Dirty, Sexy Politics
by Meghan McCain
The Week
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Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat
by Hal Herzog
(HarperCollins, $26)
In his cleverly titled new book, psychology professor Hal Herzog teases out inconsistencies in our attitudes toward animals, said Phillip Manning in the Raleigh, N.C., News & Observer. After all, it makes little moral sense that 2 million chickens are slaughtered every day to feed America’s pet cats. Herzog’s point isn’t to expose us as hypocrites, though: Humans can’t arrive at a perfect ethic for animal treatment, he writes; contradictions are inevitable.
On Balance
by Adam Phillips
(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26)
There’s no such thing as “excessive behavior” in Adam Phillips’ world, said Adam Kirsch in The Boston Globe. Phillips, a “highly regarded” psychotherapist, wants us to read all addictions, phobias, and fanatical beliefs as expressions of hidden but potentially knowable personal needs. The essays in this book “can best be understood as Freudian sermons.” Their purpose isn’t to promulgate cures, but to help us root out hidden desires and recognize that fulfilling them isn’t always possible.
The Glamour of Grammar
by Roy Peter Clark
(Little, Brown, $20)
Be warned, all self-appointed police of “useless and unenforceable” grammar rules, said Ammon Shea in The New York Times. Book editor Roy Peter Clark has a usage manual for our time that “reserves its scolding” not for writers who start sentences with “And,” but for the “crotchety crowd” who’d forbid the practice. His guide won’t replace Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, but “it is a welcome addition to the bookshelf for anyone who cares about language.”
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Music reviews: Chance the Rapper, Cass McCombs, and Molly TuttleFeature "Star Line," "Interior Live Oak," and "So Long Little Miss Sunshine"
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Film reviews: Eden and Honey Don't!Feature Seekers of a new utopia spiral into savagery and a queer private eye prowls a high-desert town
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Critics' choice: Three chefs fulfilling their ambitionsFeature Kwame Onwuachi's grand second act, Travis Lett makes a comeback, and Jeff Watson's new Korean restaurant
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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.”