Tag Archives: Non-Fiction

Books: The New York Times Book Review – Jan 29, 2023

The New York Times Book Review – January 29, 2023:

Fleeing Slavery in a Top Hat and Cravat

“Master Slave Husband Wife,” by Ilyon Woo, relates the daring escape from bondage in Georgia to freedom in the North by an enslaved couple disguised as a wealthy planter and his property.

Think Screens Stole Our Attention? Medieval Monks Were Distracted Too.

In “The Wandering Mind,” the historian Jamie Kreiner shows that the struggle to focus is not just a digital-age blight but afflicted even those who spent their lives in seclusion and prayer.

‘Age of Vice’: A Lush Thriller Dives Into New Delhi’s Underworld

In Deepti Kapoor’s cinematic novel, a young man from the provinces falls in with a powerful crime syndicate.

Interviews: Richard Haass – “The World – A Brief Introduction” (Podcast)

The Book Review Podcast“The whole lesson of this pandemic, and the whole lesson of 9/11, is we can’t ignore the world, or if we do ignore the world, it’s at our peril,” Haass says. “These oceans that surround us are not moats. We’ve got to pay attention to the world and we’ve got to fix things here at home.”

The ambition of Richard Haass’s new book is clear from its title: “The World: A Brief Introduction.” In just 400 pages, Haass, who has been the president of the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations since 2003, offers a primer on world affairs. On this week’s podcast, Haass talks about why he wrote it. (Read more)

Richard Nathan Haass is an American diplomat. He has been president of the Council on Foreign Relations since July 2003, prior to which he was Director of Policy Planning for the United States Department of State and a close advisor to Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Top Non-Fiction Books: “Brooklyn – The Once And Future City” By Thomas J. Campanella (2019)

From a Princeton University Press online release:

Brooklyn - The Once and Future CityAmerica’s most storied urban underdog, Brooklyn has become an internationally recognized brand in recent decades—celebrated and scorned as one of the hippest destinations in the world. In Brooklyn: The Once and Future City, Thomas J. Campanella unearths long-lost threads of the urban past, telling the rich history of the rise, fall, and reinvention of one of the world’s most resurgent cities.

Spanning centuries and neighborhoods, Brooklyn-born Campanella recounts the creation of places familiar and long forgotten, both built and never realized, bringing to life the individuals whose dreams, visions, rackets, and schemes forged the city we know today. He takes us through Brooklyn’s history as homeland of the Leni Lenape and its transformation by Dutch colonists into a dense slaveholding region. We learn about English émigré Deborah Moody, whose town of Gravesend was the first founded by a woman in America. We see how wanderlusting Yale dropout Frederick Law Olmsted used Prospect Park to anchor an open space system that was to reach back to Manhattan. And we witness Brooklyn’s emergence as a playland of racetracks and amusement parks celebrated around the world.

To read more: https://press.princeton.edu/titles/13671.html