Archives de catégorie : Frankfurt 2020 Adult Nonfiction

GOODBYE EASTERN EUROPE de Jacob Mikanowski

Eastern Europe is disappearing. Not the physical place, but the idea. Whatever held the region together in the mind’s eye — a shared experience of occupation and exclusion, the permanent-seeming weight of economic backwardness, treasured memories of defeat — is gone, or at least not as present as it had been.” – Jacob Mikanowski

GOODBYE EASTERN EUROPE
by Jacob Mikanowski

Knopf, Winter 2021
(chez Frances Goldin Literary Agency – voir catalogue)

In the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, the bonds that held all the various nations of Eastern Europe together as Soviet satellites have dissolved, calling into question what exactly connects them, and whether there was ever any such place to begin with. But, Mikanowski argues, there really was something more to Eastern Europe than shared political subjection. Eastern Europe had a particular character, and this book will name and describe the peculiar flavor of the place, from the Baltics to the Balkans, from Prague to Kiev. Part history, part travelogue, part reading of the disparate canon of Eastern European literature, GOODBYE EASTERN EUROPE will be a work in the tradition of Ian Frazier’s Travels in Siberia, or Simon Winder’s Germania or Danubia—an anatomy of a region as refracted through its literature, and a fascinating exploration of an incredibly diverse, complex, and surprising terrain.

Jacob Mikanowski is a journalist, critic and essayist. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, The Guardian, Lapham’s Quarterly, and elsewhere. He grew up in the US, but his family is Polish.

MAKERS: PARIS de Kate Van Den Boogert, photos de Carrie Solomon

Meet the extraordinary community of artisans and creative entrepreneurs making their mark on Paris today.

MAKERS: PARIS
by Kate Van Den Boogert, with photographs by Carrie Solomon

Prestel, April 2021
(chez David Black Literary Agency)

This inspirational guide introduces you to the locals behind thirty-five of Paris’s unique shops, studios, and more. Through beautifully illustrated spreads, immerse yourself in the daily practices of diverse creatives including fashion designer Isabel Marant; baker Apollonia Poilâne, whose sourdough loaves are the toast of the city; fourth-generation art supplier Sophie Sennelier; Palais-Royal shoe designer Pierre Hardy; jet-setting street artist and hotelier André Saraiva; bookseller Sylvia Whitman who continues her father’s literary heritage with flair; French cocktail expert Franck Audoux; the duo behind ecological sneaker brand Véja; the inventor of the bistronomy movement Yves Camdeborde; plus a host of chocolatiers, florists, cheesemakers, patissiers, stationers, and more. Each maker links to the next with a personal introduction that adds insight to how these interconnected communities thrive and grow together. You’ll get to know each maker—their tools, practices, passions, histories, inspirations, and work environments. MAKERS: PARIS takes you inside their businesses to show you how they invent, craft, and sell their wares, and demonstrates in the process how each maker’s own passions and talents splendidly intersect with their city’s hunger for quality, style, and substance. Whether you’re planning a trip to Paris, looking for inspiration, or just wondering what’s hot in the City of Lights, this thrilling tour will leave you inspired, satisfied…and hungry for more.

Kate Van Den Boogert is Founding Director of Gogo City Guides, up-to-date, seasonal guides to Paris & London.
Carrie Solomon, one of France’s most renowned still-life photographers, is a food and travel writer/photographer for Elle France. Her most recent book is Inside Chefs’ Fridges : Europe and she is working on a new volume exploring the home fridges of chefs across the world.

KING de Jonathan Eig

A new biography of Martin Luther King by award-winning author and journalist Jonathan Eig, including newly-revealed materials.

KING
by Jonathan Eig
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2022
(chez David Black Literary Agency)

Credit: Lizz Kannenberg

Martin Luther King Jr. was the courageous and brilliant leader of the American civil rights movement, but today many know nothing about him beyond four syllables: “I have a dream.” When we turn heroes into superheroes, when we simplify the lives of great men and women in order to make their lessons easier to digest, we lose sight of their true greatness. We fail to honor them as real people with real accomplishments. Martin Luther King is fast approaching this predicament. The timing for a fresh look at his life could not be better, and the need for one is urgent: thousands of previously unseen documents have come to light, and many of King’s friends, followers, and confidants are eager to talk. Those who can give firsthand accounts are nearing the point in their lives where, if they aren’t heard soon, their stories will be lost for good. In the thirty-six years since the last full biography of King was published, a plethora of new primary documents have become available, and our understanding of King the man has fundamentally changed. The new materials include the 102 interviews with King contemporaries conducted from 2010-2016 for the National Museum of African American History and Culture; more than 100 interview transcripts from the 1987 documentary Eyes on the Prize; handwritten notes from James Baldwin; a 1964 interview with King himself taken by the poet and novelist Robert Penn Warren; as well as tens of thousands of newly released FBI documents. Some of King’s contemporaries, including Harry Belafonte and Andrew Young, have already given interviews for Jonathan Eig’s book, which will also incorporate recent research suggesting that King battled depression, drawing from thousands of newly archived personal correspondence, including letters from King to his first biographer, Lawrence Dunbar Reddick, in 1958.

