My Dead Parents
A memoir about knowing your parents only after they die. Yurchyshyn reconstructs the young, enviously promising lives of her mother and father—entirely alien to the two people she grew up with in her unhappy Boston home. Some mysteries are solved; others
Just the Funny Parts By Nell Scovell HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS Hilarious and depressing accounts from a top comedy writer. Scovell, who collaborated on Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In and wrote for David Letterman and countless sitcoms, endured decades of what she calls “stereotype threats.” To wit: After being ignored once more in a writers’ room full of men, she says to a female co-worker: “Am I corporeal? <ou can see and hear me, right?” <ou don’t have to be a comedy writer to get that, just a woman.
Time Pieces: A Dublin Memoir By John Banville ALFRED A. KNOPF
“I recall so many trivial things,” Banville writes, “and forget so many very momentous ones.” But there is poetry and astonishment contained in the memories of this splendid writer, no matter how inconsequential.
The Race to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue the Russian Imperial Family By Helen Rappaport ST. MARTIN’S PRESS
Reader, they all died. But Rappaport, a historian, turns the question of why European relatives and Allied governments failed to save Czar Nicholas and family into a thriller, full of juicy tidbits for Romanov completists. (Out in June.) Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock By Steven Hyden DE< STREET, HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS “The old myth about the white-male superman who pursues truth via decadence and virtuosic displays of musicianship has run its course,” writes Hyden in his engaging (even loving) deʀation of boomer rock heroes and traditions.
See What Can Be Done: Essays, Criticism, and Commentary By Lorrie Moore ALFRED A. KNOPF
The singular short story writer was a regular contributor of nonɿction to The New York Review of Books, and this collection of wide-ranging, lively and incisive takes on politics, literature and pop culture proves she’s a singularly astute (and compassionate) critic too.
Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion By Michelle Dean GROVE PRESS
Dean’s series of biographical portraits— of Mary Mccarthy, Susan Sontag and Dorothy Parker, among others—tracks the trials and successes, as well as the sometimes barbed wit and rivalries, of these enormously gifted writers, all of whom confounded gender norms to become the smartest people at any table.
Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece By Michael Benson SIMON & SCHUSTER
Benson’s in-depth look at one of ɿlm’s most intense collaborations is a treasure chest for Kubrick and sci-ɿ ɿlm nerds. There’s gold in the details, like a heartbreaking anecdote about Kubrick’s funeral from special effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull.
What Would the Great Economists Do By Linda Yueh PICADOR
A highly accessible and lively evaluation of the global ɿnancial crisis through the work of 12 top economists, from Adam Smith to John Maynard Keynes. <ueh, an economist and popular British columnist and TV personality, has a way of simplifying the arcane and ferreting out good news—of which we need a lot. (Out in June.)