We came, we read, we gushed. Here’s a recap of the titles that left us especially warm and swoony this past month.
That’s What She Said: What Men Need to Know (and Women Need to Tell Them) about Working Together by Joanne Lipman (William Morrow). Reviewed by Salley Shannon. “Men of goodwill, you can stop quivering despite all the #MeToo in the air. Your guidebook is at hand. Joanne Lipman, until recently chief content officer of Gannett and editor-in-chief of USA Today, has written a book charting day-to-day things everyone can do, starting right now, to put women on a path toward true workplace equality. It’s superbly researched and impeccably reasoned.”
Tiger Woods by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian (Simon & Schuster). Reviewed by Jay Price. “But as unsparing as they are in chronicling their flawed hero’s shortcomings and peccadillos, Benedict and Keteyian spend the final pages of Tiger Woods looking for signs of redemption — or, at the very least, a path to more trophies — in recent glimpses of a new (or newly chastened) Tiger who smiles more often and no longer cows would-be rivals and sportswriters with the death stare he learned as a teenager.”
Cloudbursts: Collected and New Stories by Thomas McGuane (Knopf). Reviewed by Mark Gamin. “His men are mad, bad, and/or vulnerable and pang-filled; his women are usually tough enough to take chances at which the former would demur. The sexes get along with each other reasonably well, so long as their relationships are not formalized — wedded bliss in Cloudbursts is rare.”
You Can Stop Humming Now: A Doctor’s Stories of Life, Death, and in Between by Daniela Lamas (Little, Brown and Co.) Reviewed by Philip K. Jason. “Lamas has written and arranged a series of gems. The essays and characters seem almost to interact, providing a deeply textured mosaic of life before, during, and after major medical interventions. The author’s voice enriches the material and may fortify those facing their own health crises. But, throughout, readers are reminded that while technology can save life, it can’t always preserve its quality.”
1983: Reagan, Andropov, and a World on the Brink by Taylor Downing (Da Capo Press). Reviewed by Larry Matthews. “Taylor Downing’s 1983: Reagan, Andropov, and a World on the Brink is a terrific book that should terrify anyone who reads it. It is a must-read for students of the Cold War and for anyone who thinks nuclear brinkmanship is a productive way to conduct foreign policy. The book is a chronicle of a time when the United States and the Soviet Union came close to destroying civilization in a confrontation of thermonuclear insanity.”
The Judge Hunter: A Novel by Christopher Buckley (Simon & Schuster). Reviewed by Drew Gallagher. “Buckley’s genius in building his narrative around Balty is that the history books are rather sparse on details of Balthasar de St. Michel. We know just about everything there is to know about Pepys because of the daily diary he kept for nearly a decade (it’s possible to learn what Pepys had for breakfast on just about any given day in 1665, if one is so inclined), but scant little about Balty, which makes him the perfect foil for Buckley’s wit.”
Hadrian’s Wall by Adrian Goldsworthy (Basic Books). Reviewed by Ronald Mellor. “Thus, Adrian Goldsworthy’s excellent book on one of history’s most emblematic walls, the 70-mile barrier built by the emperor Hadrian in northern England, is especially timely. This is not a descriptive guidebook to the wall, but an analysis of the history, purpose, construction, and effects of it and the evolution of its purpose during three centuries of Roman Britain.”
