Bare Branches by Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. den Boer This well-documented study shows how female infanticide and prenatal sex selection have caused an alarmingly lopsided gender ratio in China and India: nearly 120 men for every 100 women. The proliferation of “bare branches”–lone men without spouses or offspring is one of the biggest threats to 21st-century stability, the authors argue. Their prescriptions for policymakers–including encouraging the in-migration of women and relocating men–offer little hope that the balance can be easily restored. –Susan H. Greenberg
Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen Hiaasen’s love-hate relationship with Florida (loves the place, hates what developers have done) has produced some of the best and funniest fiction ever written about the Sunshine State. And in protagonist Chaz Perrone, Hiaasen has fashioned one of the great jerks of American literature. Chaz not only tries to kill his wife, Joey, but he does it on an anniversary cruise, because he thinks she’s discovered that he’s been falsifying water-quality standards. Joey survives, thereby kick-starting the plot, which is an intricate proof that hell hath no fury like a woman thrown off a cruise ship. –Malcolm Jones
title: “Snap Judgment Books” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-05” author: “James Zeringue”
State-Building By Francis Fukuyama This wide-ranging, thoughtful analysis argues persuasively that some of the thorniest issues of our time–poverty, AIDS, drugs and terrorism–result not from overregulation but from weak states. While hawks and doves alike recognize the critical importance of state-building in Iraq, Fukuyama’s sobering if unsurprising conclusion is that anarchy is far easier to create than to fix. There are no shortcuts to creating public institutions that work. –Tara Pepper
Amber By Stephan Collishaw Raised in a children’s home in Lithuania, Antanas is shipped off at 18 to fight for the Soviets in Afghanistan. Nearly a decade later, the place comes back to haunt him when his best friend confesses he smuggled out an amber bracelet after a disastrous ambush during the war. Collishaw, inspired by his brother-in-law, who was wounded while serving in the Soviet Army, cleverly switches between post-communist Lithuania and the Afghan front to relate the mystery of the bracelet. But the book is a tad preachy, and not as compelling as his first novel, “The Last Girl.” –Ginanne Brownell
title: “Snap Judgment Books” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-29” author: “Bessie Ray”
The Outlaw Sea
by William Langewiesche
The ocean is a realm that remains radically free," warns the author, describing a largely unregulated global shipping industry that leaves crews vulnerable to pirates and poorly maintained vessels susceptible to sinking. One such ship, the Estonia, went down in 1994 because of a broken bow visor, killing more than 800 people–an accident recounted here in riveting detail. Even more alarming are the opportunities the anarchic ocean offers to terrorists today, in the form of 40,000 ships sailing freely each year. This gripping book reads like an adventure story, yet lingers in the mind like the memory–or portent–of a disaster. –Christina B. Gillham
The Meaning of Sports
by Michael Mandelbaum
Why do we care about spoiled millionaires who happen to be good at throwing, kicking, hitting or catching balls? It is the underlying question in this fascinating, anthropological look at the three dominant American team sports: baseball, basketball and football. Known largely for his foreign-policy expertise, Mandelbaum argues that these games are, in fact, extensions of 20th-century America. Baseball conveys a nostalgic relationship to a lost agrarian past; football embodies the post World War II admiration for a force battling for turf, and basketball is the tech-era competition in which players can use quick thinking and agility to defeat bigger opponents. These games are us–an idea compelling to sports lovers and haters alike. –Eric Pape
Sun After Dark by Pico Iyer
Literally (and metaphorically) turning night into day, Iyer traverses endless time zones exploring the discombobulation of jet lag and exile, the loss of self in “the foreign” and the thrilling novelty of adventure. He visits Oman just before 9/11, mourns in Cambodia’s killing fields and is strip-searched in a Kafkaesque Bolivian prison. But in this haunting collection of essays, the most fascinating journeys are inward. –Vibhuti Patel
title: “Snap Judgment Books” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-02” author: “Andrea Salmons”
Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures by Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait and Andrew Thomson Who said disaster can’t be fun? In this engaging account, three thirtysomething aid workers replay the highs and lows of working for the United Nations in the ’ 90s. The booze and drugs flow in Cambodia. In Somalia and Haiti, their hopes are crushed when the U.N. missions end in disaster. In Rwanda, Bosnia and Liberia, optimism gives way to despair, redeemed only by their lasting friendship. Although an indictment of failed U.N. policy, the book may also be a great recruiting tool. The motto: See Life, See Death, Have Sex. –Michael Hastings
The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki The collective guess of a group wagering on the location of a lost submarine comes within 250 meters. A British crowd at a fair nails the weight of an ox to within half a kilo. Minutes after the space shuttle Challenger explosion, the U.S. stock market correctly punishes the company most responsible. Crowds aren’t nearly as dumb as you think, says Surowiecki, a business writer. In fact, under the right conditions they make far savvier decisions than the sharpest individual. It’s a fun, intriguing read–and a concept with enormous potential for CEOs and politicos alike. –Jonathan Adams
title: “Snap Judgment Books” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-06” author: “Christine Spears”
Confessions of a Bigamist by Kate Lehrer You’ve got to feel a little bit of sympathy for Michelle Banyon, Lehrer’s 47-year-old heroine. She’s torn between two lovers: her high-powered Manhattan husband and a passionate Texas naturalist she meets when she literally runs him over and then nurses him back to health. Who will she choose? The title’s a hint. Her romantic juggling act is a middle-aged woman’s fantasy tale–hardly realistic, but a great escape.
