Tabla de contenidos para Vol. 118, No. 18, 5/15/22 en Booklist

Journalism & Publishing Battling the Big Lie: How Fox, Facebook, and the MAGA Media Are Destroying America. By Dan Pfeiffer. June 2022. 336p. Twelve, $30 (9781538707975); e-book, $16.99 (9781538707999). 070. Former Obama White House communications director and cohost of the popular Pod Save America, Pfeiffer probably won’t change a single Republican mind. And Democrats know too well the case Pfeiffer makes that disinformation spread by the likes of Fox News and Facebook has had a corrosive effect on democracy. However, the author does detail, with bracing clarity, just how effective right-wing messaging has been compared to that of the left—see the Big Lie—and he offers advice for mainstream media in advance of upcoming elections: publicly out anonymous sources who lie, refuse to invite known liars onto prestigious media platforms for…

General Fiction After the Hurricane. By Leah Franqui. July 2022. 368p. William Morrow, $27.99 (9780063204591); e-book, $14.99 (9780063204614). Franqui (Mother Land, 2020) turns her focus from India to Puerto Rico in this moving novel. Elena Vega was born in the United States, but her connection to her father’s home country runs deep. Santiago Vega Jr. has had a tumultuous life as a person with bipolar disorder and an addiction to alcohol. When he and Elena’s mother divorced, Santiago retreated to Puerto Rico. He’s had little contact with Elena since. But when she gets word that her father has gone missing, she journeys to Puerto Rico to find him. The country is recovering from Hurricane Maria, but Santiago survived; while the hurricane’s aftermath is a powerful backdrop to the story’s events,…

The Great Mrs. Elias. By Barbara Chase-Riboud. 2022. HarperOne, $26.99 (9780063019904). Chase-Riboud fictionalizes the remarkable real-life rags-to-riches story of Hannah Elias with a sobering look at Black female exploitation set within a randy, rollicking tour of Gilded Age excess, racism, and misogyny. Harsh Times. By Mario Vargas Llosa. Tr. by Adrian Nathan West. 2021. Farrar, $28 (9780374601232). Nobel laureate Vargas Llosa dramatizes political turmoil in 1950s Guatemala, in a tale encompassing covert U.S. corporate and government operations, the 1954 military coup, and Martita Borrero Parra, aka Miss Guatemala. Horse. By Geraldine Brooks. 2022. Viking, $28 (9780399562969). Brooks tells a complexly impactful tale about Lexington, a Civil Warera champion racehorse; Jarret, an enslaved groom in Kentucky; an equestrian artist; and, in the twenty-first century, a Nigerian American art student and a…

Adult Bootblack. By Mikaël. Art by the author. Tr. by Matt Maden. May 2022. 128p. NBM, $24.99 (9781681122960). 741.5. Al Chrysler is born Altenberg Ferguson in New York to German immigrants in the 1920s. As a boy, he becomes frustrated with his parents’ lessons from their past and runs away, only to return to see his home in flames. Al begins living on the streets with a found family of boys who make their living shining shoes. Alongside his gang, Al struggles to survive, makes deals with criminals, falls in love, goes to prison, and ultimately, in 1945, enlists with the army to fight in WWII. Those trying to classify this book by genre will struggle to choose among historical fiction, crime fiction, and romance, but the aspect that ties…

Older Readers The Counselors. By Jessica Goodman. May 2022. 352p. Razorbill, $17.99 (9780593524220); paper, $11 (9780593527504). Gr. 9–12. Goodman’s latest YA thriller is again set in the elite world of the rich and famous, this time during the summer at Camp Alpine Lake. Goldie Easton is from a small town next door to the prestigious camp where only the wealthiest families can afford to send their children. As a child, Goldie was allowed to attend only because her parents worked there. Her two best friends are wealthy girls she met at camp who live a world away from her, and after a devastating high-school year, Goldie is eager to return, this time as a counselor, to her only safe haven, the place filled with her best childhood memories. That is,…

