# Book Review: A dazzlingly fun historical fiction, 'A True Account' tests the borders of reality
By **DONNA EDWARDS**
November 21, 2023. 1:23 PM EST

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Hannah Masury, for a brief time, was a pirate. At least, according to the mysterious manuscript that shows up on Professor Marian Beresford's desk, brought by a bright-faced student excited at the possibility of finding the treasure that Hannah left behind.

Novelist and historian Katherine Howe embarks on a dazzlingly fun historical fiction, "A True Account: Hannah Masury's Sojourn Amongst the Pyrates, Written by Herself: A Novel" - aptly named given the way it tests the boundaries between reality and imagination.

When undergrad Kay Lonergan brings Hannah's found manuscript to her professor, Marian's years of cynicism have hardened her. She highly doubts its authenticity and even points out the more doubtful details, verging on breaking the fourth wall. But Kay convinces Marian to approach her famous explorer of a father and persuade him, and his expedition society club, to back their trip in search of long-lost pirate booty.

And is that jealousy we detect in the professor? The further the story gets, the more it seems that Kay is everything Marian wishes she was: young, exciting, fashionable, carefree, commanding, self-assured. But Hannah's manuscript might be just the thing to spark some excitement into Marian's dull life - and to finally win her father's attention and approval.

History buffs will appreciate the accurate inclusion of figures such as pirate William Fly and Puritan preacher Cotton Mather. Those who aren't so thrilled about history will enjoy Hannah's wry take on the happenings of the early 1700s.

Mirrored in Hannah's restlessness with the status quo is Marian's inability to fit into the mold set for women of the early 1900s. She quickly becomes endeared to the young pirate who disguised herself as a cabin boy and went bravely adventuring with one of the world's most notoriously vicious pirates, Edward Low.

Hannah's manuscript, which is about half of the book, follows only hints of the linguistic style of 18th-century American literature. Mercifully, she's far more readable than Mathers.

"A True Account" is a slow start that picks up quickly into a wild voyage of satisfying twists and an even more satisfying ending. The story ties threads of fact and fiction into an intricate knot that's just as enjoyable to look at as it is to untangle.


# Book Review: 'I Would Meet You Anywhere' is a breathtaking account of an adoptee's search for family
By **DONNA EDWARDS**
November 20, 2023. 3:58 PM EST

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Susan Kiyo Ito always knew she was adopted, but uncovering her birth family became a decadeslong process marked by moments of warm connection and icy divides - raw stories compiled into a memoir that's alternately touching and heartbreaking.

Opening on the fateful moment when Ito is about to meet her birth mother for the first time, "I Would Meet You Anywhere" transcends a title and becomes a refrain throughout the book.

Ito's relationship with Yumi is fraught from the beginning, but her birth mother holds the key to the information she needs to find the other half of her DNA. Ito meets Yumi when and where the latter deems convenient - New Jersey, California, a small Midwestern town; in a house, a hotel, a hospital. And Ito would meet her anywhere.

In the process of finding her birth parents and piecing together her origins, Ito explores the theme of family - and what it means to occupy the various roles within it - pondering the symmetry in the first 17 years she spent living with her mom, Kikuko, taking care of her to the last 27 years of her mom's life when their roles reversed.

Meanwhile, Yumi flits in and out of the story, leaving the impression of her taking up more space than her physical presence.

Ito is left wondering about the reproductive choices that have shaped her life, starting with her conception. After all, what choice did Yumi have? Her family had started over with nothing after the United States forced them into internment camps, along with an estimated 120,000 other Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals.

There aren't many things Yumi refuses to talk about, but these topics are frustratingly the most important ones, big question marks that threaten to burn answerless into oblivion.

Unlike Yumi, the author is totally open about her thoughts, feelings and experiences. Ito's prose follows her mood; the default of easy conversational writing becomes stilted when she's upset, flowing when she's hopeful.

Part 2 ends in a burst of poetry disguised as prose, an astounding compilation of similes and squishy adjectives that perfectly capture a feeling that rests right on the periphery of language. It's an absolutely surreal moment of her life described the only way one can truly capture such a confluence of happenstance: with uncanny poetic prose that verges on nonsense, if it weren't so utterly fitting.

"I Would Meet You Anywhere" is breathtaking. Like a master quilter, Ito is able to find the patterns and fit them together in a beautiful, cohesive story that's balanced and satisfying, working in tandem to create a blanket of meaning enshrouding an entire life, plus some.


# Book Review: San Diego private eye tangles with FBI and Russian mob in fast-paced 'Odyssey's End'
By **BRUCE DESILVA**
November 20, 2023. 12:58 PM EST

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Author Matt Coyle has put San Diego private eye Rick Cahill through a lot in his fine series of crime novels. Rick has accumulated sinister enemies on both sides of the law. He's been shot and beaten so many times that his body is laced with scars. And he's in the early stages of CTE, a degenerative brain disease that unleashes fits of rage and may soon kill him.

His wife, convinced that Rick's work - and Rick himself -are too dangerous, has left him, taking their 20-month-old daughter with her.

As "Odyssey's End," the 10th book in the series, opens, Rick is considering another line of work but fears he's too much of an adrenaline junkie to give it up. Still, he can't quit just yet - not until he can tuck enough money aside to secure his little girl's future.

Such is his state of mind when two old enemies suddenly reappear. Sergei Volkov, a homicidal Russian mob boss who has reasons to want Rick dead, has just been released from federal prison. And Peter Stone, Rick's longtime nemesis, shows up with a surprising request.

