Conspirator in Chief: The Long Tradition of Conspiracy Theories in the American Presidency by Stephen F. Knott (University Press of Kansas). Reviewed by Eric Dezenhall. “Do conspirators-in-chief believe what they’re spreading, or do they just cynically deploy fanciful plots to achieve their goals? My read is that Knott supports the notion that presidents buy much of what they’re saying, such is the personal offense they take at their opponents’ barbs. Still, certain presidents were less inclined toward the cult of legerdemain, including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Calvin Coolidge, and George W. Bush, the latter of whom worked overtime to ensure American Muslims weren’t demonized in the wake of the September 11th attacks.”

Immersions: A Novel by Kyle McCarthy (Tin House). Reviewed by Terri Lewis. “Early on, the novel’s theme is slipped into a little section involving a mouse killed in a trap that has done its work ‘bloodlessly.’ Frances imagines how Charley would’ve reacted to the death and admits she doesn’t know her sister anymore but still hopes to win her approval. Johnny’s return focuses her internal monologue; she explains and justifies and searches for whys. Although the novel contains secondary characters — parents, a friend, a mysterious stranger who keeps turning up — it’s Frances’ first-person, endlessly musing voice that tells the story. That voice is compelling, and the writing is excellent.”

Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old by Mary Beard (University of Chicago Press). Reviewed by Gabrielle Stecher Woodward. “Like the best teachers, Beard doesn’t ask readers to do any intellectual work that she’s unwilling to undertake herself. Thinking alongside rather than talking down to her audience remains a central source of her appeal to armchair classicists, interdisciplinary scholars, and aspiring historians alike. Much of what distinguishes Beard as a grand dame of public humanities lies in this refusal to gatekeep: She treats the classical past as a realm accessible to anyone inclined not just to wonder but to ‘look our demons in the eye.’ No doctorate required, simply a willingness to take antiquity’s beauty and its ugliness in stride.”

Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage by Belle Burden (The Dial Press). Reviewed by Kitty Kelley. “Burden divides the dissolution of her marriage into five parts, and opens each segment of the book with a scene involving the ospreys perched high on an aerie near her Vineyard home. It’s an artful metaphor: Ospreys mate for life, an aspiration that eluded Belle, as it had her mother, Amanda Burden, and her famous grandmother, Babe Paley — women of enormous wealth and social privilege who endured the public humiliations of errant men.”

Looking for Frank Wills: A Novel by Wesley Brown (McSweeney’s). Reviewed by Michael Maiello. “Multiple figures on both sides of the Watergate scandal, including Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and break-in mastermind G. Gordon Liddy, achieved fame and fortune; Wills ended up living hand-to-mouth, dependent on his mother’s Social Security checks to get by in later life. While the world treated Wills’ contribution to the Watergate saga as mostly inadvertent, Beasley suggests there’s more to it and that Wills took his job seriously in ways other people might not.”

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