2018 School Spending Survey Report
Editors' Fall Picks
Ah, fall, that time of amethyst mists and a cascade of great new books. From fiction set in Colonial America to this feature's first audio, these picks are not the usual suspects but titles we know you'll want to rake in. 
Politics and Ecstasy
Aslam's writing is guided by the conviction that “there is nothing unique about me; if it's true about me, it will be true of other people.” And right now the Pakistan-born author, who came to England as a teenager, is genuinely confused about the current East-West tangle over Islamic terrorism. To sum up his confusion—and ours—he points to a crucial torture scene toward the end of his book that, he tells LJ, echoes Gloucester's blinding by King Lear. “A case can be made that Gloucester was guilty of a crime, but the blinding is so severe, so malicious, that we immediately lose sympathy with it,” he explains. Similarly, “No matter what the West did, we were sickened by 9/11—and by the response.” Aslam may be confounded by contemporary world politics, but there's fearsome clarity in his rendering of various extreme viewpoints, from the terrorists' hatred of the West to the CIA's rigid politicking to the Afghan warlord's amoral conniving. He so startles us with his sure take on the unthinkable that his book could be called an antipolemic polemic if his own writing weren't so scrupulous—and so piercingly beautiful. From the first page, where a mirror is seen as large enough that “if it was water [Lara] could dive and disappear into it,” Aslam crafts such steadfastly evocative lines that one imagines they might violate Islam's strictures regarding imagery. Exquisite prose comes naturally to Aslam, who loves writers who love language, though he puts it more elegantly—“It's the sky under which I move.” His writing inevitably reflects his own interests—“Whatever comes in to your mind comes out of your hand in the writing”—so The Wasted Vigil also embodies his passion for jazz and Islamic art and his curiosity about perfume making. As a result, it required little research, though he did travel to the fabled perfume-making town of Kalar Kahar, deep in Afghanistan, compelling his mother to ask neighbors to pray at the local mosque for his safety. Boldly enfolding his interests, Aslam's narrative proves his assertion that “I am happiest when I am writing something political and also something ecstatically pleasing. I hope I got the right mix,” he adds earnestly. Indeed, he did. The novel was conceived 15 years ago, but Aslam instead pursued an idea that became the Kiriyama Prize–winning Maps for Lost Lovers. When he returned to this novel, he found that “85 percent of the story was already there,” with the forces shaping early 1990s Afghanistan still in play. As Aslam advises, “We can't play geopolitical games in other parts of the world; there are consequences.” What we can do, though, is try to understand what's happening. For that, read The Wasted Vigil; there's no better guide.—Barbara Hoffert 
Real Heroics
In his journal, Neugass explained grim realities—“No sense sewing up a guy's chest if there's a hole in the liver. Since livers will hold no stitches, almost all boys nicked in this organ die”—and memorialized the dead. Of a former Child's Restaurant counterman he wrote, “Some of him lies buried in the grave dug free of charge by a fascist bomb.” Within a mere five months, he ceased referring to “the World War” that was behind and wondered about the one to come. Ever a self-conscious writer, he repeatedly asked himself “Why did I come to Spain?” Neugass returned home in April 1938, the leather journal with him. He married, had two sons, and lived in New York, working chiefly as a cabinetmaker (though he had declared in his diary, “When I get back...I'm going to drive a taxi or a carriage. I'll wait...in front of the Metropolitan Opera House and drive society couples slowly through Central Park on spring nights”). He wrote some short stories and spent years on his first novel, Rain of Ashes, published in 1949. That year he suffered a heart attack and died. Over 50 years later, Neugass's typescript was discovered among what were likely the papers of socialist critic Max Eastman—evidently Neugass's submission to consider for publication. Save for a couple of excerpts that appeared in a 1938 pamphlet on the Spanish Civil War, Neugass's journal is now published for the first time. Since the Spanish conflict included relatively few Americans, we now pay it little mind compared with the larger one that followed. But the pulse of war delivered by Spain's roads to Neugass is here delivered to us. His narrative conveys the awful alchemy of war—as he put it, “something big and something terribly human. Pity and terror, mercy and pain, all between drawn lips”—yet also speaks of the writer himself and his own powers of alchemy. There was no “mock heroism” in his work in aid of the anti-Fascist cause, nor in his faith in himself as a writer. One day, near the front at Teruel, Neugass was “filling in a shell hole [when] a small limousine came tearing down the road.... 'That's Hemingway,' said someone pointing at the vanishing cloud of dust.... 'He's a writer and I'm a writer,' I thought, and went back to work.” Did Hemingway really leave James Neugass in the dust? Don't be so sure.—Margaret Heilbrun 
