Psychologist Brottman (Couple Found Slain) meticulously catalogs the illicit passions roiling beneath a husband’s murder in this enthralling true crime narrative. The Winchesters (Brian and Kathy) and Williamses (Mike and Denise) were tight-knit friends who met at North Florida Christian High School and remained close through college, marriage, and parenthood. In 2000, Mike went missing while duck-hunting in an alligator-infested lake. Rumors flew when Denise collected $1 million in life insurance, but without a body, little could be proven. A few years later, Brian divorced Kathy and married Denise, raising eyebrows among the couple’s social circles. When Brian’s sex addiction and drug use spiraled out of control, Denise filed for divorce in 2015, and Brian snapped, kidnapping her at gunpoint. After he was arrested, authorities cut him a plea deal, and he eventually testified that he and Denise, who had long been lovers, plotted to kill Mike and collect his insurance money. Though the case itself doesn’t harbor many surprises, Brottman excels at evoking Denise and Brian’s Southern Christian milieu, and she paces the proceedings with aplomb. Readers won’t be able to look away. Agent: Betsy Lerner, Dunow, Carlson, and Lerner Literary. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

American drivers’ bad safety record can be attributed to poor street and highway design rather than personal error, according to this incisive debut polemic. Civil engineer Marshall lays out how transportation engineers have “designed and built a system that incites bad behavior and invites crashes” due to their overreliance on standards (e.g., roadway widths) that have little scientific basis. Engineers should instead treat standards as guidelines subject to good engineering judgment, according to Marshall, but he further contends that transportation engineers generally consider safety less important than mobility (i.e., moving vehicles as quickly as possible). Marshall delves into esoteric transportation literature, liberally quoting from standards manuals and research articles to portray—and lampoon—how transportation engineers think. He documents the inadequacy of safety research—which is warped by government funding requirements, the contortions of legal liability, and pressure from the automobile industry—and critiques current design standards, including what he describes as the flawed premise that speed of travel matters more for mobility than access (e.g., off-ramps and cross-streets), a misconception which he says hinders both mobility and safety as it leads to logjams and dangerous maneuvers by drivers. Marshall’s breezy narrative, with section titles like “What Are We Doing Here?,” plunges surprisingly deeply into the nitty-gritty of engineering standards, giving many specialist terms a vigorous, exasperated working-over. Transit nerds and advocates for safer streets will relish the detailed conceptual battle map drawn here. (June)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

Human-caused ecological change is enumerated in this bracing survey from the cocreators of the website Feral Atlas. The authors focus on “patches,” their term for species and ecosystems “transformed by human infrastructure” but “not under the control of human designers.” An example is the red turpentine beetle, a harmless North American species that “hitchhiked” on shipments of timber to China, where it picked up a “potent... symbiotic fungus” and became an unstoppable force of destruction, killing more than 10 million trees. Other patches include lodgepole pines that flourish in unstable sands produced by coal mines and drug-resistant bacteria that evolve in wastewater from pharmaceutical plants. The authors’ pragmatic goal is to demonstrate that the “Anthropocene” is already a lived reality for most species—that humans, who have “mov[ed] more dirt than the Ice Age glaciers,” are now the dominant force for environmental change—and thus that a “new nature” has emerged, one requiring a novel perspective to study it, in which “commodity chains” are considered as important as biomes. The book’s litany of cataclysms is shot through with a surprising hopefulness, as the authors propose a philosophy of collective well-being extending across species. It’s an unsettling but undefeated vision of a world in volatile flux. (May)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

