Review by New York Times Review
IN EVERY MOMENT WE ARE STILL ALIVE, by Tom Malmquist. (Melville House, $25.99.) Based on a true story, this searing autobiographical novel, translated from the Swedish by Henning Koch, depicts a father struggling to cope with the tragic loss of his partner just as their daughter is born. EATING ETERNITY: Food, Art and Literature in France, by John Baxter. (Museyon, paper, $19.95.) A wide-ranging, lavishly illustrated guide to French gastronomy that broadens its subject into the fields of art and literature and the culture at large. Who ever suspected that Proust's famous madeleine almost lost out to a plain slice of toast? THE AFTERLIVES, by Thomas Pierce. (Riverhead, $27.) In Pierce's warm and inventive debut novel, about a heart attack victim who finds the world subtly changed, the feeling that nothing's quite real - that perhaps everything is a fever dream in the narrator's dying brain - nags at him, and at us. NINE CONTINENTS: A Memoir In and Out of China, by Xiaoli Guo. (Grove, $26.) Guo, a writer and filmmaker, grew up in China at a time of deprivation. The Beijing Film Academy introduced her to a more cosmopolitan world; now in London, she has been acclaimed one of Britain's best young novelists. THE WIZARD AND THE PROPHET: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World, byCharlesC. Mann. (Knopf, $28.95.) The essential debate of environmentalism - to respect limits, or transcend them? - as seen through the lives of two men, William Vogt and Norman Borlaug. THE SABOTEUR: The Aristocrat Who Became France's Most Daring Anti-Nazi Commando, by Paul Kix. (Harper/HarperCollins, $27.99.) Dashing and brave, Robert de La Rochefoucauld was a member of the French Resistance who came from an aristocratic family. Kix details his exploits and many death-defying escapes during the war. MUNICH, by Robert Harris. (Knopf, $27.95.) An expertly paced thriller featuring two junior diplomats, once friends at Oxford but now members of the opposing German and British delegations that would seal the fate of Czechoslovakia by permitting the Nazis to occupy it in 1938. RESERVOIR 13, by Jon McGregor. (Catapult, paper, $16.95.) McGregor's fourth novel opens with the disappearance of a teenage girl visiting an English village, but its deeper concern is the passage of time and its effect on local residents. MARTIN RISING: Requiem for a King, by Andrea David Pinkney. Illustrated by Brian Pinkney. (Scholastic, $19.99, ages 9 to 12.) A soaring, poetic account of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the last month of his life. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 29, 2018]
Review by Booklist Review
Robert de la Rochefoucauld (1923-2012), born into French nobility, was a secret agent for the British in German-occupied France during WWII. In the postwar years, he trained the French military, worked in various businesses, and was the mayor of a town in France. A handful of years before his death, he courted controversy by testifying in defense of a man accused of complicity in the Nazi extermination of Jews. Those are the bare-bones facts of the man's life. In this compassionate biography, Kix puts flesh on those bones as he explores the man himself. Drawing on la Rochefoucauld's 2002 memoir, as well as interviews with his children and other primary sources, the author explores the reasons why a man of French nobility would risk his life and his family's reputation to fight a secret war (for starters, he wanted to reclaim the France that his family had helped mold). This thoroughly sourced account is highly readable and effectively showcases the life of a fascinating, complex man whose too-little-known role in the Resistance will be of great interest to followers of WWII history.--Pitt, David Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Honor is a recurrent word in this tale of an aristocrat who risked his life in commando operations in France during the Second World War. Robert de la Rochefoucauld came from a family that boasted centuries of nobility, with knights, military officers, politicians, writers, cardinals, and even two saints in its line. He was 16 when German forces sieged Paris. At 18, he escaped to England to join the Free French Forces. After being invited to join Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE), he first met with French general and president Charles de Gaulle to ask his blessing. Soon Rochefoucauld was in France assisting the Resistance, bombing targets vital to Germany's war effort. He was captured three times and twice escaped through his own efforts, once disguised as a nun. After the war, he seldom talked about his undercover efforts. The records of SOE operations are largely missing; journalist Kix had to do first-class detective work using primary sources to create this riveting story. VERDICT Fans of World War II history will eagerly read this story, which is almost as exciting as a James Bond novel.-David Keymer, Cleveland © 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.