The Second Assistant by Clare Naylor and Mimi Hare It is tempting to try to call this book a blend of chick lit and Hollywood-insider tell-all, but the harder you try, the harder it fights back. Plucky heroine? Check. Lots of tales of Hollywood snarkiness and nuttiness? Of course. But this story of a power agent’s lowly second assistant has a lot of heart to go with its smarts, and the authors know what so many people overlook: that just because Hollywood sells fantasy doesn’t mean the spell it casts isn’t real, even to the people who work there. Besides, how can you not like a book in which the resident psychiatrist is also a psychic?
title: “Snap Judgment Books” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-24” author: “Ronald Hobgood”
Smith has made a career out of turning the lives of bold-faced names into meticulously researched biographies. This time, she targets the most glamorous couple to inhabit 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. In “Grace and Power: The Private World of the Kennedy White House,” Smith chronicles Jack and Jackie’s highs and lows: heroic diplomacy, prodigious infidelity and a sparkling intellectual and social life unsurpassed by their successors. As in her previous biographies of William Paley, Pamela Harriman and Princess Diana, Smith leaves no detail unturned. It may overwhelm a casual reader, but it will satisfy any Kennedy junkie.
The Polymath By Bensalem Himmich
In this historical novel, we meet perhaps the most famous of all Arab intellectuals, the 14th-century historian and judge Ibn Khaldun. It is near the end of his life, and Khaldun has settled in Cairo after decades of advising North African and Spanish Muslim rulers. Amid rumors and rebellions in among the Mamluk rulers of Egypt, Ibn Khaldun is hired, fired, imprisoned and dispatched to negotiate with the Mamluk’s saber-rattling adversary, the Mongol conqueror Tamerlane. Readers have to plow through a long introduction to Ibn Khaldun’s ideas before reaching the best part of this work, translated from Arabic: the personal history of a still-influential polymath.
Tales From Shakespeare By Tina Packer
This beautifully illustrated book adapts 10 of the Bard’s most popular comedies and tragedies into concise, clearly told tales. Packer, a British-born actor-director famed for her unwavering fealty to Shakespeare’s original language, imports his wit and wisdom–along with many original lines. She succeeds in capturing the essence of works like “Hamlet” and “The Tempest” in all their frank, witty, sad melodrama–at a fraction of the words. A perfect introduction for newcomers.
title: “Snap Judgment Books” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-07” author: “Benjamin Holland”
Islamic jihadists don’t have a monopoly on hating the West. As this slim volume shows, West-bashers have a long pedigree, from Japanese intellectuals to Russian Slavophiles. The authors gather their dehumanizing images of the West under the rubric of Occidentalism. But even more interesting than the examples is the key insight that “most revolts against Western imperialism have borrowed from Western ideas.” That makes confronting them all the more difficult–but is something of a victory in itself. –William Dobson
I Am Black and I Don’t Like Manioc by Gaston Kelman
The idea that garbage collection is for black people is an enduring prejudice in France. But when even blacks take it for granted, it’s time for action, warns this Cameroon-born French author. With humor and conviction, Kelman debunks the racial cliches inherited from colonial times as well as the myth of victimization. The book has touched a nerve in France at a time when questions of integration center on Arabs and Muslims. As the debate over wearing overtly religious symbols in public shows, the country cannot simply ignore its multicultural identity. And should not, as Kelman makes clear, leave anyone out of the discussion. –Marie Valla
The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World by Lawrence Osborne
In an attempt to determine what makes good wine good, Osborne travels to Italy, France and California for a firsthand education in such things as “varietal character,” wine aroma wheels and the all-important terroir. He offers amusing anecdotes of his experiences, such as visiting a “garage winery” in Bordeaux, all the while searching for just the right adjective to describe the beverage before him. Osborne ultimately reveals a highly commercialized and trendy industry. But insecure bouquet sniffers will revel in the company of a kindred spirit. –Christina B. Gillham
title: “Snap Judgment Books” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-06” author: “Robert Barlage”
When a novel begins with the words “I believe in miracles,” it’s usually a miracle if you can get to the end. Charlie and his brother, Sam, are in a car wreck; in the realm between life and death, Charlie promises Sam he’ll never leave him, but Sam dies and Charlie lives. For 13 years, he works at the cemetery where Sam is buried, because every sunset his brother’s spirit appears; when Charlie meets an adventurous woman named Tess, he must choose between the dead and the living. His decision is the only predictable thing in this bittersweet novel. Yes, it’s about “grief” and “healing, " but Sherwood writes sentences so spare and sure, they slice the heart like steel. He makes you believe–and that’s miracle enough.