Beyond Walden
Longtime voice-over artist and narrator Brett Barry's (www.brettsvoice.com) crisp, well-paced reading free of theatrics allows the author's words to resonate. Listeners will get the sense of walking alongside Thoreau as he leads them—half authoritative teacher, half marveling student—on a tour of the evocative landscape. (Hear a clip at www.silverhollowaudio.com.) “It's very gratifying to publish something that's never been released as an audiobook before and to expose a whole new audience to [it],” says Brett, who, together with wife Rebecca Rego Barry, a former preservation and archives librarian (Drew Univ.) and public services librarian (Marist Coll.), cofounded Silver Hollow Audio in 2005. It was Rebecca who suggested they produce “Autumnal Tints” in audio form when she came across a paperback reprint of the lecture (Applewood Bks., 1996) in a Concord, MA, museum shop. Silver Hollow being such a small publisher, the Barrys have control over the entire production process, from book selection to recording and editing to package design. “Caring for the environment and minimizing our impact on it has always been near and dear to [us],” says Brett, which is why the couple decided to package its first coproduced title, Henry Beston's The Outermost House (Best Audio, LJ 1/08), in recyclable paperboard. With Autumnal Tints, they've taken their commitment to environmentally friendly packaging further (it was, after all, Thoreau who once asked, “What's the use of a fine house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?”). The audiobook packaging features 100 percent green forestry practices–board, a minimum of ten percent postconsumer recycled content, and all vegetable inks and is—besides the shrink wrap—plastic-free and completely recyclable. Further, through the Barrys' partnership with the organization 1% for the Planet (www.onepercentfortheplanet.org/en), one percent of Silver Hollow's gross profits will be donated to a network of environmental nonprofits worldwide, a practice they hope to continue with all future releases. The Barrys are also considering producing another of Thoreau's posthumously published essays, “Ktaadn,” from The Maine Woods. To reduce their carbon footprint further and remain in the spirit of Thoreau's tenet to “Simplify, simplify,” says Brett, they're thinking they might sell it solely as a digital download.—Raya Kuzyk 
The Watchmen Cometh
Brooklyn Cheer
The first black baseball player in the major leagues (he played for the Dodgers between 1947 and 1956), Robinson struggled for acceptance by the white Protestant majority, just like Brooklyn's many immigrant Jews. “It took immigrants to appreciate the downtrodden, or the downtrodden to appreciate the downtrodden,” Golenbock tells LJ. “That's one of the themes of this book: without immigrants, this country wouldn't be half of what it is.” Neocons won't keep this behemoth next to their bedside Ann Coulter—Golenbock proudly and loudly criticizes George W. Bush—but this is a book that transcends politics as usual. The voices of several generations of Americans—black, white, male, female, Jewish, Muslim, Italian, Irish—make clear that every one of us has suffered at the hand of some evil, that every one of us is still an immigrant, whether we care to admit it or not. Rather than repeat the injustices of A. Mitchell Palmer, J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy, and, yes, Dubya, Golenbock's Brooklynites urge us to honor life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—true American ideals. “Bigotry is a terrible, terrible thing,” concludes Golenbock, “and the people in this book fought it. They didn't always win, but they didn't often lose either.”—Heather McCormack 
Don't Praise Me
Young-Eisendrath tells LJ of baby boom parents she's counseled: “Their suffering was palpable; these parents had devoted their lives, savings, and mental resources to trying to give their children the best possible of everything, but it wasn't working. The children were distressed, restless, distracted, or, worse, really cynical about themselves and their lives.” In younger parents, she noticed what seemed to be a “socially sanctioned obsession” with creating a “sociocultural niche for their young that could never be reproduced by the world outside the family.” And when they leave that falsely enriched, supportive environment, twentysomethings can't share dorm rooms or pay their dues in a career. In her book, Young-Eisendrath cites a recent survey that showed “a stunning 98 percent of college freshmen agreed with the statement 'I am sure that one day I will get to where I want to be in life,'” and she argues that it takes a decade of engagement to be able to make any sort of creative contribution to a field. When Young-Eisendrath noticed how hard it was to talk with young mothers about the potential danger of the cosseted environment they