Schuster, $35)
There’s at least one thing about Mao that America had wrong, said John Pomfret in The Washington Post. As this important book makes clear, Mao was always a passionate acolyte of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, not an independent revolutionary who might have been coaxed into friendship with the U.S. The authors are oddly insistent about acknowledging Mao’s achievements, but the ruler who emerges is “a thoroughly repulsive political operator.” by Alexander V. Pantsov & Steven I. Levine (Simon & Schuster, $35)
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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.”