Country Driving
by Peter Hessler
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Nothing to Envy
by Barbara Demick
(Spiegel & Grau, $26)
Barbara Demick’s “groundbreaking” portrait of the lives of six ordinary North Korean citizens radically expands our knowledge of the group’s secretive homeland, said John Delury in Slate.com. Kim Jong Il’s once-prosperous nation endured “one of the deadliest famines in modern times” a decade ago. Demick interviewed defectors and wove together this unprecedented narrative. “Elegantly structured and written,” the book is a testament to the power of literary nonfiction.
The Last Train From Hiroshima
by Charles Pellegrino
(Holt, $27.50)
Charles Pellegrino’s new book is “not for the weak-stomached,” said Dwight Garner in The New York Times. A “clear-eyed catalogue” of the horrors inflicted on victims of the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945, it deftly synthesizes countless earlier memoirs and archival materials. As many as 165 people somehow survived both bombings. Other citizens became blackened, “ant-walking alligators”—eyeless, faceless figures with only red holes where their mouths used to be.
A Dead Hand
by Paul Theroux
(Houghton Mifflin, $26)
Paul Theroux’s “evocations of India” are the best things in his new novel, a first stab at crime fiction from one of our great travel writers, said Tim Rutten in the Los Angeles Times. The story of a burned-out magazine scribe who becomes enthralled with an American heiress while investigating a boy’s death at a Calcutta hotel, it’s far too haphazardly plotted. The parts to enjoy are when the “smirking, insincere” journalist pokes into the city’s darker corners, sounding a lot like his perceptive creator.
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August 10 editorial cartoonsCartoons Sunday's political cartoons include a global plastics problem, GOP enthusiasm over tariffs, and more
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5 thin-skinned cartoons about shooting the messengerCartoons Artists take on unfavorable weather, a look in the mirror, and more
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Is Trump's new peacemaking model working in DR Congo?Talking Point Truce brokered by the US president in June is holding, but foundations of a long-term peace have let to be laid
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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.”