Books
With a true reader-in-chief now ensconced in the White House, reading books - and reading about them - may become the coolest thing since staring endlessly at a cell phone.
With a true reader-in-chief now ensconced in the White House, reading books - and reading about them - may become the coolest thing since staring endlessly at a cell phone.
The January/February issue of Washington Monthly, getting into the literate spirit of the new administration, presents 25 writers and thinkers recommending books that President Obama should read, from 100-year-old Jacques Barzun promoting William James' classic The Will to Believe to Princeton dean Anne-Marie Slaughter flagging the brand-new Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams.
We doubt the leader of the free world will have time to check out our picks for some of this season's notable new arrivals, but here's an edifying baker's dozen just in case.
- Carlin Romano
Inquirer book critic
Nonfiction
Innocent Abroad by Martin Indyk (Simon & Schuster, January)
Just as he's poised to start roving again as an envoy for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the former two-time U.S. ambassador to Israel tells insider tales from his years of diplomacy in the Mideast.
Alain L. Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher by Leonard Harris and Charles Molesworth (University of Chicago, January)
The Philadelphia-born thinker and cultural critic who helped ignite the Harlem Renaissance, a writer widely regarded as the foremost African American exponent of pragmatism, finally gets his overdue, definitive and eye-opening biography.
Up From History by Robert J. Norrell (Harvard University Press, January)
The much-misunderstood Booker T. Washington (1856-1915), the most prominent African American leader of his time, is brought back to life in riveting fashion by a University of Tennessee historian.
The Art and Politics of Science by Harold Varmus (W.W. Norton, February).
A Nobel laureate in medicine, also former director of the National Institutes of Health and current president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, provides a clear-eyed, autobiographical view of science and health policy from the top.
Equal: Women Reshape American Law by Fred Strebeigh (W.W. Norton, February)
A smart, accessible overview, from a teacher of nonfiction writing at Yale, of how women have transformed American law over the last few decades.
One Nation Under Dog by Michael Schaffer (Henry Holt, March)
In the wake of Marley mania, Philadelphia author and former Inquirer reporter Schaffer explores the rapidly expanding dimensions of America's pet mania - Mr. President, a must-read before you pick the pup!
The Blue Hour by Lilian Pizzichini (W.W. Norton, April)
Empathetic life of the tormented novelist Jean Rhys (1890-1979), beguiling author of Wide Sargasso Sea.
Fiction
Vilnius Poker by Ricardas Gavelis (Open Letter, January)
Have you been watching the deceased Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño become a fiery posthumous success? Here's the Baltic equivalent, a great Lithuanian novelist whose madcap masterwork revolves around a digital librarian obsessed with what's really happening in his home city.
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (Alfred A. Knopf, February)
Celebrated as a doctor who writes lustrous nonfiction (My Own Country), Verghese switches to the novel with superb deftness, shaping a beautiful tale about twin brothers, immigrant doctors and much more.
Etta by Gerald Kolpan (Random House, March)
From Fox29's own 21-years-and-counting lead features reporter, a first novel that rambunctiously imagines the life of Etta Place, mysterious girlfriend of the Sundance Kid.
The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell (HarperCollins, March)
An extraordinary, much-awaited novel in which Max Aue, a former top Nazi officer, recounts the fall of the Third Reich in the manner of a fascist Zelig who's been everywhere and met everyone. Littell, the New-York-born son of American parents, grew up in both France and the United States, published the book originally in French, and won France's top literary prize, the Prix Goncourt.
All Other Nights by Dara Horn (W.W. Norton, April)
The much-lauded author of The World to Come, tapped as one of Granta's "Best Young American Novelists," returns with her third book-length fiction, the Civil War story of a Jewish soldier in the Union Army.
Unplugging Philco by Jim Knipfel (Simon & Schuster, April)
Remember the odd Mr. Knipfel from his days as a Philadelphia alt-paper writer, before Thomas Pynchon blurbed him as "the Balzac of the bin"? Yes, he lives and writes, and addled Wally Philco, the protagonist of this cockeyed tale, is a creature worthy of his creator.
Contact book critic Carlin Romano at cromano@phillynews.com or 214-854-5615.