Stone says he needs a kidney transplant, but aging, violent criminals don't rank high on donor lists. His only hope is an organ from his grown daughter, but she's gone missing. So Stone wants Rick to find her.

Rick figures Stone's story is a lie, or at least not the whole truth. Besides, there's no way Rich wants to work for this psychopath. But when Stone hands him $50,000 dollars, Rick reluctantly takes the job.

As he digs into the case, Rick is threatened by two FBI agents who mistakenly think he is searching for Theodore Raskin, the fugitive founder of a fraudulent crypto currency firm. Soon, more complications arise, and several people associated with Rick's investigation end up dead.

Coyle's prose is vivid and tight, his characters are well drawn, and the tension rarely lets up in this fast-paced tale of duplicity and betrayal. The climactic scene is a long-drawn-out gun battle in which Rick, armed with a handgun, takes on a small army of Russian mobsters brandishing automatic rifles. That Rick prevails is satisfying in a John Wick sort of way, but some readers might his survival a tad farfetched.


# Book Review: Benjamin Taylor's brief new biography of Willa Cather displays the devotion of a fan
By **ANN LEVIN**
November 14, 2023. 7:31 AM EST

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Benjamin Taylor has a thing for Willa Cather. This year, the 150th anniversary of her birth, he has written a passionate love letter to her in the form of a brief but illuminating biography. "Chasing Bright Medusas" clocks in at just over 150 pages but it offers a fine introduction to one of the leading novelists of the American frontier.

Taylor, a prize-winning author who also penned short books about Philip Roth and Marcel Proust, argues that Cather's move at age 9 from Virginia's Shenandoah Valley to Red Cloud, Nebraska, where for the first time she encountered Jews, Norwegians, Mexicans and immigrants of all kinds, was a foundational event that "made her a cosmopolitan while she was still a provincial."

He also demonstrates how, as she matured as a writer, she differed sharply from her younger contemporaries in the literary world, including Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald and Dos Passos, in her "unironic" idealism about America's possibility.

His other major themes include her complicated relationship to both gender and religion. About the former, he agrees with other critics who have simply taken her strong preference for women as a given. But he adds another layer of complexity by asserting that she preferred "to talk about love at its most exalted, above the reach of mere carnality... sexual nature is what she intends to rise above."

As for religion, he explains how it was closely bound up with her profound reverence for nature, especially the "harsh beauty of the Southwest," which "seemed to her the landscape of an inner life." It was also part and parcel of her desire for literary immortality. "There is no God but one God and Art is his revealer," Cather wrote to a friend when she was still in her early 20s. "That's my creed and I'll follow it to the end."

Portraying her as a relatively late bloomer - she had a lengthy stint in journalism before she began writing fiction - Taylor repeatedly marvels at both her physical courage and stamina and her iron discipline as a writer. He cites with admiration what she once wrote to a friend: "If only I could nail up the front door and live in a mess, I could simply become a fountain pen and have done with it - a conduit for ink to run through."

By marshaling judicious quotes from her letters as well as her short stories and novels, including such classics as "My Antonia" and "Death Comes for the Archbishop," Taylor makes a case for Cather's enduring place in the American literary canon.


# Book Review: 'UFO' is a detailed look at the history of the search for the truth that's out there
By **ANDREW DeMILLO**
November 13, 2023. 2:35 PM EST

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The truth may be out there, but making sense out of it isn't easy.

Discussion about unidentified flying objects has moved over the years from fodder for science fiction movies or jokes to the subject of congressional hearings. Garrett M. Graff's "UFO: The Inside Story of the U.S. Government's Search for Alien Life Here - and Out There" is the perfect guide for readers interested in learning how that discussion has evolved.

Graff offers an authoritative and objective look at the history of UFO sightings and research into the possibility of extraterrestrial life over the past 75 years.

It's a narrative as compelling as Graff's other works, including his history of Watergate, and requires the same skill that he's demonstrated in navigating government documents.

The deeply researched history traces the ways the government has struggled to wrap its arms around the questions raised by UFOs - or, as they're now known, "unidentified aerial phenomena" - sightings going back to the 1940s.

"It's not that the government knows something it doesn't want to tell us," Graff writes at the outset of the book. "It's that the government is uncomfortable telling us it doesn't know anything at all."

Graff profiles a sprawling cast of characters who have played a role in the search for UFOs and alien life over the years, from amateur ufologists to famed astronomer Carl Sagan to Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge.

They're all battling hoaxes and public skepticism and trying to overcome the lingering question first posed by physicist Enrico Fermi: if extraterrestrial life is prevalent, why don't we see more of it?

Graff highlights the advances in science that are made over the years in trying to answer that question, but also in showing just how vast and unknown the universe is.

The book shows how attitudes toward UFOs have changed over the years, not just by scientists and the government but also in popular culture. Those shifting attitudes have led to more openness about discussing sightings, and the national security implications of not knowing what they could be.

Graff is unlikely to convert firm skeptics, but he may at least convince them to keep an open mind the next time they read about UFOs or UAPs.


# Book Review: Rock 'n' roller and Rush pioneer Geddy Lee goes deep in his memoir, 'My Effin' Life'
By **MARK KENNEDY**
November 14, 2023. 7:28 AM EST

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Geddy Lee is a rock star, that's undeniable. But he's also a polite Canadian to the core. So it's fitting that the Rush icon picked a not-too-bawdy title for his memoir.

"My Effin' Life" is an engrossing tale of a "classic underachiever" who became a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame vocalist, bassist, and keyboard player. It's a great read for anyone interested in the brilliant prog-rock trio or the music scene from the 1970s onward.

