I spent the holidays home with both our kids, which was both deeply rewarding and exhausting. This weekend we’re taking a grownups-only trip to New York, and I have a little time to think and finally pull together all my favorite books of the last year.
The Director, by Daniel Kehlmann
This might have been my favorite book of the whole year. It’s a novel loosely based on the life of D.W. Griffith, a film director in the early days of filmmaking. Kehlmann’s story begins in Hollywood, where Griffith was languishing in the 1920’s before abruptly deciding to return home to Austria moments before Hitler annexed it. Kehlmann’s storytelling is taut without being melodramatic–a remarkable accomplishment given the world-historical events that take place around Griffith as he finds himself ensnared in Hitler’s regime and still trying to make movies. There is a deeply moving scene involving a gathering of random acquaintances when Griffith arrives in Europe before going on to Austria. War is in the air, but nobody knows it for certain yet. The chill I felt when reading this section was very real.
The Last Manager
This book was a gift from my father in law, a sports writer and Baltimore Orioles fan. You don’t have to love the Orioles to enjoy this book, but you probably do need to care a little bit about baseball, or about the role that it played in American society in the 20th century. The book tells the story of Earl Weaver, legendary manager of the Baltimore Orioles in the 1970’s, who had a longish tenure during a period when baseball, and America in general, were in transition. For deep baseball fans, Weaver is notable as the originator of much that now defines the game. For the casual reader, Weaver is just a wild character to read about. He pulled stunts like climbing to the top of a flagpole during a game to protest a bad call by an umpire. He was known for getting into legendary shouting matches with umpires resulting his spectacular ejections from games. Because these were televised, you can now find some of these showdowns on Youtube, and they are an absolute goddamned delight.
Astor, by Anerson Cooper
I picked this book up in the airport at LAX when I realized I had nothing else to read. Out of a limited selection of mostly gossip magazines, this turned out to be a great read. I think it managed to sneak into the mix because of its celebrity author. Cooper wrote a previous book about his Vanderbilt forebears, and I suppose it inspired this followup about another robber baron clan.
The book reads like a novel, with each chapter covering an Astor of a succeeding era. It starts with John Jacob Astor, a German butcher who made a vast fortune in the fur trade. As a butcher, he took cutthroat capitalism quite literally; Cooper infers that one of Astor’s advantages over the competition was his willingness to deal directly with the (often quite messy) merchandise himself, saving on costs.
Although I didn’t read it this year, I have to make honorable mention here of Ron Chernow’s fantastic biography of John D. Rockefeller Jr., which is similarly gripping.
Careless People, by Sarah Wynn-Williams
This book grabs you hard from its very opening and tells a very compelling story. I won’t say much more about it here other than that I found it an engaging read that’s worth taking seriously.
Everything is Tuberculosis, by John Green
I picked this book up because I started my career in international development working in public health. I am not too proud to admit that I was fully halfway through the book before I realized that it was written by the John Green who also writes YA fiction. I thought it was just a common name. Needless to say, Green’s a good writer, as his scrillions of book sales and fan base can testify. When he turns his attention to tubercolosis as a disease and social ill, the result is extraordinary. I learned so much from these pages.
Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro
I think every episode of Downtown Abbey should begin with a disclaimer that it owes a debt to this beautiful novel. It lives in the same world and focuses on the same theme of wistful longing for the days when English landed gentry commanded a vast army of servants on their estates. The main character in this novel is basically Downton’s Mr. Carson, an elderly butler who has spent decades in service, slightly appalled at the way England has changed due to the 20th century’s wars and the demise of Empire. Like Mr. Carson, Ishiguro’s butler carries the scars of an old love that withered in the past long ago because of his sense of duty. Unlike Mr. Carson, the butler in this story’s love is still alive, and the story is about a road trip to see her. It’s a beautiful story.
Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
I am not a very online person, but even I know that this book has sparked a lot of conline controversy. I think this is a good thing, and it shows that Klein and Thompson have taken aim at problems that people care about. Affordable housing is a genuine challenge right now. Political success should be measured against the goal of solving it.
Wicked, by Gregory Maguire
I worked at Barnes and Noble when the Wicked musical came out, and this book was selling again like hotcakes. I didn’t read it then for the same reason I never saw the musical: I was working for near-minimum wage at a chain bookstore, and free time was hard to come by.
Maguire’s book is one of those books like the Hobbity ones with a map in the front, which tells you
This is one of those books that comes with a map printed in the front. Maguire did not create the Oz universe, of course. That was L. Frank Baum. But Maguire takes it seriously, much, much more than Baum did, and made it kind of evil. It’s like Riverdale or Wednesday.
The storytelling of this novel is so bleak it can wear on one. This version of Oz has cruelty and blood everywhere you look, and the characters live in dark, sad places dripping with water and smelling like mildew. The contrast to the aesthetic of the film (and presumably the musical, though I still haven’t seen it) could not be more stark. But oddly, I think the central question is the same: where does goodness come from?
All Fours, by Miranda July
Nothing could have surprised me more than to see another book from Miranda July come out after all these years, unless it would have been for it to become a bestseller. Her book of weird little short stories has been a favorite of mine since it was published when I was in grad school, and I remember liking her film too (Me and You and Everyone We Know).
Reading this book gave me a crucial perspective on entering middle age that I would never have known otherwise.
American Republics, by Alan Taylor
I don’t know why I got on such an early American history kick this year, but I did. This book does a remarkably good job of tying together stories that are too often told separately: the history of native peoples in North America, the French and Spanish empires, and the United States and remaining British empire after the war.
Our First Civil War, HW Brands
More early American history. Might have been overkill with the new Ken Burns documentary just coming out, but worth a read in its own right.
We the Poeople, by Jill Lepore
I had no idea before reading this book that “Originalism” is not original, and did not spring fully formed from Antonin Scalia’s brain. This book is tightly focused on Lepore’s thesis that the American Constitution was designed to be something that can evolve, and that attempts to keep that from happening have a long history rooted in oppression.