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Books: Food for Thought

by Justin W. Ravitz
March/April 2008

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Keith Gessen, founder of trendy literary magazine n+1, arrives with a funny but not overly clever novel about three neurotic twentysomething writers, All the Sad Young Literary Men; one protagonist recalls his Harvard roommate’s loud nights with the sweet daughter of a U.S. vice president. (Gessen and Karenna Gore Schiff graduated two years apart. Hmmm.) South African-born Ceridwen Dovey delicately melds the clipped prose of fellow native J.M. Coetzee with the mythical sweep of Gabriel García Márquez in her debut Blood Kin, told in alternating voices—the secret-bearing servants of an ousted president—following a military coup in an unnamed country. As known for her distinctive persona as for her New York Times dispatches, Jennifer 8. Lee went in search of General Tso, chop suey’s inventor, and other cross-cultural mysteries about food in her yummy first book, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food. On a different kind of quest, Brett Grainger brings novelistic grace to his trenchant yet deeply personal portrait of born-again spirituality, In the World But Not of It: One Family’s Militant Faith and the History of Fundamentalism in America. More seasoned writers are still blooming, too. Master economists Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes report the ultimate in sticker shock, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, about the war’s hidden financial repercussions. Speaking of gloomy economic news, in The Last Economy and the Next: America’s Age of Inflation and Its Aftermath, Robert Samuelson argues that double-digit inflation in the ’70s was as cataclysmic as Vietnam. Meanwhile, Michael Kinsley compiles over a decade of sharp-edged political commentary from Slate and elsewhere in Please Don’t Remain Calm: Provocations and Commentaries. All things considered, a little escapism seems in order. Indie rockers have long worshipped at the altar of Dean Wareham, the creative force behind critical-fave bands such as Luna and Galaxie 500. The Harvard-educated hipster relates his rise to cult stardom (look, Ma, no ODs!) in Black Postcards: Rock & Roll Romance. Finally, 02138’s own Richard Bradley steps up to the plate with The Greatest Game: The Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Playoff of ’78, revivifying a historic season in American sports’ most intense rivalry with exclusive interviews and the passion of a diehard fan. Play ball!

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