Lee's writing is a lot like his band's songs - deep, gloriously nerdy, sometimes wandering and wonderfully thoughtful. It's a 400-page narrative from a perfectionist who calls himself "Mr. Bossypants."

"It's a compulsion to exhaust every possibility to make the perfect record," he writes. "I don't want to have to live with errors. Impossible, I know, but what's the effin' point of not shooting for the moon?"

The book is enlivened by photos of scrawled lyric sheets, studio doodles and private emails as Lee traces the rise of a band who faced a pre-MTV landscape, a lack of coast-to-coast progressive radio network or sympathetic critics. One reviewer said he sounded like "a guinea pig with an amphetamine habit."

Readers will go chronologically as Rush - including guitarist Alex Lifeson and drummer and lyricist Neil Peart - go from sleeping on luggage in the back of a rented station wagon to five-star hotels. Along the way there are dubious sartorial choices like kimonos and lots of cocaine.

The band - considered the patron saints of brainy, technical, ambitious rock - leans on all kinds of sources, from the sci-fi of Robert. A Heinlein and J.R.R. Tolkien, to Ayn Rand, Rod Serling and Jean-Paul Sartre.

There are hard-won tips for musicians, like never believing any producer who says "Don't worry, lads. It'll all be fixed in the mix." Lee also advises bands to demand final approval on everything, offer soundchecks and take your wallet onstage. One tip seems universal: "Do NOT drop psychedelics before an interview."

It's a treat to see Lee geek out on audio equipment - like "the JP-8 with its trendy arpeggiator fed by an 808 drum box" - and later wine. Sipping a glass of 1978 Musigny he writes may be the most rewarding experience he's had.

A private treasure is seeing the photo - snapped by a friend - that captured the moment Lee and his future wife Nancy first locked lips. "How many folks can boast a relationship of 50-plus years and still have a photo of their very first kiss?" he writes.

Lee throws shade at musician Billy Preston and producer Steve Lillywhite but also turns his critical eye on himself - his neuroses and poor husbanding - and his band, writing that with the album "Vapor Trails," they "disappeared up our own asses."

One thing to beware of is Lee's modesty, like the time he casually mentions that he became "besotted" by baseball. In actuality, he has a massive collection of baseball memorabilia, including balls signed by the Beatles and Shoeless Joe Jackson.

Lee - born Gershon Eliezer Weinrib - was a "shy, long-haired, brooding character" who grew up in Toronto, born to parents who survived the Holocaust. This is not something he tosses off - it causes echoes throughout his life.

Chapter 3 - Lee says you can skip it, but you mustn't - is a meticulously examination of the horrific paths his parents took into hell, a 40-page indictment of Nazi evil that starts in Poland and ends with his mom rescued at Bergen-Belsen and dad from Dachau. Lee's laser-focus on details is put to astounding use here.

He suspects his earliest vocal style may have been rooted in his childhood "listening to the stories of what my parents had endured in the camps, suffering all the bullying and alienation, so that when I did begin to sing it did come rushing out as a screaming banshee."

This is a memoir where tragedy seems always around the corner, especially later when bandmate Peart is tortured by loss. The memoir even ends with a scene in a Toronto cemetery where Lee introduces his grandson, Finnian, to the boy's great-great grandfather - in the ground.

It may be hard in parts but always worth it. It's an effin' good read.


# Book Review: Mitch Albom spins moving Holocaust tale in 'The Little Liar'
By **ROB MERRILL**
November 13, 2023. 9:36 AM EST

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Mitch Albom's books often capture the zeitgeist, but his new novel about the fate of Greek Jews during World War II packs a particular punch in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7.

"The Little Liar" tells the story of four interconnected characters, three of them Jews living in Salonika, Greece, at the onset of Germany's invasion, and the other a Third Reich devotee carrying out Hitler's orders on the Mediterranean island.

Nico Krispis is the title character and it's his journey from a beautiful boy who has never told a lie to a Nazi pawn that drives the novel. Nico and his brother, Sebastian, are just boys when the story begins and by the end they're middle-aged men who have lived lives defined by the choices they made during the war. Between them is their childhood friend Fannie, who both boys crushed on when they were growing up, and who Sebastian throws off a train bound for Auschwitz at the start of the novel.

The book's narrator presents as the definition of reliable: "I am Truth. And this is a story about a boy who tried to break me." Truth often breaks the fourth wall and "speaks" directly to the reader and sometimes the plot is broken up by parables, as in the one where Parable himself urges Truth to don colorful clothes instead of walking about naked and scaring the populace. That story precedes a chapter called "The Lie of Resettlement" - which explains the myth that Germans told Jews about their destination in the east where they would live and work with their families as they boarded cattle cars bound for concentration camps.

Revealing more plot details is counterproductive for a story whose full scope, like a distant image coming into focus through a lens, sharpens with each turn of the page. As with all Albom books, the pages turn quickly. For most, this is a book that will be read in just one or two sittings. But no matter how long it takes, it will stay with you.

Inspired by what really happened to 50,000 Jewish people living in Greece during the Holocaust, Albom has created art that can be added to the long list of movies, music, theater and books that are humanity's best hope to deliver on the words inscribed on memorials around the world: "Never Forget."


# Book Review: Alice McDermott's 'Absolution' captures America with Vietnam War in the background
By **ANITA SNOW**
November 8, 2023. 1:31 PM EST

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Living in Western diplomatic privilege with cooks and maids and drivers, the women in the new novel "Absolution" spend their days attending luncheons, lectures and cocktail parties as the Vietnam War rumbles in the background.

