(Blue Rider, $30)
It’s a shame that few people who aren’t already fans will read Neil Young’s new memoir, said Wesley Stace in The Wall Street Journal. The legendary Canadian folkie-rocker has written a “terrific” book—one that’s “modest, honest, funny,” and a charming antidote to the self-mythologizing common in other pop-star self-portraits. If you were handed a list of the subjects Young gives most of his attention to, you’d be unhappy to learn that music falls somewhere after the many cars he’s owned and PureTone, the digital audio format that he’s developing to improve on MP3. But there’s much to be said for a work that’s at times erratic, conversational, and “comically repetitive.” In some ways, “the closest antecedent to Waging Heavy Peace may be Laurence Sterne’s 1760 masterpiece, Tristram Shandy.”
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Young wrote the book at a curious moment in his life, said Simon Vozick-Levinson in Rolling Stone. He had recently given up booze and weed for the first time in decades, and as he hit a dry spell with his songwriting, he was clearly “haunted by his late father’s descent into dementia” and “the idea that he might end up the same way.” But don’t ever underestimate the power of Young’s commitment to his so-called “hippie dream,” said Bob Ruggiero in the Houston Chronicle. Not only is he still trying to save music by promoting PureTone (now called Pono). At 66, he’s also back on the road with Crazy Horse, “playing furious, gloriously skuzzy rock ’n’ roll and raging against the dying light.”
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The fall of the generals: China’s military purgeIn the Spotlight Xi Jinping’s extraordinary removal of senior general proves that no-one is safe from anti-corruption drive that has investigated millions
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Why the Gorton and Denton by-election is a ‘Frankenstein’s monster’Talking Point Reform and the Greens have the Labour seat in their sights, but the constituency’s complex demographics make messaging tricky
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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.”