African Town. By Irene Latham and Charles Waters. 2022. Putnam, $18.99 (9780593322888). Gr. 9–12. Inspired by the true story of the last American slave ship, this epic novel in verse follows the kidnapping of 110 Africans and the free community some of these individuals manage to build. The Beatryce Prophecy. By Kate DiCamillo. Illus. by Sophie Blackall. 2021. Candlewick, $19.99 (9781536213614). Gr. 3–6. A girl with no memory, a fierce goat, a bright boy, a rebel monk, and a lost king find their paths intertwined in this medieval adventure, in which families are made and found and the power of stories shines bright. Cuba in My Pocket. By Adrianna Cuevas. 2021. Farrar, $16.99 (9780374314675). Gr. 4–7. Cuevas draws upon her father’s boyhood in her intense account of Cumba, a Cuban…

from These books are recommended by BlueInk Review, a fee-based review service devoted exclusively to self-published books. Every other issue, BlueInk will compile a list of their favorites for Booklist, as a service to librarians hoping to incorporate self-published work into their collections. BlueInk was founded by Patti Thorn, former book review editor of Denver’s Rocky Mountain News, and Patricia Moosbrugger, a literary agent who represents several best-selling authors. The company delivers professional, unbiased reviews of self-published books written by critics drawn largely from major mainstream publications and by editors from prominent publishing houses. Stars reflect the decisions of BlueInk reviewers and editors. Booklist is happy to bring this curated collection of the best in self-publishing for adults and youth to our audience. Adult The Bard of Souvac. By Tony…

Black Cloud Rising. By David Wright Faladé. 2022. Atlantic Monthly, $27 (9780802159199). Richard Etheridge, son of a plantation owner and an enslaved Black woman, proudly joins the Union army only to face more racism, while remaining deeply conflicted about the white half of his family. The Cape Doctor. By E. J. Levy. 2021. Little, Brown, $28 (9780316536585). Levy fictionalizes the remarkable life of the nineteenth-century physician Dr. James Miranda Barry, who is born female but assumes a male persona to attend medical school in Edinburgh, becoming a military surgeon in Cape Town and conducting a complicated affair with Governor Lord Somerton. Daughters of Sparta. By Claire Heywood. 2021. Dutton, $16.99 (9780593184370). Heywood follows the tragic fates of two of the most famous women in the ancient world, daughters of the…

Older Readers Devotion (Adapted for Young Adults): An Epic Story of Heroism and Friendship. By Adam Makos. May 2022. 386p. illus. Delacorte, $18.99 (9780593481455). Gr. 7–10. 951.904. Opening with a pilot crash-landing behind enemy lines, Makos (Spearhead, 2019) hits the ground running in this exciting account of friendship during the Korean War. The pilot in question is Ensign Jesse Brown, the U.S. Navy’s first Black carrier-ship pilot. Flying overhead is Lieutenant Tom Hudner, who is desperate to rescue his downed friend. Having established his dramatic chops, Makos then flashes back to the two pilots’ respective childhoods. The son of a sharecropper, Brown grew up poor in rural Mississippi. Hudner, on the other hand, was a white child of privilege, growing up in a wealthy family in Massachusetts. Despite their different…

An Answer for Everything: 200 Infographics to Explain the World. By Delayed Gratification. 2022. Bloomsbury, $25 (9781526633644). From the quarterly magazine that embraces “slow journalism,” these infographics answer questions from the serious (How soon will the Earth overheat?), to the slightly ridiculous (What is the best thing since sliced bread?). Attacks on the American Press: A Documentary and Reference Guide. By Jessica Roberts and Adam Maksl. 2021. ABC-CLIO, $111 (9781440872563). Using the text of primary documents followed by analytical comments, this informative and readable guide includes chapters such as, “Threats to the Press during Wartime” and “Legal Attacks on the Press.” First Amendment Freedoms: A Reference Handbook. By Michael C. LeMay. 2021. ABC-CLIO, $63 (9781440869297). This exhaustive volume examines the First Amendment both historically and in the context of modern…

Adult The Candy House. By Jennifer Egan. Read by a full cast. 2022. 11hr. Simon & Schuster Audio, CD, $28.74 (9781797128412). With the computer program “Own Your Unconscious,” Bix Bouton has created a way to access your own and others’ memories. But not everyone is eager to share their memories, and these “eluders” fight for their anonymity. This complex story jumps between the 1960s and 2030. Egan plays with form, and while most chapters follow a story line, some are a series of emails or tweets. (These segments use multiple narrators.) The main themes are the search for permanence in an impermanent world and the role of technology in shaping society in the past and future. This recording is the very definition of a “full cast” performance: over 20 readers…