Hidden America
by Jeanne Marie Laskas (Putnam, $27)
As its title suggests, Hidden America contains “many marvelous surprises,” said Craig Fehrman in The Boston Globe. Ignoring celebrity culture, magazine writer Jeanne Marie Laskas has routinely ventured out to coal mines, oil rigs, and other unglamorous locales to profile unsung workers. A chapter on the Cincinnati Bengals’ cheerleaders is one of several that don’t fit the book’s theme, but Laskas has serious storytelling talent, plus “industrial-grade empathy” for every character she meets.
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Desert America
by Rubén Martínez (Metropolitan, $28)
Rubén Martínez has written a moving memoir that’s also “an excellent work of reportage,” said Héctor Tobar in the Los Angeles Times. Fleeing Los Angeles and a drug habit, Martínez sought renewal by migrating to New Mexico, only to discover more than the empty spaces he expected. His account captures rugged landscapes as well as the rugged collection of immigrants, military families, and native Pueblos who live in them. He shows us “what the West was, and what it’s becoming.”
My American Revolution
by Robert Sullivan (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26)
Sometimes, “the people you’ve never heard of can be the ones you most need to hear,” said Eric G. Wilson in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. In his “exuberant” new book, Robert Sullivan journeys to Revolutionary War sites overlooked by historians, uncovering forgotten events and players. Whether breathing life back into a soldier who wrote battle poetry or retracing George Washington’s 30-mile march through New Jersey’s Watchung Mountains, Sullivan seems “a true poet of living history.”
Darkest America
by Yuval Taylor and Jake Austen (Norton, $27)
Black minstrelsy remains “one of the most assailed yet resilient and adaptable” forms of American entertainment, said Preston Lauterbach in The Wall Street Journal. This inquiry into its history acknowledges the “appalling truth” about its “carefree trafficking in vicious stereotypes.” But by looking closer at some key practitioners and showing how elements of the act persist in the work of Tyler Perry or rapper Lil Wayne, the authors prove that we misunderstand minstrelsy if we too quickly look away.
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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.”