It's 1963 Saigon, but the wives of ambitious American attorneys and engineers are focused on writing clever letters with French phrases to be slipped into light blue airmail envelopes and the daily dressing rituals that include girdles, stockings and white dress shields fastened with tiny gold safety pins.

Alice McDermott's ninth novel perfectly captures the manner and mood of that era and the constricted lives that women led as "helpmeets" for their husbands. McDermott won the National Book Award for her novel "Charming Billy."

In "Absolution," Irish American newlywed Tricia is just 23, proud of her handsome engineer husband who is on loan to the Navy and hoping they can quickly start a family during their time in southeast Asia.

Tricia soon meets Charlene, who is slightly older and has three children. Charlene is dedicated to doing good by raising money to stuff baskets with toys and candy that she and the other ladies deliver to hospitals and later a leper colony. Tricia is pulled into the group of women right away.

Barbie dolls are a new trend and Charlene comes up with an idea for a doll outfit that the other Americans can't resist: a traditional Vietnamese ensemble of slim white pants and overdress, topped off with a conical hat.

Barbie's Vietnamese-style getup made by a talented local seamstress is huge success and Charlene raises ever more cash for her charitable deeds.

The words "absolution" and "absolved" pop up repeatedly in the book that serves as a nod to " The Quiet American," another look at early U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Its author, English writer Graham Greene, was a Catholic convert who used his own novels to study the moral questions of modern times.

Tricia, raised a devout Catholic in the years before Vatican II, learns during her year in Vietnam about obligation, grace and sacrifice even as everything seems to collapse around her. She's looking for absolution - a forgiveness of sins - in an imperfect world she can't control and she doesn't always understand.

Tricia finally has some questions answered 60 years later, when Charlene's daughter, Rainey, finds her living as a widow in Washington and they relive their memories of that time.

Just like America's involvement in Vietnam, Tricia looks back to see that even good intentions can have terrible consequences, but absolution is possible in the end.


# Book Review: Tess Gerritsen writes an un-put-downable spin on espionage novels with 'The Spy Coast'
By **DONNA EDWARDS**
November 6, 2023. 3:03 PM EST

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Maggie Bird just wants to relax into a quiet retirement, raising chickens in the cold little town of Purity, Maine. Even in these remote woods, though, trouble manages to find her. She'll have to face her past if she has any hope of staying alive.

Spy novel meets travelog with a murder mystery in "The Spy Coast," Book 1 of the new "Martini Club" series. Engrossing from the get-go, Tess Gerritsen's prose is undeniable - a true professional at sucking you right into the story.

When a young spy shows up dead outside Maggie's home, her friends immediately jump to action, recalling their former lives as CIA operatives.

They may be in their 60s now, but these retirees are more than capable, exasperating Officer Jo Thibodeau. While the young police chief's involvement in the case is an annoying obstacle for Maggie, she can't help but be beguiled by this woman who reminds her of her former self. Jo's constant run-ins with the self-named Martini Club promise her character will have a lasting place in this fiction.

Throughout the novel, we learn about Maggie's final job 16 years ago: Operation Cyrano. These flashbacks slowly reveal bits about Danny - the man Maggie met in Bangkok - and his connection to the messy end of her career.

In her author's note, Gerritsen says she "wanted to write about spies who don't look like James Bond." She exceeded her goal by miles, handling the Martini Club's old age beautifully and foregoing a glamorized portrayal of espionage in favor of one that reflects a grind - a job just like any other, except for the high likelihood of death.

Gerritsen has dozens of titles under her belt, including the novels that inspired the TV series "Rizzoli & Isles," and her wealth of experience shows. She makes it look seamlessly easy; every piece fits together, every chapter is gripping and fun, blood spatters are described with just the right level of ominous medical accuracy. And with the same level of detail, she describes amazing dishes from around the world, their flavor notes mouthwateringly cataloged.

Most chapters focus on Maggie, the only character to get first-person perspective, though Gerritsen affords us the occasional, tantalizing glimpse into what's going on with other key players. It's the perfect mix - Maggie completely won me over, and getting to be in her head is an absolute treat.

"The Spy Coast" is a positively devourable and un-put-downable start to what promises to be an excellent series.


# Book Review: Solitary writer ruminates on grief, love and writing during pandemic's first spring
By **ANN LEVIN**
November 6, 2023. 10:29 AM EST

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The flood of pandemic literature shows no sign of letting up. In the three-plus years since the COVID-19 lockdown, we have seen fiction from the likes of Gary Shteyngart, Elizabeth Strout and many others. Now Sigrid Nunez, author of "Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag" and the National Book Award-winning "The Friend," has written a pandemic novel called "The Vulnerables."

The title refers to the groups of people, including the elderly, considered at high risk of getting severely ill at the start of the pandemic in spring 2020. The unnamed narrator, a stand-in for the 72-year-old author, is among them.

In the publishing world "The Vulnerables" is classified as a novel but it more often reads like an elegant, funny essay about what it felt like to be stuck in New York City in the early days of the lockdown, when your wealthier friends fled to their country houses, leaving you alone with a bad case of writer's block.

The narrator broods about the writing life even though she knows that "whenever I write something about writing or being a writer, I am annoying the hell out of some people." Indeed, self-awareness is a great part of her charm. "For the writer," she muses, "obsessive rumination is a must."

About halfway through the book, Nunez stumbles on something like a plot: the narrator is asked to take care of a male parrot named Eureka for a couple stranded in California by the pandemic. The college student who had agreed to do it has fled the city, too, in a worrying display of Gen Z irresponsibility. Then he returns, in part because he missed the bird. "We're bros, he explained, to make me feel even more left out."