-Sean Smith
The Dew Breaker by Edwige Danticat
In Haiti, a “dew breaker” is a torturer; this simultaneously poetic and horrific term makes the perfect title for Danticat’s not-quite-novel-but-more-than-story collection, loosely organized around the redemption of a Duvalier-era brute fond of jumping up and down on his victims’ backs. Danticat evokes her characters’ surroundings sharply, from Haitian mountain villages to Brooklyn’s Nostrand Avenue. But the people tend to blur, and her torturer’s mysterious turnabout, while treated with admirable subtlety and ambivalence, feels willed and contrived–more like literature than life.
-David Gates
Howling at the Moon by Walter Yetnikoff
Yetnikoff was head of CBS Records in the ’80s–and a raging alcoholic, cokehead and womanizer. This wildly funny memoir of his rise and fall offers anecdotes on everyone from Bob Dylan (his mother nagged him to eat more) to Michael Jackson (Yetnikoff begged him to lay off the plastic surgery). In this book, rock and roll is really all about drugs and sex. Who knew?
-Nicki Gostin
title: “Snap Judgment Books” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-07” author: “Myrtle Johnson”
The title of this graphic novel is borrowed from a Persian dish, the first line is “I’m hungry,” and the characters are starved for love and community. Satrapi, a masterly Iranian cartoonist (“Persepolis”), sets the story in 1958 Iran, where a musician named Nasser Ali is grieving for his broken instrument; we get portraits of his family as their dreams unravel. The novel leavens all the grief with damn-funny jokes–even when they’re about cancer. “Chicken” is a feast you’ll devour.
–Ramin Setoodeh
Conservatives Without
Conscience by John W. Dean
Dean now has a far more distinguished career than his ignominious role in Nixon’s White House: he’s a knowing political observer with six books and a column on findlaw.com. He’s still a “Goldwater conservative” (the senator, a friend, had planned to co-write the book before he died). Today’s right, Dean argues, isn’t libertarian but authoritarian. New research in social science and psychology, he says, links the aggressive, angry, often amoral authoritarian personality with today’s Republicanism. Scary stuff. –David Gates
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
Don’t look here for the unrelenting self-deprecation and the moping over men common to chick lit. Yes, Camille Preaker, narrator of this debut novel, is a thirtysomething reporter yearning for more out of life, but she’s also a problem drinker, fresh from the psych ward. When she reluctantly returns to her hometown to investigate the murders of two small girls, disturbing family secrets complicate her assignment. I won’t reveal Flynn’s surprises, but I promise you’ll be thoroughly unnerved at the end. –Raina Kelley
title: “Snap Judgment Books” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-07” author: “Natasha Grotts”
If only we had Margaret Atwood around us always, making our lives’ hard choices and awkward impasses seem not only inevitable but graceful. This collection of interconnected short stories centers on Nell, a Canadian Everywoman who is both whipsmart and hilariously unsure. In Nell’s world, affairs become marriages, chickens become pets and old age doesn’t bring wisdom but more questions. The writing is magnificent–not a word wasted. In “The Art of Cooking and Sewing,” the teenage Nell contemplates growing up while lying on her bed with her “head hanging over the edge, holding up a mirror to see what I looked like upside down.” Atwood has a crafted such a convincing life for Nell that I was sorry I had to return to my own.
–Raina Kelley
The Confession by James McGreevey
Hasn’t Jim McGreevey confessed enough? The former governor of New Jersey already forfeited his job, his wife and his career two years ago after a scandal involving a male lover he’d put on the state payroll. Yet in “The Confession,” McGreevey offers an astonishingly candid memoir of his life in the closet, starting with his schoolboy crushes, through his years of sordid trysts and ending with the relationship that ended it all, with an Israeli political consultant. (The man in question says he was actually harassed.) It’s a brave and powerful book, the tale of a man who’s lost everything and is willing to relive the pain in hopes of helping others and healing himself.
–Marc Peyser
Redemption by Nicholas Lemann
In the 1870s, gangs of whites in the Deep South–whom Lemann rightly calls “terrorists”–succeeded in denying newly freed blacks the ability to vote, to organize, to speak and, in many cases, to live. The subtitle–“The Last Battle of the Civil War”–sounds like hype. But Lemann, a New Yorker staff writer and dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, makes a strong case that the years of terror, leading up to the withdrawal of federal troops in 1877, were “a lower-intensity continuation of the war,” and that the South won.
–David Gates
