Review by New York Times Review
THEY CAN'T KILL US ALL: The Story of the Struggle for Black Lives, by Wesley Lowery. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $16.99.) As a journalist with The Washington Post covering race and law enforcement, Lowery reported on highprofile deaths including those of Michael Brown, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling and followed the Black Lives Matter movement. His book chronicles the movement as well as his evolution and outlook as a reporter. THEY MAY NOT MEAN TO, BUT THEY DO, by Cathleen Schine. (Picador, $16.) After her husband's death, Joy, 86, worries about becoming a burden and being sent offto a nursing home. Her children fret about helping her stave offloneliness and despair, until the return of Joy's old flame sends them into a frenzy. Schine handles death, aging and infirmity with candor and wry humor. TRUE BELIEVER: Stalin's Last American Spy, by Kati Marton. (Simon & Schuster, $17.) A privileged American who worked for the State Department, Noel Field joined the underground Communist movement in the 1930s, before being groomed by Soviet intelligence. Marton charts his transformation from an idealist to Stalinist hard-liner, tracing his ideology to what he saw as failures of capitalism. THE STORY OF A BRIEF MARRIAGE, by Anuk Arudpragasam. (Flatiron, $14.99.) Dinesh is one of hundreds displaced by Sri Lanka's civil war, helping bury the dead in a refugee camp during the final months of the conflict. An unexpected marriage thrusts him into new, unexpected intimacies, all while surrounded by the churn of violence and death. This debut novel is "a book that makes one kneel before the elegance of the human spirit and the yearning that is at the essence of every life," Ru Freeman wrote here. MAKERS AND TAKERS: How Wall Street Destroyed Main Street, by Rana Foroohar. (Crown Business, $17.) The recovery after the 2008 crash has been the slowest and weakest of the postwar era, Foroohar, a Financial Times columnist, observes, and finance has stopped serving the real economy. She suggests ways to reverse course and ensure that middle-class Americans and small businesses aren't leftbehind. MOONGLOW, by Michael Chabon. (Harper Perennial, $16.99.) Drawing on his grandfather's deathbed confessions, Chabon has written a hybrid novel based on his grandparents' unlikely marriage (she a French Holocaust survivor, he an American Jew who served in World War II). The story is a lyrical portrait of postwar United States, with digressions on the supernatural and space travel.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 30, 2019]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Digging beneath the news headlines of police killings and protests, Lowery's timely work gives texture and context to a new era of African-American activism. Lowery, a young black Washington Post journalist with a bit of street cred after being arrested during a protest in Ferguson, Mo., found himself at the middle of the burgeoning Black Lives Matter movement. Though Lowery shares his personal and familial experiences with race, he is a reporter at heart, focusing on the stories of activists behind the protests. One of his most vivid subjects is Netta Elzie, a social media-savvy St. Louis native. As Lowery writes, she was already devastated by a beloved friend's unresolved killing by police when she first learned of Michael Brown's killing. She went to the scene and became a "chief on-the-ground correspondent" in Ferguson. Another strong voice in the book belongs to Bree Newsome, an NYU film school alum, who was politicized by the slaying of Trayvon Martin and first expressed her activism in voting rights advocacy in her home state of North Carolina. She came to public attention when, following the killing of parishioners of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, she removed the Confederate flag displayed at the South Carolina statehouse in protest. Through their stories and those of others, Lowery conveys the shape and direction of a national movement. Agent: Mollie Glick, CAA. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Library Journal Review
One of the first books on the Black Lives Matter movement, Washington Post writer Lowery's debut draws upon journalism, memoir, and history. (LJ 10/15/16) © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Washington Post reporter Lowery chronicles his assignment to Ferguson, Missouri, following the police killing of Michael Brown and how he became the newspaper's go-to journalist covering the use of deadly force against unarmed black men in other cities.The author mixes straightforward reporting with occasional informed speculation, sometimes taking a detour to his personal saga of growing up black and wading into racially charged assignments that meant dealing with white officers and other white authorities. Lowery understands the constant dangers of policing, so he does not spin the police-involved killings to advocate for the victims when ambiguity exists. For instance, he reports that the 18-year-old Brown did steal from a store, rough up the clerk, and probably never said, "Hands up, don't shoot" to Officer Darren Wilson. On the other hand, Lowery's reporting leads him to question the use of lethal force, the lack of sensitivity by Ferguson police after the shooting, the lies disseminated by police and white politicians, the tactics that worsened the post-shooting violence, and the questionable conduct of the prosecutor in failing to file a criminal charge against Wilson. After leaving Ferguson, the author gathered information to write about police using excessive and often lethal force aimed at unarmed black males in Cleveland, Baltimore, Charleston, and elsewhere. Each case has been intense for everyone involved, and the relentless coverage began to depress and exhaust Lowery. Not all of the chapters emphasize specific deadly cases. Toward the end of the book, Lowery covers black student protests at the University of Missouri that found their genesis partly in the aftermath of the Ferguson debacle. The campus protest eventually involved the football team and led to the resignation of the university president. A bonus of the riveting narrative is its value as a journalism procedural, as Lowery and his colleagues have attempted to determine the number of police shootings nationwide involving the wounded and dead of all races. A timely, significant book. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