Jonathan Eig is the author of five critically acclaimed books, two of them New York Times bestsellers. He was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Monsey, New York. Eig is a former staff writer for the Wall Street Journal, and he remains a contributing writer there. He has written for the New York Times, The New Yorker, Esquire, the Washington Post, and other publications. His most recent book, Ali: A Life, was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. It has also been long-listed for the Plutarch Prize for biography and the 2018 PEN/ESPN Award for literary sports writing. It was selected as one of the best books of 2017 by The Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, and Sports Illustrated. Eig is currently working as producer on multi-part Muhammad Ali documentary. Eig is also working with Morgan Freeman and CBS Studios to develop an eight-part television series based on the life of Ali. Eig’s birth-control pill book is under option by Nat Geo for a television series, and his Lou Gehrig book is in development as a major motion picture. He lives in Chicago, IL.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT CAMPAIGN de John Klima

The first book to prominently feature captured and declassified Nazi communiqués sent from Washington, D.C., to Berlin that show how the Nazis attempted to contaminate the American political system by meddling in the 1940 election.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT CAMPAIGN:
Fear, Propaganda and the True Story of the Nazi Plot to Steal the American Presidency
by John Klima
Pantheon/PRH, 2022

Credit: Jennifer Marder

The year: 1940. Joseph Goebbels, desperate for a favorable outcome to the US presidential election, deployed every media tool at his disposal. THE ENLIGHTENMENT CAMPAIGN is the first book to prominently feature captured and declassified Nazi communiqués sent from Washington, D.C., to Berlin that show how the Nazis attempted to contaminate the American political system by meddling in the 1940 election. The protagonist: one of the farthest-reaching voices in American media of the time—the largely forgotten dynamo Dorothy Thompson. The first woman journalist to interview Hitler, in 1931, she came back from the experience aghast, and spent the next decade—the period of this book—sounding the alarm of the creeping threat of fascism coming to America. Through her syndicated columns and her regular radio addresses, her audience numbered 13 million. She was the first woman journalist to make the cover of TIME Magazine. Since her interview with Hitler—and drawing on her decades in Europe as a foreign correspondent—she saw the way insidious propaganda and the stoking of xenophobia could drive an economically vulnerable democracy into the arms of an anti-democratic despot. In a fast-paced, informative, and reverberating narrative, John Klima recounts this battle for the hearts and minds of the American people.

John Klima, a former staff writer at The Los Angeles Times, a former National Baseball columnist at the Los Angeles Daily News, and whose work has appeared in the Best American Sports Writing, The New York Times, and elsewhere, is the author of three critically acclaimed narrative baseball histories: The Game Must Go On (Thomas Dunne, 2015) (“Zips along and offers great descriptions,” PW), Bushville Wins! (Thomas Dunne, 2012) (“[Klima] tells a great story well, makes a dead era vivid,” Wall Street Journal), and Willie’s Boys (Wiley, 2009) (“The drama is real, the stakes are high, and Klima captures it with shimmering prose and hard-nosed reporting,” Jonathan Eig).

TIRED AS F*CK de Caroline Dooner

In this funny, sincere, absurd, inspiring memoir, Caroline Dooner will look at years of desperate attempts to heal her health problems, undiagnosed anxiety, an eating disorder and dental trauma through extreme methods and through bargains with God.

TIRED AS F*CK:
My rabid search for a miracle cure,and why I needed two years of rest
by Caroline Dooner
HarperWave, 2021
(chez David Black Literary Agency)

TIRED AS F*CK will examine how our culture exhausts us—looking at the dark side of self-help through Caroline’s own experience—and how she used rest to defy cultural expectations. As she had done with the F*ck It Diet, Caroline felt she needed to apply an extreme approach to all other areas of her life—to her career and social life, to dating and the way she talked to herself. Caroline recognized that she was making choices that were keeping her exhausted and she had to figure them out. She decided for the next two years she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to do. Looking at how she became exhausted, with chapters such as “How to Get Debilitating Performance Anxiety” and “How to Secure a Miracle Tooth,” through the debilitating power of positive thinking in chapters such as “How to Only Think Positive Thoughts, or Else,” and “How to be an Actual Children’s Birthday Clown,” to her rest-seeking sections including “How to Figure out What’s Depleting You” and “How to Be Ok Dying Alone,” TIRED AS F*CK is not a self-help book, it’s a cautionary tale. It’s an honest look at the dogma of wellness and spiritual self-improvement culture. It will revel in the healing power of rest.

Caroline Dooner is a writer, humorist, storyteller, and semi-ex-performer/comedian. She is the creator of The F*ck It Diet website, workshops, and podcast, and the author of the instant favorite The F*ck It Diet, that has consistently continued to grow in readership by word of mouth . Caroline excels at explaining why we have such a dysfunctional relationship with food and weight, and has helped tens of thousands of people heal their relationship with food and body, through a combination of storytelling, scientific studies, and humor.