A decade ago, Anne Applebaum wrote a magisterial history of the Soviet prison-camp system. Now she shows how the Soviet Union imposed its totalitarian will upon Eastern European nations ravaged by World War II. It was an age of forced migrations and state suspicion of every activity.
Two decades after his gripping memoir of what it was like to be an anti-apartheid Afrikaner, “My Traitor’s Heart,” Rian Malan is finally back with this collection of his epic investigative journalism, from his account of the first rock band to hit South Africa (in 1969) to a disturbing exploration of Africa’s AIDS industry.
Numbers don’t, in fact, speak for themselves. Much has been made of Nate Silver’s electoral predictions. But his impressive book explores the principles of prognostication in fields from sports and politics to Wall Street and the weather. His “breezy style makes even the most difficult statistical material accessible,” our reviewer.
Some 1.5 million Americans fought in Iraq between 2003 and 2011. Their story is told in monumental detail in “The Endgame,” which despite its title
is a full narrative—from early victories to
civil war, the
success of the surge and the American withdrawal.
Sincerity is
an old idea—and not one always
appreciated, as we often find “straight talk” too much honesty. R. Jay Magill Jr. shows how our search for plainspoken wisdom in politics and “authenticity” in food is in fact part of a desire for something deeper: the sincere.
Three immigrants put the early Republic on sound economic footing: Robert Morris (from Liverpool), Alexander Hamilton (from St. Croix) and Albert Gallatin. Their very rootlessness, in Thomas McCraw’s telling, helped them see the value of strong money, credit and banks at a time when the political class was dominated by a landed aristocracy.
Fred Astaire was our most elegant film star. But he danced in the shadow of a partner, his glamorous sister, Adele, until she retired from the stage in 1932 and he headed off to Hollywood. Kathleen Riley chronicles this sibling non- rivalry and gives us a broad portrait of a very American art form, the Broadway and Hollywood musical.
If “no man is
a hero to his valet,” what must he
be to his wife? Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Osip Mandelstam,
Mikhail Bulgakov, Vladimir Nabokov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn each had a long-suffering and immensely gifted spouse.
