No matter how many true espionage tales you have read, you will be captivated by Shaun Walker’s crackerjack The Illegals, which focuses on how Russia for decades has dispatched its citizens abroad as deep-cover spies, posing as others while doing Moscow’s bidding. The book opens in 2010, with the notorious roundup of 10 “illegals” in the United States that made a star of the real-estate broker/spy Anna Chapman, and Walker’s job as a Moscow correspondent gives him both a fresh angle on the scandal and sets the stage for much of the book being told from Russian sources. The best-known “illegals” may be the fictional ones played by Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys in The Americans, but Walker proves that truth can not only be stranger than fiction but far more compelling.
All of you who love snakes, raise your hand. Ah, I see exactly one hand, and it belongs to this author, whose engaging look at what he calls “a sinuous form of lightning” might not make you love snakes but will surely make you respect them. What Stephen S. Hall does brilliantly is to explore the world of a reptile that has been both venerated and feared ever since it was first encountered by humans, from Medusa’s slithering hair to Bulgari’s Serpenti jewelry line, to Snakes on a Plane, a movie so scary in its title alone that even horror fans skipped it.
The chapter on the sex lives of snakes is revelatory, but what truly excites the reader is not only Hall’s witty commentary as he travels the world in search of pythons and cobras and the scientists who study them but his suggestion that we can derive lessons for ourselves from snakes’ ability to change and adapt to any environment.
I picked up this book, subtitled “Timeless Favorites and Hidden Gems of World Cinema” and written by a longtime host on Turner Classic Movies, to see what she had to say about Ingmar Bergman’s final theatrical film, Fanny and Alexander. Two hours later, I put the book down, still not having read all the entries but so much wiser both about films I had seen and those I have not yet seen.
Alicia Malone makes no pretense that this is the definitive list of the world’s best films, and she organizes the 52 she does discuss in an unorthodox but effective way: by the season they evoke. (Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, Jacques Tati’s comedy classic, is in the summer section, while Louis Malle’s Elevator to the Gallows is for the fall.) Each film gets a few pages, with crisp recaps, sharp photos, brief details about director and stars, and behind-the-scenes tidbits. Who knew that Malle intercepted Miles Davis at the Paris airport to persuade him to write the film’s iconic score, his first ever? TCM Imports offers a marvelous and eclectic mix of films—some familiar, some not—and will gloriously enhance your time watching them.
Jim Kelly is the Books Editor at AIR MAIl