Review_NONFICTION
WWW.PUBLISHERSWEEKLY.COM 41
In his posthumous essay collection, Quicksand,
Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell ruminates
on creating a meaningful life (reviewed on p. 47).
★ Somebody with a Little
Hammer: Essays
Mary Gaitskill. Pantheon, $24.95 (288p)
ISBN 978-0-307-37822-4
This collection of essays spanning two
decades has the same fearless curiosity
about the human psyche that Gaitskill
(The Mare) exhibits in her fiction, along
with the same unerring precision of prose.
The broad range of her reviews, which
cover art and literature from the Book of
Revelations to Gone Girl, are united by
her demand for complexity, her fascination with “enchantment and cruelty” (the
title for her piece on J. M. Barrie), and her
disdain for sentimental complacency.
Early reflections tease and knead language
into towering baroque shapes, but essays
such as “The Bridge,” on her visit to Saint
Petersburg, and the astonishing “Lost
Cat,” on losing her pet, Gattino, settle
down to the work of attentive, metaphor-rich descriptions. In later essays,
Gaitskill’s dryness veers toward the
acerbic, shearing through the reductive
and the bowdlerized. Even those essays
which start with the broadest of subjects—myth, religion, literature—
repeatedly turn inward, drawn by Gaitskill’s
interest in complicated inner landscapes,
her favorite theme of “the innately mixed,
sometimes debased nature of human love,”
and her unyielding “moral empathy” for
the perversity of the human condition.
The surprising, nimble prose alone is a
delight, and the pages burst with insight
and a candid, unflinching self-assessment
sure to thrill Gaitskill’s existing fans and
win her new ones. (Apr.)
At Balthazar:
The New York Brasserie at the
Center of the World
Reggie Nadelson. Gallery, $27 (336p)
ISBN 978-1-5011-1677-3
Granted unlimited access to Balthazar,
one of N. Y.C.’s preeminent bistros, journalist and novelist Nadelson (Blood Count)
has produced a gilded portrait. Balthazar
was the brainchild of restaurateur Keith
McNally, and transplanted French tradition to Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood,
becoming a center for expense-account
tourism. Nadelson, a native New Yorker,
scopes the restaurant from the labyrinth
basement to the grand tilted dining-room
mirrors, profiling busboys and sous chefs
while also venturing to a Kansas slaughterhouse and Bordeaux vineyard in an
effort to encompass the entire Balthazar
food chain. Her exploration leads her into
the history of SoHo, New York, bistros, and
Paris. Balthazar was Nadelson’s breakfast
nook for years and her praise is unstinting:
she depicts food, ambience, and staff as
flawless, with McNally the (remote) nonpareil. A guilty confession that she doesn’t
like oysters—not even Balthazar oysters—
is as hard as Nadelson hits. All that being
said, Nadelson offers artful depictions of
the evanescent magic that dining out can
provide; few who read this book will be
able to resist making a reservation. (Apr.)
★ Civil Wars: A History of Ideas
David Armitage. Knopf, $27.95 (368p)
ISBN 978-0-307-27113-6
Armitage (The Declaration of Independence:
A Global History), a professor of history at
Harvard, succeeds in his quest to distinguish civil wars from revolutionary wars,
and different kinds of civil wars from one
another, in a learned book that cuts a trail
through “an impoverished area of inquiry.”
Starting with the Greeks and Romans and
arriving in the 21st century, Armitage
leads readers down long, murky paths that
writers, historians, and philosophers have
previously trod without making the type
of lasting, satisfying distinctions he seeks.
As Armitage shows, this is a surprisingly
complex subject filled with much heavy
speculation. But where others, including
many whose thinking Armitage analyzes
and quotes, employ laborious prose, his
book is a model of its kind: concise, win-
ningly written, clearly laid out, trenchantly
argued. Armitage contends that failure to
understand civil wars—which are normal
and perhaps unavoidable—has burdened
the understanding of history and policy
in unfortunate ways. His conclusion is
sobering: human societies may never be
without this kind of conflict, and we’re
better off trying to understand it than
ignoring its problematic nature. It’s hard
to imagine a more timely work for today.
Historians, political scientists and theorists,
and policy makers will find it indispens-
able. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency.
(Mar.)
The Knowledge Illusion:
Why We Never Think Alone
Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach.
Riverhead, $28 (304p) ISBN 978-0-399-18435-2
Sloman, a professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological sciences, and
Fernbach, a cognitive scientist and professor of marketing, attempt nothing less
than a takedown of widely held beliefs
about intelligence and knowledge, namely
the role of an individual’s brain as the main
center for knowledge. Using a mixture of
stories and science from an array of disciplines, the authors present a compelling
and entertaining examination of the gap
between knowledge one thinks one has
and the amount of knowledge actually
held in the brain, seeking to “explain how
human thinking can be so shallow and so
powerful at the same time.” The book starts
with revelatory scholarly insights into the
relationship between knowledge and the
brain, finding that humans “are largely
unaware of how little we understand.”
Sloman and Fernbach then take the reader
through numerous real-life applications
of their findings, such as the implications
for non-experts’ understanding of science,
politics, and personal finances. In an
increasingly polarized culture where
certainty reigns supreme, a book advocating
intellectual humility and recognition of
the limits of understanding feels both
revolutionary and necessary. The fact that
it’s a fun and engaging page-turner is a
bonus benefit for the reader. Agent: Christy
Fletcher, Fletcher and Co. (Mar.)
Nonfiction
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