Review by New York Times Review
GIVE PEOPLE MONEY: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World, by Annie Lowrey. (Crown, $26.) Lowrey, a journalist who covers economic policy for The Atlantic, musters considerable research to make the case for a universal basic income - a government-funded cash handout for all. NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCES ... AND OTHERS, by Robert Gottlieb. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $28.) An esteemed book editor who can write well about nearly anything here brings erudition and passion to essays on romance novels, Hollywood classics and, especially, ballet. FROM THE CORNER OF THE OVAL: A Memoir, by Beck Dorey-Stein. (Spiegel & Grau, $28.) The often-staid White House memoir genre gets a fresh, funny, candid boost from this addictably readable account by one of President Obama's stenographers, who turns out to be a skilled writer as well. TELL THE MACHINE GOODNIGHT, by Katie Williams. (Riverhead, $25.) Williams's first novel for adults imagines a future in which machines generate "recipes" for individual happiness. The protagonist, who works for the machine company, must confront her son's unwillingness to follow its prescriptions. THE SHADES, by Evgenia Citkowitz. (Norton, $25.95.) An elegantly unnerving first novel that follows the remorseful decline of a British family in the aftermath of a daughter's accidental death. Written in cool and crystalline prose, "The Shades" unspools in a rational and realistic world in which all is not as it seems. THAT KIND OF MOTHER, by Rumaan Alam. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $26.99.) In his second novel, about a white woman who adopts a black son, Alam shrewdly explores the complexities of caregiving as employment, illuminating issues of class and race that arise when people are paid to do hard, dirty work and, in essence, to provide love. THE COST OF LIVING: A Working Autobiography, by Deborah Levy. (Bloomsbury, $20.) The prolific British novelist, playwright and poet reflects on the sacrifices and satisfactions of her career, drawing larger conclusions about the conflict between a woman's public and private responsibilities. PIE IS FOR SHARING, by Stephanie Parsley Ledyard. Illustrated by Jason Chin. (Neal Porter/Roaring Brook, $17.99; ages 2 to 6.) This uplifting picture book features a buoyant group on a daylong picnic, with subtle political resonance to the theme of sharing. SMILEY'S DREAM BOOK, by Jeff Smith. (Scholastic, $17.99; ages 2 to 6.) Smith, creator of the Bone graphic novels, here offers a picture book in which sweet Smiley Bone walks in the woods, counting birds. Adventure and suspense sneak satisfyingly in. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 2, 2018]
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this sterling essay collection, Gottlieb (Avid Reader), an influential editor and critic, wields words skillfully and insightfully, with razor-sharp wit and precision. He is erudite but never stuffy, and is a master of the well-placed and hilarious side comment (on criticisms that James Joyce's Ulysses wouldn't be understood by its own "mass man" protagonist, Leopold Bloom, he comments, "By this standard, we would condemn Lassie Come-Home because Lassie couldn't appreciate it"). Composed mostly of critical essays for the New York Review of Books, plus a selection of dance reviews for the Observer, the collection puts notable names from a number of different artistic fields front and center, including movie star Mary Astor, author Wilkie Collins, singer Ethel Merman, choreographer Twyla Tharp, and conductor Arturo Toscanini. (The title essay is one exception, exploring books about "going to heaven" experiences, and how science might explain the near-death phenomenon; a newly relevant look at the Trump family, originally written in 2000, is another.) Gottlieb's standards are exacting, but he gives praise where due. He's particularly passionate about the state of dance, and makes the reader share his enthusiasm. Perhaps Gottlieb's greatest achievement is that he inspires one to want to learn more about his subjects; his restless curiosity becomes the reader's. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An erudite and opinionated critic offers up a taster of tantalizing essays.Former New Yorker editor and Knopf editor-in-chief Gottlieb (Avid Reader: A Life, 2016, etc.), now approaching 90, is still keeping his writing fingers busy in the book world. This collection of previously published essays, mostly book reviews from the New York Review of Books written over the past 10 years, is divided into six sections: Lives, Letters, Music, Dance, Movies, and Observing Dance (notices about dance performances published in the New York Observer). As a book publisher for 60 years and a Farrar, Straus and Giroux author, Gottlieb assesses Boris Kachka's Hothouse, a history of the publisher. Although the book is a "vigorous and diverting trotfrequently slapdash and overwrought," it's a "valuable effort" about a press that has "maintained an amazingly consistent level of quality." Having penned biographies of George Balanchine and Sarah Bernhardt, Gottlieb is quite adept writing about music and dance. An essay on Clive Davis, the "mogul of moguls of pop music," easily rests beside the author's discussions of the "maestro," Arturo Toscanini, whom Gottlieb puts in the same category with Einstein and Picasso. Conductor Leonard Bernstein, whom Gottlieb worked with as an author, is simultaneously "legendary" and "over-the-top." The author's "In the Mood for Love" is a sprightly assessment of romance novels: "Its readership is vast, its satisfactions apparently limitless, its profitability incontestable. And where's the harm?" He rescues Ivan Goncharov's 1859 novel Oblomov, about a man who never gets out of bed, and waxes euphoric over Irishman Sebastian Barry's "luminous" novels. Gottlieb takes on an eclectic mix of subjects: Wilkie Collins, Diana Cooper, John Wilkes Booth, Mary Astor, Ethel Merman, Dorothy Parker, Esther Williams, Lorenz Hart, Maya Plisetskaya, Frank Sinatra, the "awful" film Black Swan, Setsuko Hara, an "actress like no other," and Thomas Wolfe, who "has gone over the cultural cliff."Perspicacious, penetrating, and instructive. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