were creating for their children, she researched the phenomenon but was unable to find any new conversations about parenting. “Because parents and kids still believed that promoting the individual self of a child (praise and enhancement of individual abilities and performance, both real and imagined) would be the best path to long-term happiness,” she said. Parents of children under ten years old are most likely to resist her thesis, she thinks. “When you are a parent of a young child—especially a toddler or preschooler—you can still idealize yourself and your child. You can see your child as becoming just what you want him/her to become,” she explained. “You can't yet see your child's adult identity because the abstract skills and self-consciousness of later adolescence haven't yet been developed.” In addition to providing guidance and understanding to adults who feel themselves caught in the self-esteem trap, Young-Eisendrath opens up a whole new conversation on “What it takes to prepare a human being for a lifetime of engagement, creativity, satisfaction, and reverence.”—Anna Katterjohn 
Good Cooking
Fifteen years after publishing her last cookbook, Favorite Fruitcakes, Hodgson put all her experiences to good use. She decided to write a memoir, something she says has been at the back of her mind for many years. “I kept scrapbooks filled with anything from movie ticket stubs, matchbook covers, and the local paper currency to letters, postcards, and my (usually dismal) report cards,” she tells LJ. She also reveals that her sister and her parents had a “wonderful” sense of humor and would exchange stories around the dinner table. Recalling those stories was important because her family changed countries so often. As Hodgson observes, “I always hated it when we had to move on,” and she tried to pin down the memories of the place they'd just left. Hodgson's culinary adventures are reminiscent of chef Anthony Bourdain's exotic travels and unusual food experiences, but she says some of the things she has seen him “cheerfully scoff down give me pause.” Still, there's nothing edible that she will not try once, except that “Japanese fish called fugu that can paralyze you if the chef preparing it slips up.” She has never collaborated with Bourdain, but she has worked with star chefs Pierre Franey, Gordon Ramsay, and Marco Pierre White. Hodgson has been the restaurant critic for the New York Observer for over 20 years. She explains that her job there is fun and interesting, not just because she loves food and tasting new dishes but because restaurants are a “barometer of the times: about people, fashion, art, architecture, and, of course, social mores. Things have certainly changed since I first came to New York and Jackie Kennedy was thrown out of La Côte Basque for wearing a pantsuit!” Whether it's a plain peanut butter and jelly sandwich or a complex Moroccan stew made with intriguing spices, Hodgson enjoys food that's good. She likes “simplicity: ingredients that aren't gussied up but allowed to speak for themselves.” Speaking for herself, she's given anyone who loves reading about food a delectable treat.—Ann Burns 
History Made Novel
This lad, and a slip of a one, stands no taller than my chin. He's a filthy thing, more like a chimney sweep than a painter's apprentice—thin enough to slide down any flue. He reeked of lye and wood smoke. A poor boy, meager and pale, with a much-bitten, crusty scalp, all but shaved. A desperate boy, as I could see in his brown eyes, shuttered with lashes long—haunting eyes, weary beyond measure. He wore clothes that would have fit two of him: loose trousers secured with a rope, and a moth-eaten jacket I took to be his father's. He held in one hand a cap and in the other a wool satchel, stitched together with cotton, a handiwork I noted as he placed the thing on the table, after we crossed the hall to the parlor. He opened the bag. Why must I see his sketches? I need a lad of promise, one who will do my bidding, not one who pretends to Art. What matter his dreary drawings? Might I not be spared the clumsy courtesy of false praise? “Aye, what a fine eye for line, you have, Weston” (for that is the lad's name). “My, what an astonishing likeness of your sainted mother.” But. But. As he opened the bag, with his small, roughened hands, out came half a dozen likenesses, such as Hogarth himself might have made. Sweet Jesus. Charcoal on coarse paper. But the faces: young girls, rosy but knowing, and old men, wistful, and more than one of the same polished gentleman, of about my age, smiling with a kind of Lovelacian lovelessness that I cannot even describe. Surpassing work. My head near reeled at the sight, and I had to struggle to hide my joy. That I must have him, I know. But it will require a patch of deceit to secure him, for Reader, as you by now know all too well, I have aught to pay him, and not a sitter in sight. From the book Blindspot by Jane Kamensky & Jill Lepore, to be published by Spiegel & Grau, a division of Random House, Inc. Reprinted with permission. 
Unspeakable Need
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