Initially antagonistic, they slowly form a bond over edibles, vegan ice cream and microdoses of psilocybin. I briefly wondered whether Nunez was heading into "Harold and Maude" territory, the 1971 movie about a troubled young man who falls in love with a much older woman.

But as a writer and academic thoroughly steeped in literary theory, Nunez knows that a conventional marriage plot is not an option in contemporary fiction, not "with the world on fire and its systems collapsing... with hope after hope turning out to have been merely false hope." Plus, someone like her likely would have thought that he was not just too troubled but also too young. And so, their unlikely friendship becomes just one more oddball incident in this elegiac essay-novel.


# Book Review: Edel Rodriguez shows Cuban history as a warning for the US in new graphic memoir 'Worm'
By **DONNA EDWARDS**
November 6, 2023. 9:48 AM EST

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Decades before Edel Rodriguez made his iconic, mouth-only political illustration of Donald Trump for the cover of Time magazine, he was a boy growing up in Fidel Castro's Cuba.

In his new graphic memoir, "Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey," Rodriguez mixes historical context and personal stories to recount his harrowing journey growing up under - then escaping - Communism and authoritarianism in Cuba, as well as the warning signs he recognizes in America today.

Before diving into his life, Rodriguez paints a picture of the Cuba he was born into, starting with a short history of the Cuban Revolution that culminated in the January 1959 insurrection and Castro seizing power.

Then, Rodriguez zooms in to focus on the small town of El Gabriel, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Havana, where his family has lived for generations. Here we see the echoes of Cuban politics in Edel's daily life as his grandfather saves every scrap and his grandmother warns that the walls have ears.

The style is similar to the simplistic but expressive look of his famed political cartoons, but with a printmaking look. Rodriguez uses a limited, layered color palette - mainly red, green and black like the Pan-African flag.

But the mildly cartoon-y style is sometimes broken up by detailed portraits and elegant compositions. A depiction of his grandmother holding young Edel early in the book recalls Dorothea Lange's photojournalism of the Great Depression, surrounded by streaky black darkness. Depictions of roses, a skull, a goat and a Santería evil eye dance around them, illuminated in sepia spotlights and looking like they could have come straight from a deck of tarot cards. It makes for a arresting piece that takes up the entire page.

Most of the panels in "Worm" are large - if not full-page illustrations, the space is often split into thirds or halves, letting traditional paneling fall by the wayside in favor of sweeping images marked by chunky notes of narration. Even speech bubbles tend toward full paragraphs.

Uniquely positioned to comment on autocracies and authoritarianism, Rodriguez reveals his personal fears about the future of the United States, particularly after the Jan. 6 insurrection. He portrays the crowd on the Capitol much like the one in Havana in January 1959 that start the novel, bringing it full-circle in a striking visual comparison.

It's these moments at the end that bump "Worm" up from good to great.

The final chapter is a touching, personal interview with Edel's father. Namely, he wants to know, why did his parents take such risks to put their family on a rickety old fishing boat for an overnight voyage to Florida? Why go to America, when they were already preparing paperwork for Spain?

After everything Edel and his family went through, after seeing how his peers who stayed in Cuba fared, after witnessing how narrowly the U.S. managed to hang onto democracy, what his father passes along proves a heart-rending ending that gives a slight tilt to the story, reframing Rodriguez's historical memoir as a sincere warning.


# Book Review: 'The Warped Side of Our Universe' a novel look at secrets of cosmos
By **ANDREW DeMILLO**
October 30, 2023. 11:42 AM EST

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Black holes, wormholes and other mysteries of the universe are so firmly embedded in popular culture - from Carl Sagan's "Contact" to Christopher Nolan's "Interstellar" - that readers with no scientific background have some images in mind when the concepts are mentioned.

But in "The Warped Side of Our Universe: An Odyssey Through Black Holes, Wormholes, Time Travel, and Gravitational Waves," physicist Kip Thorne and artist Lia Halloran find a novel approach to exploring these topics in startling detail.

The collaboration between the two is just as fascinating as the book itself. Thorne is among three astrophysicists who won the Nobel prize in physics in 2017 for their research into gravitational waves. For the past 13 years he and Halloran have partnered on this book as a way to explain the research that has helped shed light on the far reaches the universe.

Written in verse form, Thorne's writing is perfectly complemented by Halloran's vivid illustrations in explaining how that research has pierced a universe that is "varied and vast."

The paintings portray a swirling universe of wonders, explaining a black hole's characteristics with images of Halloran's wife being bent by its warped spacetime. Images of other scientists such as Sagan and Stephen Hawking appear throughout the paintings in the book, alongside illustrations of black holes colliding and wormholes metamorphizing into time machines.

The book guides readers through the history of the research into these concepts, including the work on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, that led to the 2017 Nobel. And it offers a glimpse at the work ahead that physicists hope will reveal more about the birth of the universe.


# Book Review: Henry Winkler grapples with the Fonz and dyslexia in his entertaining new memoir
By **MARK KENNEDY**
October 31, 2023. 10:02 PM EST

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Henry Winkler's memoir begins on a Tuesday morning in October 1973, at his first audition for "Happy Days." He was almost 28 - quite a bit old for a high schooler - and struggling with something he didn't know had a name.

"Being Henry: The Fonz... and Beyond," released Tuesday by Celadon Books, is a breezy, inspirational story of one of Hollywood's most beloved figures who became an unlikely TV screen icon and later a champion for those with dyslexia.

