Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife, by Francesca Wade
Writing about Gertrude Stein entailed reckoning with a wealth of complexities and contradictions, and Francesca Wade does a splendid job untangling the author’s self-mythologizing, assessing her confounding politics, and exploring what makes her radical writing so beguiling. And it’s impossible to write about Stein without writing about Alice Toklas, who devoted her life first to enabling Stein’s work, then to shepherding her posthumous legacy with equal zeal, cunning, and devotion. Read how Wade accomplished this here.
1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History–and How It Shattered a Nation, by Andrew Ross Sorkin
If you think you understand the greatest financial calamity in U.S. history, think again. Andrew Ross Sorkin offers a vivid account of the disaster through the lives of those who suffered through it and those who tried to avert it. Read our interview with Sorkin here.
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism, by Sarah Wynn-Williams
As breakups go, few are as dramatic as the firing of Facebook’s director of global public policy, who exacted cold revenge with this engrossing tale of a workplace she found to be corrupt, sexist, and tilted toward autocrats. The devil is in the details, and Sarah Wynn-Williams has plenty of them. Read Emma Duncan’s story here.
Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, by Leo Damrosch
Robert Louis Stevenson may not be as frequently read today as he was a few decades ago, but in this splendid biography, Leo Damrosch makes the case both for the author’s writing, which includes Treasure Island and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and for the imagination of the mind behind these creations. Read Max Carter’s review here.
Allies at War: How the Struggles Between the Allied Powers Shaped the War and the World, by Tim Bouverie
The alliances and connections that made up the Allied side during World War II were ever shifting, with endless sideshows and subplots. Personalities—some honorable, some prickly, some preposterous, some all three—could make or break a treaty or an arrangement and throw the whole thing into doubt. This is the story that Tim Bouverie tells in his magisterial, eminently readable, and surprisingly fast-moving book. It’s an apt double entrendre: the Allied nations are at war with the bad guys but with each other, too. Read Wendell Jamieson’s review here.
Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America, by Sam Tanenhaus
Here it is, at long last, Sam Tanenhaus’s biography about the conservative author (rocking the ivy walls with the publication of God and Man at Yale at the wunderkind age of 25), magazine founder, television host, slice-and-dice debater, mayoral candidate, sailing enthusiast, spy novelist, social diarist, and spirited harpsichordist, William F. Buckley Jr. Here was a man of so many facets that he couldn’t help but dazzle, and Tanenhaus captures him in marvelous fashion. Read James Wolcott’s review here.
Is a River Alive?, by Robert Macfarlane
The author takes off on three long journeys: to the Los Cedros cloud forest in northern Ecuador; around contaminated waterways in southern India; and, for two weeks, along an imperiled and turbulent river in Eastern Canada. In every case, he works to remind us that, by rescuing rivers, we begin to restore ourselves; our lives depend on theirs as much as theirs depend on us. Robert Macfarlane is the most engaging—and the least snarky—of British writers, with wit to spare. Read Pico Iyer’s review here.
The Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City: 1986-1990, by Jonathan Mahler
It is not enough to call Jonathan Mahler a historian of New York City. He is more like an archaeologist, able to pick up shards of culture and politics and business and various other endeavors and piece them together in ways that suddenly make sense of the times we lived in. His latest book, subtitled “Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City, 1986–1990,” is a superb narrative, told with vim, and shockingly relevant, not just because Donald Trump is a major figure but because Zohran Mamdani’s election as the 111th mayor of New York City was foreshadowed by what happened decades ago. Read our interview with Mahler here.
Memorial Days: A Memoir, by Geraldine Brooks
On May 27, 2019, the journalist Tony Horwitz dropped dead while jogging. He was only 60, and his wife, Geraldine Brooks, spent the next few years coming to terms with the unthinkable, including traveling to a remote part of her native Australia to mourn in private. Brooks, whose novel March won the Pulitzer Prize, brings to bear the descriptive powers, attention to detail, and straight shooting of the best reporters and a fine novelist’s grace and humanity. Read Joanne Kaufman’s review here.
When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines, by Graydon Carter
Yes, yes, we know the author is the co-founder of Air Mail, but now that our esteemed company has a new owner you cannot accuse us of sucking up to the boss. An autobiography is a tricky thing, since so many of them tend to be humblebrags or odes to one’s superpowers. Graydon Carter knows he is as much lucky as he is talented, and one does not reign atop Vanity Fair for 25 years without accumulating an Hermès trunk of anecdotes and insights, delivered here with wit, brio, and a refreshing dash of self-deprecation. Read our interview with Carter here.
Jim Kelly is the Books Editor at AIR MAIl. He can be reached at jkelly@airmail.news