Ramana (The Power of Promise), a global affairs professor at the University of British Columbia, argues against the expansion of nuclear power in this vehement treatise. Increased reliance on atomic energy will exacerbate the risk of serious accidents, Ramana contends, explaining that while reactors can be shut down during emergencies, the fission products continue to produce heat that, if cooling systems fail, can melt through the fuel assembly and leak into the environment. Reactors produce harmful radioactive waste that takes millions of years to decay, he writes, suggesting that proposals to store waste in underground repositories carry a high risk of failure due to long-term natural changes in geological conditions that could break the container’s seal. Elsewhere, Ramana notes that nuclear power is less cost-effective than solar and suggests atomic energy makes “catastrophic nuclear war more likely” because of the increased availability of nuclear technology. Detailed case studies demonstrate the practical difficulties involved in commissioning nuclear plants (Ramana describes how an as-yet-unfinished Somerset, England, plant whose planning began in 2008 has taken longer to build and been more expensive than anticipated, costing at least twice as much as the £16 billion initially estimated), and Ramana builds a persuasive case that the costs of nuclear power outweigh the benefits. Environmentally-conscious readers will have their eyes opened. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

Journalist Bergstein (Brilliance and Fire) delivers a satisfying tribute to YA author Blume that emphasizes her novels’ feminist bona fides and traces her life story against the backdrop of cultural shifts around women’s sexuality and place in society. Crediting Blume’s books with distilling the values of the 1960s and ’70s sexual revolution for young readers, Bergstein celebrates the positive depictions of masturbation in Deenie and premarital sex in Forever for normalizing women’s pleasure. Bergstein tracks how Blume’s life has intersected with broader debates about women’s social status, noting that while Betty Friedan was writing about “housewives’ ennui” in the early 1960s, Blume had grown restless staying home to care for her own children and took up writing to stay occupied. Unfortunately, the cultural background sometimes overwhelms the ostensible focus on Blume, such as when Bergstein provides a lengthy account of a 1982 Supreme Court case over the legality of banning books from school libraries, even though Blume’s books hadn’t been challenged at the schools in question. (The frank discussions of sexuality in Blume’s books have made them a frequent target of other censorship campaigns, as Bergstein notes.) Still, Bergstein offers a thoughtful take on how Blume’s life and books translated for young people the gains of the women’s movement. Blume’s fans will treasure this. Agent: David Halpern, Robbins Office. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

“The cheapest, safest, and only sure path to a safe climate starts with slashing emissions,” according to this invigorating report. Jackson (The Earth Remains Forever), an environmental science professor at Stanford University, surveys how cows, gas ranges, and the cement industry, among others, are filling the atmosphere with methane and carbon dioxide. Spotlighting individuals working on sustainable solutions, he shares how the CEO of a Swedish steel business, incentivized by laws requiring companies to pay for the carbon dioxide they release, developed a way to replace coal with hydrogen in the manufacturing process, which generates water instead of CO2 as a byproduct. Technology capable of removing greenhouse gases from the air will be necessary to achieve pre-industrial levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane, he contends, describing how “direct-air capture” and “enhanced weathering” technologies work (the latter involves exposing certain reactive minerals to air, which initiates a chemical reaction that binds CO2 with the rock and removes the gas from the atmosphere). The scientific descriptions are crisp and accessible (“The carbon-hydrogen [C-H] bonds in methane absorb long-wave radiation and bounce like hyperactive schoolkids. These vibrations are how greenhouse gases warm the earth”), and the profiles offer reason for hope amid the gloom. This is an exceptional inquiry into the fight against global warming. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

Brooks, an assistant English professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, debuts with a rigorous analysis of how Black musicians shaped Black political and social discourse in the 19th and 20th centuries. Ranging from the ragtime of the late 19th century to the gospel music of the 1960s civil rights movement, Brooks dissects how Duke Ellington “articulated Black identity and history” during the Harlem Renaissance by exploring “themes of racial uplift” through new tonal registers; how John Coltrane and other “free jazz” pioneers used “growls, screams, hollers, and other unorthodox sounds” to reject Western rhythms during the Black Nationalist movement of the ’60s and ’70s; and how gospel singer Mahalia Jackson married blues music with Black gospel tradition for a sound that symbolized, and was used to fuel, the political activism of Black churches in the ’50s and ’60s. (Jackson’s refusal to play for racially segregated crowds also paved the way for some of the first integrated gospel concerts across the country, Brooks notes.) Lucidly anchoring his analysis in sonic studies—the study of how sound is produced and consumed—and sociohistorical context, Brooks reveals how music served to broaden boundaries of “what can be said—and to whom” and helped to spread changing ideas of Black identity, liberation, and protest. It’s a fascinating look at the complicated relationship between art, culture, and social change. (June)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

