The Great Resetby Richard Florida
How the U.S. economy will re-start itself after years of excess and mismanagement
Is it possible that the economic crisis might actually turn out to be a good thing? According to Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, it just might be. Based on an analysis of the United States economy in the wake of past downturns such as the Great Depression or the 19th-century Long Depression, Florida argues that we are poised for what he terms a “Great Reset” which could potentially reconfigure the entire U.S. economic infrastructure, from the way we approach home ownership to public transportation. The editor of Wired magazine called The Great Reset “must reading for anyone who wants to understand where we are now and where we are headed,” and is a breath of fresh air for anyone hoping that Americans (and economists) will learn from their past mistakes.
If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This by Robin Black
A brutally honest debut short-story collection
After years of getting published in literary magazines and The Best Creative Nonfiction anthology, Robin Black has come out with her much-anticipated debut collection of short stories, and If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This doesn’t disappoint. Black proves herself to be a keen observer of the human condition as she shows how her characters navigate their inner worlds, usually in misguided efforts to cope with loss. Sympathetic but never saccharine and with an honesty that is just short of brutal, Black’s style is described by Publishers Weekly as “evocative and lyrical [but] balanced by the sharp dialogue.”
Crossing Mandelbaum Gateby Kai Bird
A Pulitzer Prize-winning author tells a surprising coming-of-age story
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is never out of the news for long, but it’s rare to get a glimpse of the problem from an insider’s perspective. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Kai Bird has managed to provide just that in Crossing Mandelbaum Gate, named after the gate that formerly separated Israeli western Jerusalem from the Jordanian East side. Part memoir, part history, part political analysis, Bird’s story of growing up in the Middle East, India, and the United States provides an unusually broad perspective of the cultural gaps (and similarities) between them. “Bird’s acute and engaging memoir is a mournful recollection of a time when the single issue of Arab and Israeli, Muslim and Jew, was not the monotonously dominant theme that it has since become,” wrote Christopher Hitchens.
Deliver Us From Evil by David Baldacci
David Baldacci is back with another classic thriller
Bestselling American novelist David Baldacci is at it again in his latest thriller. The mysterious detective Shaw from Baldacci’s The Whole Truth is back on the cause following Evan Waller, a tycoon who has amassed a fortune by his willingness to buy and sell anything—and anyone. Waller’s latest investment could be responsible for millions of deaths around the world and Shaw heads to a small village in Provence in order to stop him. “This is a very clever novel, and full marks go to Baldacci for pulling off an especially difficult type of story—one in which neither of the central characters knows entirely what’s going on, while the reader is omniscient,” Booklist writes. “We become intensely involved in the story, wishing we could step inside the book and clue its two protagonists into what’s going on.”
The Lake Shore Limited by Sue Miller
Family and friends have to face each other after the death of a relative on 9/11
In The Lake Shore Limited, Sue Miller uses her trademark insight to follow the friends and family of a young man named Gus, who was tragically killed on 9/11. Though perfunctorily intimate, Gus’s inner circle has fallen out of touch and into a set of half-true beliefs about his life and legacy, until they are brought back together by his former girlfriend Billy, who has written a play about him. As they all sit through Billy’s scene that both encapsulates and distorts their complex circumstances after Gus’s death, Miller’s characters are forced to confront emotions that are messier than anyone cares to admit. Miller deals expertly with a difficult subject in a novel The Washington Post described as “exquisite […] gorgeously drawn and told with stark honesty.”
