nonfiction

“Seriocomic tales of the author’s
recovery from a host of bad habits, including drinking,
false friends, bad relationships and politics.”
from we learn nothing
DIGITAL VERTIGO
How Today’s Online
Social Revolution
Is Dividing, Diminishing,
and Disorienting Us
Keen, Andrew
St. Martin’s (240 pp.)
$25.99 | May 22, 2012
978-0-312-62498-9
978-1-4299-4096-2 e-book
An Internet entrepreneur and critic
rails against the inexorable growth of social media.
Keen (The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing
Our Culture, 2007) claims that the onslaught of social media and
the willingness of users to share every detail of their lives online
signify that “we are forgetting who we really are.” The author
takes on serious issues like privacy concerns and how online
communities create real-world isolation, and he offers thoughtful
analysis of what a shared online experience could mean for
the future. But despite his passion, the author never creates
a satisfying argument and struggles to establish connections
between past events and the online realm today. For example,
he unconvincingly tags the “narcissistic generation” of 1960s
“bohemians” as the forerunners of the “free-floating, fragmented
butterflies of today’s age of Foursquare, SocialEyes and
Plancast.” Keen’s tendency to ping from subject to subject—
e.g., from the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851 to Vermeer’s
17th-century painting Woman in Blue Reading a Letter to Orwell’s
1984—confuses considerably more than it elucidates. Lacking
historical analogies for other points, the author falls back on
excessively provocative statements, often without any evidence
to back them up—a social reading app, for example, would
herald “the end of solitary thought.” Adding to the jumble is
Keen’s heavy-handed insistence on drawing parallels between
our online lives and the plot of Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller Vertigo—he
even devotes nearly an entire chapter to the movie’s
plot—possibly in an attempt to justify his book’s title.
Occasionally insightful but tiresome and scattershot.
A DIFFICULT WOMAN
The Challenging Life and
Times of Lillian Hellman
Kessler-Harris, Alice
Bloomsbury (320 pp.)
$30.00 | Apr. 24, 2012
978-1-59691-363-9
A hefty examination of one of the
20th century’s most socially scrutinized,
politically controversial and creatively
frustrated writers.
Lillian Hellman (1905–1984) would likely have attained
celebrity status through her distinctive renown in any one
area of her life—for her literary accomplishments as a fearless
playwright, for a series of love affairs with notable men or
through her affiliations with highly charged political groups
and movements. Kessler-Harris (American History/Columbia
Univ.; Gendering Labor History, 2006, etc.), the president of the
Organization of American Historians, wisely gets the Dashiell
Hammett affair out of the way early on and organizes Hellman’s
life thereafter not chronologically but around emotional, cultural,
intellectual and professional themes. The chapters—e.g.,
“The Writer as Moralist,” “An American Jew,” and “A Known
Communist”—are deftly interconnected, allowing Hellman’s
story to evolve organically: her experiences as a young woman
falling into one doomed relationship after another, reluctant
admissions decades later on a psychoanalyst’s couch, pithy testimony
in the HUAC hearings and blunt outbursts at her own
dinner parties. The portrait that emerges is at once riveting and
distasteful, with the intelligence of her literary achievements,
including The Children’s Hour and The Little Foxes, standing in
stark contrast to her affairs with married men and pointed declarations
during the Spanish War. As with so many artists, it is in
the context of Hellman’s work that her innermost convictions,
fears, foibles and mettle play out, and Kessler-Harris investigates
every play opening, ill-advised sexual dalliance and heated
debate with equal bite and nuance. Of particular interest is the
author’s deconstruction of the complex story surrounding Hellman’s
title character for the 1977 film Julia.
A richly layered portrait of a woman whose literary might
and sociopolitical daring continue to demand attention.
WE LEARN NOTHING
Essays and Cartoons
Kreider, Tim
Illus. by Kreider, Tim
Free Press (240 pp.)
$20.00 | Jun. 12, 2012
978-1-4391-9870-4
Seriocomic tales of the author’s recovery
from a host of bad habits, including
drinking, false friends, bad relationships
and politics.
New York Times contributor Kreider (Twilight of the Assholes,
2011, etc.) gained a cult following for drawing cartoons that
were fiercely critical of the George W. Bush administration,
but these essays reflect an urge to detox from things that used
to make his blood run hot. For instance, he attends a Tea Party
rally but takes pains not to get too riled up, and he recalls one
alcoholic friend who routinely deceived him, but mostly frames
him as gentle and charming. This kind of emotional poise
doesn’t come naturally to Kreider, and the best essays chronicle
his emotional and intellectual struggle to temper anger and
heartbreak into (at least) stoicism. In the collection’s finest
essay, “Escape From Pony Island,” he recalls how a friendship
with a self-declared intellectual heavyweight went sour over
“peak oil” theory, laying out his friend’s frustrating behavior but
also identifying how his own intellectual shortcomings helped
sink the relationship. Kreider sets up most of these essays as
humor pieces. In “The Referendum,” he boggles at the idea
of raising a child—or rather, having “a small rude incontinent
person follow me around screaming and making me buy them
stuff for the rest of my life”—and cartoons depicting him and
his friends as rubber-faced and careworn support the knowing,
self-critical tone. However, none of the essays are lighthearted
shtick, and Kreider closes with three essays that are softer and
more nuanced, addressing a friend undergoing a male-to-female
sex change, reading Tristram Shandy with his ailing mother and
finally meeting his two half sisters in his 40s. Though the author
occasionally labors to balance compassion and laughs, his sincerity
is always evident.