Winkler's 245-page book charts his course chronologically from the Fonz to "Barry" - and the frustrating fallow periods in between - painting a portrait of a man trying to overcome a bitter, loveless childhood and a disability that made reading impossibly hard and simply trying to become a better man.

"I was, in my mind, always a little boy," he writes. "My real self was like a kernel of corn sheathed in yards of concrete - as insulated as the nuclear material at Chernobyl."

He describes himself at the "Happy Days" audition as "a short Jew from New York City with a unibrow and hair down to my shoulders, confident about next to nothing in my life." He had graduated from Yale's drama school and bagged a few roles despite having difficulty reading.

The Fonz almost never happened for him: The fearsome Barry Diller, then head of development for ABC, and future Disney CEO Michael Eisner were skeptical of Winkler getting the part. But writer-creator Garry Marshall saw something.

Later, Winkler dishes, the immense popularity of the Fonz eclipsed anyone else on the show and the network secretly approached him with the idea of spinning off a show or changing the name to "Fonzie's Happy Days." Winkler refused.

The end of "Happy Days" brought its own stress for a man who admits that "worrying is my favorite indoor sports." He writes: "I was terrified of being a flash in the pan. A one-hit wonder. Was I?"

Over the years, there were guest spots on shows like "Arrested Development," "Royal Pains" and "Parks and Recreation" until finally "Barry," the show in 2018 that would prove a second tentpole to his career and produce his first primetime Emmy.

In 2003, Winkler branched out into children's books with Lin Oliver, writing about the adventures of Hank Zipzer, a young boy with dyslexia who overcomes many learning challenges.

The 28-book series "Hank Zipzer: The World's Greatest Underachiever" was based on Winkler's own experience with undiagnosed dyslexia. "At the height of my fame and success, I felt embarrassed, inadequate," he writes.

The memoir is enlivened by an unusual move: Winkler includes long reaction passages from his wife, Stacey, who is pretty brutal about Winkler's immaturity, his parenting, his own parents and a crippling fear of poverty. "A very big thing I'd learned about Henry was that when he wasn't working, he was absolutely miserable. Adrift. Insecure. Anxious," she writes.

It's telling that Winkler - who writes he has lately benefited from therapy - includes a frank perspective from outside his own head.

There are fun moments throughout: How Winkler came to produce "MacGyver" and how he got fired from directing "Turner & Hooch." There's a hysterical section about trying to direct Burt Reynolds in "Cop & ½" and, while Winkler is a nice guy, he's still capable of throwing some shade at Michael Keaton.

He wonderfully captures the late Robin Williams - "within 42 seconds, I knew, I was in the presence of greatness" - and how ABC made Ron Howard so mad during "Happy Days" that he became a film director almost out of spite.

But one figure looms over this book and career - the Fonz, whose moody expression fills the back cover. Winkler by the end has come to peace with his creation.

"For a long time after 'Happy Days,' I was saddened that the world could only see me as the Fonz," he writes. "But I never lost sight of what the character gave me - a roof over my head, food on the table, my children's education - and how much it gave me in terms of introducing me to the whole world."


# Book Review: 'White Holes' by Carlo Rovelli reads more like poetry than science lesson
By **ANDREW DeMILLO**
October 30, 2023. 10:33 AM EST

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It doesn't take a degree in astrophysics or expertise on Albert Einstein to appreciate "White Holes," theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli's latest book. But brushing up on Dante Alighieri's work might help.

Rovelli liberally sprinkles quotes from Dante throughout his slim book exploring the hypothesis that black holes eventually transform into an inverse white hole. It's fitting for a book that says as much about imagination and exploration as it does about physics.

Oftentimes, Rovelli's book feels more like poetry than a science lesson as he explains black holes in striking detail and the theoretical concepts behind white holes.

Unlike black holes, there is no proof that white holes exist. There are no satellite images of them. As Rovelli describes them, white holes are another solution of Einstein's equation, "how a black hole would appear if we could film it and run the film in reverse."

In the book, Rovelli says he keeps two readers in mind when he's writing - those who know nothing about physics that he can communicate to, and those who know everything but he can offer new perspectives.

That's why there are no equations to pore over as Rovelli explains the nature of black holes and how time and gravity operate differently in white holes. A handful of illustrations, however do help in walking readers through these concepts.

The book won't turn lay readers into an expert on white holes or theoretical physics. But Rovelli helps readers grasp how important imagination is to seeing the universe in new ways is, for both artists and scientists.

"Science and art are about the continual reorganization of our conceptual space, of what we call meaning," Rovelli writes.


# Book Review: Broad themes meet niche topics in Fadipe's debut novel 'The Sun Sets in Singapore'
By **DONNA EDWARDS**
October 30, 2023. 10:02 AM EST

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Dara's dream of defying the odds and becoming a partner at her firm is just within reach when Lani enters the picture. This handsome Nigerian man is about to irrevocably change her life, and her best friend's and the newcomer to their book club's lives, too.

Kehinde Fadipe's debut novel, "The Sun Sets in Singapore," brings three expat Nigerian women to the stage to highlight the specific struggles that come with their race, gender and backgrounds - particularly in an upscale and competitive environment like Singapore.

Lani is joining Dara's firm, and the timing is impeccable for undermining the years of cutthroat efforts and ludicrous hours she's sunk into her job trying to secure a partnership. She tells her best friend, Amaka, in hopes they can dig up some dirt on the guy and figure out what to do.

But Amaka, who's trying to keep her workplace romance and the battle over her father's estate thoroughly compartmentalized, is zapped by an immediate attraction to Lani. Her coping mechanism of choice is pricey shoes and handbags, and with the stresses piling up, Amaka's on track to blow through everything her father left.

