Also of interest ... books for the coffee table

By The Week Staff

last updated 8 January 2015

Decade

by Eamonn McCabe and Terence McNamee

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“Rocky though they may have been, the aughts ought not to be forgotten,” said John McAlley in NPR.org. This impressive collection of photojournalism chronicles the years 2000-2010 with all their hurricanes, oil spills, and financial meltdowns. Thankfully, not all the news was grim. The book “counterpoints the darkness” with some “wonder-inducing images,” including a photo of the passengers of Flight 1549 waiting for rescue on New York City’s Hudson River. Such memories are enough “to renew our faith in the decade to come.”

Through “exquisite reproductions” of 190 of George Washington’s maps, some drawn by the man himself, historian Barnet Schecter aims here to reinterpret the Founder’s entire life story, said Virginia DeJohn Anderson in The New York Times. While the author handles Washington’s military career with “clear, vigorous prose,” his account rarely shows how the featured source materials actually shaped Washington’s “thoughts and actions.” Readers needn’t worry, though. With the maps in hand, they’re able to “explore these questions themselves.”

This “handsomely illustrated” collection of poems, letters, diary entries, and even recipes scrawled by Marilyn Monroe is as fascinating and “disjointed” as the actress was in real life, said Richard Schickel in the Los Angeles Times. Though her scrawlings are often a “mess,” they reveal a Monroe far more introspective than we usually credit her for. She clearly loved Arthur Miller, her third husband, and was devastated to discover that the playwright was “ashamed of his friends’ opinions of her.” More often, she was surrounded by people who thought they could “improve” her. Often, they simply led her astray.

“The dubious logic of the flowchart,” when “applied recklessly and indiscriminately,” can produce hilarious results, said Eileen Reynolds in The New Yorker. Doogie Horner’s “irresistibly funny” sendup of “the left-brain approach to life” offers a marginally useful frame of reference whether you’re considering “world-domination” strategies or what tattoo to choose. “Horner’s tone is raunchy and irreverent,” but as his analytical schemata for heavy-metal band names or salad dressings prove, “his logic is (more or less) sound.”

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