The Beauty and the Sorrow
by Peter Englund
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Gallipoli
by Peter Hart
(Oxford, $35)
Few campaigns during World War I proved as bloody as the British attack on Gallipoli, said John M. Taylor in The Washington Times. Spearheaded by Winston Churchill, the maneuver on the fringe of the Ottoman Empire resulted in 115,000 British troops being killed or wounded. Peter Hart is combing well-trod turf, but he adds something new by letting British and Turkish soldiers do the telling. “In Hart’s view, the undertaking was a disaster waiting to happen” from the moment it began.
Inferno
by Max Hastings
(Knopf, $35)
British historian Max Hastings’s new book on World War II could be “the best one-volume history of the war yet written,” said Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post. Hastings’s book does for the Second World War what Peter Englund’s does for the First: It forgoes the stories of great leaders and battles to tell the stories of ordinary people across the globe who lived through the war. Collectively, the accounts are both powerfully relevant and “almost more than the heart and mind can bear.”
The Battle of Midway
by Craig L. Symonds
(Oxford, $28)
Craig Symonds fiercely opposes the popular notion that the U.S. victory in 1942’s Battle of Midway was a miracle outcome, said John D. Hornfischer in The Wall Street Journal. Symonds argues that U.S. forces were prepared, not lucky. But as his compulsively readable account proceeds to detail all the fortunate breaks U.S. forces caught as they blitzed Japan’s aircraft carriers, a reader can’t help but conclude that the decisiveness of the victory “might fairly be called incredible.”
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August 24 editorial cartoonsCartoons Sunday's political cartoons include Putin at Donald Trump's circus, gallons of whitewash, and a foldable cartoon
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5 Post Office-approved cartoons about mail-in votingCartoons Artists take on reverse logic, Putin's election advice, and more
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The battle of the weight-loss drugsTalking Point Can Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly regain their former stock market glory? A lot is riding on next year's pills
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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.”