Then there's Lillian, a former concert pianist who followed her husband from the United States to Singapore in an attempt to escape her demons. But the emotional scars left by the death of her parents at an early age can't be outrun. When she sees Lani, he's the spitting image of her father. The grief, stress and aimlessness that have ruled her life for so long begin to bubble over.

The women find themselves in the same book club, which cycles through tons of enticing titles that Fadipe has kindly included a list of at the end of the novel. When the women get into discussing the books they've read, it's clearly a statement on the story; halfway through, there's essentially a book report on "Americanah" about the way women oppress each other. It's heavy handed, but it works.

Fadipe's novel tackles broad, common themes: misogyny in the workplace, family strife and love triangles. But it's also exceptionally niche.

Dara loves Greek mythology, Amaka knows designer fashion inside and out, and classical music is embedded in Lillian like DNA. Plus, their very status as Nigerians in Singapore is a rarity that brings up hyper-specific experiences unfamiliar to most Western readers. It's uncomfortable, cool, and confusing all at once. And in the moments when you know the reference, it's highly rewarding.

"The Sun Sets in Singapore" is charming, sweet, funny and emotional - but also exhausting. Its high drama, quick turns and brutally unrelenting pace demand you keep up or drop out, which makes it all the more disappointing when the pivotal climax is as clear as day with a red flag the size of Singapore waving right in readers' faces for pages. The tone doesn't change between the women's chapters, so I found myself flipping back on multiple occasions to figure out which "she" we were reading about.

Would I read it again? No. Am I glad I read it? Absolutely. Just the opportunity to experience something completely new makes "The Sun Sets in Singapore" worth picking up and discussing at your own book club.


# Book Review: 'A Brief History of Intelligence' may help humans shape the future of AI
By **ROB MERRILL**
October 23, 2023. 2:28 PM EST

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Ever wonder how Homo sapiens got so smart? How come we developed actual language when all the other animals didn't? How about what first made a nematode turn its body in a different direction? Or... what's a nematode?

Answers to those questions and much, much more can be found in the pages of Max Bennett's new book "A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI and the Five Breakthroughs that Made Our Brains." At 365 pages plus 45 more with a glossary, chapter notes and a bibliography, readers can quibble whether it's indeed brief, but it is certainly thorough.

Bennett's premise - he's a software entrepreneur who founded a company called Bluecore that "helped predict what consumers would buy before they knew what they wanted" - is that humans won't ever create true artificial intelligence without understanding exactly what led to the real intelligence we already possess. So he begins with those nematodes - worms, to you and me - and painstakingly details the five breakthroughs that over the course of billions of years evolved into the three-pound brain that is folded into all of our skulls.

The first half of the book is a touch dry, detailing not only what caused worms to turn (food!), but how fish learn via trial and error and the pivotal role the basal ganglia plays in dictating behavior, among many, many other evolutionary developments. Bennett cites the work of psychologists and neuroscientists every step of the way and includes plenty of charts and graphs to make his points. It can feel like you're reading a textbook at times. But to his credit, he begins each new chapter with actual prose, as in this description of the Cambrian explosion more than 500 million years ago: "The gooey microbial mats of the Ediacaran that turned the ocean floor green would have long since faded and given way to a more familiar sandy underbelly. The sensible, slow, and small creatures of the Ediacaran would have been replaced by a bustling zoo of large mobile animals as varied in form as in size."

When Bennett begins to connect the evolution of the human brain to where we are in the development of artificial intelligence is when the book, for this reader, gets more interesting. Why can't machines truly learn? Even ChatGPT, which every industry seems to be embracing these days, can't "learn things sequentially," writes Bennett. "They learn things all at once and then stop learning." We've trained ChatGPT using the entire contents of the Internet, but the software can't learn new things because of the risk that it will forget old things, or learn the wrong things.

Bennett is intelligent enough not to draw any conclusions about AI in a field that is changing daily, but he does end his book with a challenge. Evolution gave us our magnificent human brain, he writes, and now that we are in a position to play god and create a new form of intelligence, we must first decide on our goal - are we destined to spread out across the cosmos? Or will we fail, victims of pride or climate change or something yet unseen, just another branch on the evolutionary tree, which will grow on without humans and perhaps never add a limb called "Artificial Intelligence?" No reader alive today will live long enough for that answer, but Bennett makes a solid case for why reverse engineering the human brain may lead to future breakthroughs in the science of AI.


# Book Review: Sandra Newman puts a feminist spin on '1984' with 'Julia'
By **ROB MERRILL**
October 23, 2023. 12:58 PM EST

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Rejoice, comrades! Almost 75 years after George Orwell's "1984" was published in 1949, readers can return to Airstrip One with its Newspeak and Ministries of Truth, Peace, Love and Plenty. On second thought, maybe it's not a place anyone wants to revisit. Maybe Orwell's depiction of an ultra-totalitarian society in which "doublethink" - "Truth is Hate. Plenty is Hate. Peace is Hate. Love is Hate" - rules, hits a little too close to the real world in 2023.

But don't let that argument dissuade you from reading Sandra Newman's remarkable new novel, "Julia." Marketed as a "retelling" of "1984" (Orwell's estate actually approved its publication), it's not quite as bleak as its progenitor. And the omniscient third-person feminist perspective from inside the head of Winston Smith's lover, Julia, is refreshing.