NYU psychology professor Way (Deep Secrets) provides an insightful analysis of the stereotypes that shape boys’ psychological development and undergird a patriarchal society. Drawing on more than 30 years of research, the author observes that boys in elementary school tend to be “openly expressive” of their emotions and that those who maintain strong friendships in their teenage years are less likely to become depressed, use illicit drugs and alcohol, or partake in other high-risk behaviors. However, prevailing beliefs that men and boys lack sensitivity, are “driven mostly by their desire for sex and money,” and seek “independence, autonomy, and freedom” over emotional connection, isolate boys from friends and family and reinforce a patriarchal culture that denies their ability to express themselves and cope with life’s challenges. Much of the author’s research is fascinating, particularly her extensive interviews with boys of color, though readers may wish for more robust solutions than the advice to ask male teens and children “real questions” and “allow for real answers.” Still, parents of adolescent boys will find much food for thought. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

In this jaunty account, biographer Hughes (George Eliot) details the Victorian and Edwardian cat craze that transformed pitiful-looking agents of pest control into sleekly gorgeous, companionable house pets. Commercial illustrator Louis Wain, known for his big-eyed, round-faced felines, was a prominent force behind the making of “the modern cat.” Though Hughes structures her narrative around his life story (which ended with a 15-year stint in an asylum—still drawing cats, but abstract and multicolored ones), she also ventures beyond his influence, tracing a web of individuals who, from 1870 to 1920, built a cat-centered subculture. Among them were Frances Simpson, who popularized breeding standards, and Harrison Weir, whose reputation as a naturalist “bestowed scientific legitimacy” onto cat shows (his 1889 “manifesto” Our Cats and All About Them claimed that the only reason cats were so ill-behaved—a common perception at the time—was because they were generally mistreated; he recounts a friend’s great shock at encountering cats sitting quietly and purring). Other topics include the “cat’s meat men,” who sold cat food door-to-door in London, and the queer undertones sometimes apparent in the era’s cat obsession (Hughes contends Edward Lear’s children’s poem “The Owl and the Pussy-cat” is a queer allegory). Hughes narrates her invigorating wealth of information in a clever prose style. It makes for a unique and amusing window onto turn-of-the-20th-century art and culture. (June)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

The decision to build a port in Los Angeles’s San Pedro Bay was driven by commercial interests, local and national politics, and personal agendas, not by thoughtful analysis of geography and geology, according to this enthralling debut. Historian Tejani documents the mid-19th-century political maneuvering and “machines of the modern state and corporate capital” that heedlessly “tore apart” 3,400 acres of mud and salt marsh, which engineers at the time considered wholly unsuitable for a commercial harbor. But others—among them landowners, surveyors, railroad magnates, shipping merchants, and U.S. senators—saw opportunities to get rich via land speculation, lucrative government contracts, and monopolistic port access. Tejani’s narrative revolves around these men and the conflict, competition, and deception involved in their ambitious decades-long efforts to get the port built, which unfurled in parallel with America’s westward expansion and displacement of Native peoples and the acquisition of Mexican territory by force. Powerful players massaged government policy on these and other issues in the direction most beneficial to the port, which subsequently became central to U.S. imperial aspirations in the Pacific. Tejani astutely conveys the deep entanglement of political and economic interests at the highest echelons of power. The result is a beguiling history of Southern California, early industrial development, and U.S. empire. (July)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink