One Man’s America
by George F. Will (Crown, $27)
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Makers and Takers
by Peter Schweizer (Doubleday, $25)
Peter Schweizer’s “arresting” thesis in this polemic is that contemporary conservatives are statistically happier, more honest, more generous, and more loving than their liberal counterparts, said Libby Purves in the London Times. A “wickedly selective” use of numbers bolsters his case. Yet Schweizer’s argument, one-sided as it may be, hints that we all use ideologies “to camouflage what should be our shame” about our individual selfishness.
A Nation of Wimps
by Hara Estroff Marano (Broadway, $24)
Hara Estroff Marano’s indictment of today’s overprotective parents comes on a little too strong, said Barbara Meltz in The Boston Globe. The former editor of Psychology Today offers extensive research backing her contention that affluent Americans in particular are raising a generation of “teacup kids”—youngsters who “shatter easily” when challenged. But “her tone is off-putting.” Her readers get more than an argument: They endure a spanking.
The Big Sort
by Bill Bishop with Robert G. Cushing (Houghton Mifflin, $25)
It’s not news that Americans are increasingly isolating themselves in homogenous communities, said Scott Stossel in The New York Times. But this wonkish new study drives home the point with a sea of fresh data, and it “argues convincingly” that the cultural balkanization matters. When like-minded people are grouped together, says Bishop, they tend to embrace the views of their most extreme members.
Buying In
by Rob Walker (Random House, $25)
Rob Walker doesn’t buy into consumers’ protestations that they have grown immune to commercial persuasion, said Laura Miller in Salon.com. Like Walker’s weekly New York Times Magazine column, his first book illustrates the many ways that individual Americans invest the products they buy with personal meaning, and the new methods marketers are using to exploit that tendency. Along the way, Buying In “nimbly walks the line between” business how-to and “consumer enlightenment.”
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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.”