Tuesday’s New Releases
Good morning! It’s only fitting that my first Tuesday’s New Releases post should take place on the Tuesday my own book releases. There’s plenty about my memoir, LIFE B, all over this site, so I won’t spend a lot of time promoting it here. I hope that if you receive it, order it, read it, share it, that LIFE B: Overcoming Double Depression helps you in some way. Maybe even a way you didn’t expect.
Onward! These new releases will also go out each Wednesday in Book Wag — and given that weekly pub date, I may change this one at some point. Please note that all links will take you to the wonderful Bookshop.org, an online bookseller independent of big-box ties that also allows you to buy directly from your favorite local independent bookseller if you wish.
BEST NEW BOOKS Tuesday, May 16th, 2023:
Having been a twentysomething in Berlin, and yes it was long ago but that proves my point, I can tell you that this portrait of a lost expat millennial reads true. Daphne may not know what to do with herself, but she knows how to tell us about her surroundings in a voice that’s equal parts mustard sharp and gummi-bear sweet; her Berlin might not be cutting edge, but it is authentic. It gets a lot darker one night when Daphne’s many lies put her privileged existence at risk.
A second book about lying women and how their lies get them into trouble! R. F. Kuang’s hilarious Yellowface, where a white woman appropriates an Asian-American friend’s manuscript and passes it off as her own – until the white woman, June, starts to crumble beneath her own heap of machinations. Some readers may find the publishing metaverse too much, others will dislike the broad-stroke descriptions; many will just be laughing right along.
Who sent the 2003 postcard to the Berest home that lists the names of family members killed at Auschwitz? In 2018, Anne Berest – as fictional narrator of a story based on her real family’s history – decides to find out. Berest travels east, and back in time, to understand what happened to her mother’s parents and siblings. However, what makes this account brilliant is the author’s evolving view of antisemitism and its contemporary manifestations.
Scholar and veteran journalist Kroeger shines a light on her foremothers and colleagues, the women who have worked in U.S. journalism for decades without proper recognition. From Ida Tarbell to Charlayne Hunter-Gault, American women worked to define roles away from the male-defined “women’s sections” and into the areas of their passions and skills. An important book that should spearhead more historical writing about women and journalism in this country.
The World by Simon Sebag Montefiore
The author’s subtitle is “A Family History of Humanity,” but you have to love The Guardian’s description: “Succession Meets Game of Thrones.” Montefiore (The Romanovs) takes the units humans have regarded as family through hundreds of thousands of years and any number of dynasties, kingdoms, and migrations to remind us that our fundamental identity as social animals can’t be unlinked from our fundamental drives to hunt, gather, and survive.