Review by New York Times Review
HEAVY: An American Memoir, by Kiese Laymon. (Scribner, $16.) Laymon's profound memoir reflects on his childhood in Jackson, Miss., and shows how his pursuit of excellence was a means to survive. Touching on everything from the racism he encountered to the physical and sexual abuse he endured, Laymon compares his childhood memories with how he feels in middle age, and offers a complex, nuanced portrayal of his mother. CONFESSIONS OF THE FOX, by Jordy Rosenberg. (One World, $17.) Rosenberg's novel is a heady romp through an 18thcentury England awash in sex, crime and revolutionary ideas. When Dr. Voth, the principal narrator, finds a mysterious manuscript at a book sale, the novel expands to tell the story of Jack Sheppard and Bess Khan, notorious thieves and jailbreakers in London, and their high jinks. FLY GIRLS: How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History, by Keith O'Brien. (Mariner, $15.99.) Amelia Earhart wasn't the only female pilot to take to the skies in the 1920s, this lively new account shows, but many have been overlooked. In addition to Earhart, the book focuses on Ruth Nichols, Louise Thaden, Ruth Elder and Florence Klingensmith. As O'Brien puts it, "Each of the women went missing in her own way." DO THIS FOR ME, by Eliza Kennedy. (Broadway, $16.) Raney Moore thought she had the perfect life. A lawyer at a top-flight Manhattan law firm, she is the mother of charming teenagers and happily married. But when she discovers her husband is having an affair, she torches their life together - canceling his credit cards, deleting his email account and shipping his belongings to his mother's house - and must determine the future she wants for herself. It's an exhilarating, if over-the-top, novel of divorce. THE MARSHALL PLAN: Dawn of the Cold War, by Benn Steil. (Simon & Schuster, $20.) Steil, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, untangles the complicated politics that led to America's intervention in Europe, and focuses on the debate over the continent's economic future. Our reviewer, Timothy Naftali, praised the book's handling of "a large cast of statesmen, spies and economists that perhaps only Dickens could have corralled with ease." A PLACE FOR US, by Fatima Farheen Mirza. (SJP for Hogarth, $17.) In this debut novel, an Indian Muslim family gathers for the eldest daughter's wedding, and sets up a longawaited reunion with an estranged sibling. Mirza's book follows generations of the family as they navigate their lives in India and the United States, weathering racism, betrayals and crises of faith.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 11, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Steil, a director of international economics at the Council of Foreign Relations, begins his important examination of the Marshall Plan by providing a convincing and stark portrayal of conditions in continental Europe in 1947, two years after the end of WWII. The scale of physical destruction was immense, industrial and agricultural production remained dormant, and chances for rapid improvement seemed bleak. Local Communist parties, amply supported by the Soviets, seemed capable of seizing power in Italy, even France, as they had already done in Eastern Europe, and the American-Soviet wartime alliance was rupturing. So President Truman and Secretary of State Marshall decided to launch a massive and unprecedented foreign-aid program. First, a large PR campaign was launched to sell the program to the public and Congress. Then, inevitably, implementation of the plan was hindered by both bureaucratic inefficiency and ignorance of local conditions. Still, Steil asserts, the Marshall Plan was generally successful in achieving both its economic and political goals. This is an excellent recounting of an ambitious, huge program that helped rebuild and transform Europe.--Freeman, Jay Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this accessible work of political and economic history, Steil (The Battle of Bretton Woods), director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, comprehensively details the conception, planning, implementation, impact, and contemporary reverberations of the Marshall Plan. Steil places the massive and unprecedented European reconstruction program at the center of the emerging Cold War, delineating how it intertwined with many of the early crises of the conflict. The book makes clear that the Marshall Plan was more than simply an aid program; it effectively constituted the creation of a new Western-oriented political, economic, and military architecture in Western Europe. The plan inevitably drew the ire of the U.S.S.R., which attempted to undermine the project. Steil emphasizes the roles and personalities of leading U.S. statesmen driving the effort to enact the Marshall Plan and devotes considerable space to describing the domestic U.S. political scene and the "legislative drama" behind the plan's political passage. The Marshall Plan achieved the goals of its creators, he concludes, and while it played a role in drawing the lines of the Cold War, the conflict itself was inevitable. Steil's fresh perspective on a well-tilled subject will be appreciated by specialists for its wide-ranging analysis and welcomed by general readers for its engrossing style and accessibility. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The approaching end of World War II produced two conflicting concepts for Germany: pastoralization or revitalization as a member of the European community. The latter vision won out, largely as a defense against Communism, but that involved spending billions to reinvigorate a prostrate European economy. George Marshall, Dean Acheson, Harry Truman, and Arthur Vandenburg led the American side, while Russians Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov resisted. Meanwhile, leaders such as Britain's Winston Churchill and France's Charles de Gaulle sought American financing and protection from Soviet adventurism. The Marshall Plan solidified western Europe and was vital to the doctrine of containment throughout the Cold War, eventually leading to the common market and the transfer of several nations from Russian domination to the Western alliance. Steil (director of economics, Council on Foreign Relations; The Battle of Bretton Woods) skillfully and lengthily teases apart the complexity, expense, resistance, and nationalist intransigencies, as well as the important personal relationships among the principals. He finishes with a brief examination of the effects of the plan, and its contradictory lessons after 40 years. VERDICT Though dense reading, this work is certain to be an essential resource in academic libraries' collections on European history and -economics.-Edwin Burgess, Kansas City, KS © Copyright 2018. 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
A fresh perspective on the Marshall Plan, bringing "new material from American, Russian, German, and Czech sources."From 1948 to 1952, the United States gave Western European nations more than $13 billion to rebuild after World War II. Though scholars have covered the subject many times before, general readers will do well to choose this lively, astute account from Steil (The Battle of Bretton Woods, John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order, 2014), the director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. Everyone understood the physical destruction, but many failed to realize how, in the words of the State Department's Will Clayton, "economic dislocation, nationalization of industries, drastic land reform, severance of long-standing commercial ties, and disappearance of private commercial firms were paralyzing recovery two years after Germany's surrender. President Harry Truman and his advisers knew that they needed help. Secretary of State George Marshall tested the waters in his iconic June 1947 Harvard speech; though the American media barely noticed, it thrilled Europe. To everyone's relief, the Soviet Union refused to participate and forced its eager satellites to withdraw. To persuade a war-weary electorate and Republican-controlled Congress to support massive foreign aid required political skills whichat least in that far-off eraour leaders possessed. A national PR campaign portrayed it as an emergency measure to fight communism, and several influential Republican congressmen fought for passage. Steil casts an expert eye on the results and concludes that it succeeded, if not as dramatically as popular writers often claim. On the downside, including Germany infuriated the Soviets but did not, despite revisionist claims, start the Cold War. The author also includes a 25-page cast of characters and four appendices.Political history is often a tough slog, but Steil writes a vivid, opinionated narrative full of colorful characters, dramatic scenarios, villains, and genuine heroes, and the good guys won. It will be the definitive account for years to come. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