Earnest, well-turned personal essays about screw-ups
without an ounce of sanctimony—a tough trick.
END THIS DEPRESSION NOW!
Krugman, Paul
Norton (256 pp.)
$24.95 | Apr. 29, 2012
978-0-393-08877-9
Krugman (Economics/Princeton Univ.;
The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis
of 2008, 2008, etc.) delivers an urgent message
on ending the economic crisis.
Despite apparent financial stabilization
and indications of improvement,
writes the Nobel laureate, the conditions of peoples’ lives have
not changed. “You can’t have prosperity without a functioning
financial system,” he writes, “but stabilizing the financial system
doesn’t necessarily yield prosperity.” The country needs strong
leadership to build support for stimulus policies—e.g., largescale
job creation, debt relief and the reversal of current austerities—on
a more expansive scale, rather than just accepting
compromises. The author takes issue with three main objections:
that government spending programs don’t work, that increasing
deficits undermine business confidence and that there aren’t
enough quality projects in which to invest. Given that the private
sector is not investing enough to provide the needed increase in
demand, government spending must be a significant part of the
solution. Krugman also examines how the economic profession
has lost its way over the last 30 years. For him, the current problems
were effectively addressed during the 1930s by Keynes and
others; the author doesn’t have much patience with opponents or
critics, considering them as representing political or ideological,
not economic, views. He references ongoing research by a new
generation of economists into how government intervention
worked to end depressions in the past.
An important contribution to the current study of economics
and a reason for hope that effective solutions will
be implemented again. (Author tour to New York, Boston, Washington,
D.C., Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco)
JENERATION X
One Reluctant Adult’s
Attempt to Unarrest
Her Arrested Development,
or Why It’s Never Too
Late for Her Dumb Ass
to Learn Why Froot
Loops Are Not for Dinner
Lancaster, Jen
NAL/Berkley (384 pp.)
$25.95 | May 1, 2012
978-0-451-23317-2
An immature woman takes a crack at maturity in this chatty
memoir.
Lancaster (My Fair Lazy: One Reality Television Addict’s Attempt
to Discover If Not Being A Dumb Ass Is the New Black, or, a Culture-Up
Manifesto, 2010, etc.) provides some laugh-out-loud moments: Her
accounts of giving herself a moustache wax in the middle of the
night and of putting Vaseline all over her cat showcase the author’s
cheerful willingness to share potentially embarrassing yet hilarious
moments from her life. Most of the stories are about rites of adulthood,
such as refinancing a mortgage and getting a mammogram,
and Lancaster concludes each with a short “Reluctant Adult Lesson
Learned.” This theme organizes what could have otherwise
been a scattered series of anecdotes. On the whole, however, her
experiences are more ordinary than transformative. Lancaster is
the author of several other similar memoirs (Bitter is the New Black,
Such a Pretty Fat) and often assumes that readers will be familiar
with her back story, which could make it difficult for those new to
her work to follow the narrative thread. At its best, this memoir
will feel as comfortable as a long conversation with an old friend.
However, longtime fans may wonder if they have anything in common
with their old friend anymore—particularly during the chapter
in which she describes her hunt for the perfect vintage bowling
trophy—and new readers may occasionally feel like they are eavesdropping
on an obnoxious person braying into her cell phone. Ultimately,
Lancaster is abrasive and proud of it, and her ability to be
true to herself mostly redeems her less-than-flattering moments.
Like Froot Loops for dinner: fun but unsubstantial.
BATTLEGROUND PACIFIC
A Marine Rifleman’s
Combat Odyssey in K/3/5
Mace, Sterling & Allen, Nick
St. Martin’s (352 pp.)
$25.99 | May 8, 2012
978-1-250-00505-2
978-1-250-00977-7 e-book
Pulpy yet engrossing account of the
vicious combat encountered by U.S. Marines
in the Pacific theater of World War II.
Though co-authored by Allen, the main voice is that of Mace,
who is unapologetic about his politically incorrect perspective
(he often refers to his Japanese foes as “Nips” or in equally
824 | 15 april 2012 | nonfiction | kirkusreviews.com |
| kirkusreviews.com | nonfiction | 15 april 2012 | 825