Julia is a mechanic in the Ministry of Truth's Fiction Department, "perpetually fascinated by the plot machinery, how it worked and the ways it could go wrong." When we first meet her, she's an ideal citizen - embracing the Party line in public, but always cognizant of Big Brother watching via the ubiquitous telescreens and expressing her cynicism only in private. Oh, and she's falling in love with a young woman named Vicky at the hostel where they both live. In fact, it's Vicky's fondness for Julia that sets in motion the events that spark the plot of "1984." The love note Julia slips to Winston Smith? Turns out Vicky actually slipped it first to Julia!

"1984" fans will enjoy experiencing the story from this point forward through Julia's eyes, but for readers who aren't Orwellian scholars, it's important that "Julia" hold up on its own as well. Newman introduces the tenets of the Party - "War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength" - and describes the surveillance society of Big Brother in great detail and it's all just as horribly shocking as when you read it the first time.

Don't be discouraged though - after Winston and Julia, ahem, "rat" each other out to their torturers, we're treated to a "Part Three" that actually goes beyond the plot of "1984." It's the rare answer to that perennial question at the end of a good book, "and then what happened?" And for a little while, just a little, readers can hope that rebellions aren't always doomed, and an individual might have some power over the collective.


# Book Review: Dolly Parton gives a tour of her closet in 'Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones'
By **MAE ANDERSON**
October 17, 2023. 1:30 PM EST

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Dolly Parton's iconic look -- big hair, big heels and tight low-cut dresses covered in rhinestones or beads - is a big part of her lasting appeal, nearly as important as her vast catalogue of country ballads and bangers that made her a star.

In "Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones," Parton takes fans on a detailed tour through her closet, filled with 450 vivid photos of decades of sparkly dresses, jumpsuits, jeans and even wigs, which she started wearing early in her career.

She chronicles how she always knew she wanted a maximalist, flashy look, and stayed true to her personal style despite seemingly endless objections by her father, managers and others who always wanted her to "tone it down."

"From early on I loved the big hair and makeup, the long nails, the high heels, the flashy clothes," she writes. "But believe it or not, I had to fight for that look."

Starting with replicas of Dolly's "Coat of Many Colors," based on her famous song about a coat her mother made her, Dolly gives a tour of how her style evolved through the decades, from the country costumes she wore as the "girl singer" on "The Porter Wagoner Show" in the late 1960s and early 1970s, to the jumpsuits she wore during her rising solo career and the flashy rhinestone-studded gowns and outfits she wore making it big in Hollywood movies like "9 to 5" and "Rhinestone."

The book is a joint effort with her niece, Rebecca Seaver, and music journalist Holly George-Warren. It includes profiles and remembrances from her favorite designers, makeup artists and stylists and others that help put together Parton's famous look. And fans can get a glimpse of some of Parton's outfits at an accompanying exhibit at Lipscomb University in Nashville Oct. 31-Dec. 9.


# Book Review: Sly Stone wants to take you higher in memoir with tales of funk, drugs and survival
By **CHRISTOPHER WEBER**
October 17, 2023. 11:03 AM EST

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While summoning stories from his remarkable yet erratic life in music, Sly Stone admits he occasionally had to depend on the recollections of others because his own memory wasn't always reliable.

At one point in his new memoir, Stone, now 80, remembers that during the hazy excesses of his 1970s rock stardom he briefly shared a Los Angeles mansion with a baboon that had the run of the place. He's just not sure where the primate came from.

"I forgot where I got him?" Stone muses. "Baboon store?"

His book, co-written with Ben Greenman, overflows with wit and wordplay befitting a maestro whose funkiest song with his band the Family Stone was "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" - also the title of the book.

Born Sylvester Stewart in Texas and raised in Vallejo, California, across the bay from San Francisco, he studied music composition at a junior college while working as a radio DJ, becoming known for his whimsical patter and eclectic playlists.

Stone clearly recalls his early and evolving vision of a no-barriers style of music that would meld Motown pop-soul, James Brown's funk, R&B, gospel and psychedelic rock. Shortly after forming in 1966, Sly and the Family Stone produced a string of sunny hits including "Everyday People," "I Want To Take You Higher," "Hot Fun in the Summertime" and "Stand!" that captured the hippy spirit of the times.

Stone's band included Black and white musicians while featuring women not just singing but playing instruments - a rarity at the time. A triumphant set at Woodstock and a star turn in the subsequent film of the concert made him a household name.

"Rhythm, melody and lyrics carried inspiration to the people," he writes. That inspiration became a lasting influence for generations of artists including The Jackson 5, Prince and countless hip-hop acts.

Stone's music took a darker and more cynical turn as drugs took hold and the dream of the '60s devolved into political assassinations, racial strife and lingering war in Vietnam. He takes readers through the agonizing recording process of his 1971 classic "There's a Riot Goin' On," on which he says he "sacrificed technique for feeling." The album has an anguished tone, exemplified by the volatile funk of the single "Luv N' Haight."

Meanwhile at concerts, fans never knew whether they'd get one of his famously ecstatic performances, or if Stone would bother showing up at all.

He espoused Black Power, but not loudly enough for Black Panthers, who accused Stone of acquiescing to white America. Meanwhile, some white people thought he was too militant. While unafraid to be political, he remained defiantly nonviolent and never shook the notion that, yes, people can all get along. "We exist to coexist," he writes.

That uplifting spirit returns, if only sporadically, for 1973's "Fresh," his last great album. The band splintered soon after and Stone entered a decades-long cycle of addiction, middling solo offerings, doomed tours and tax troubles.

Predictably, the memoir contains no shortage of occasionally humorous - but mostly bleak - backstage tales of debauchery and drug abuse. While on tour in his glory days Stone carried a violin case filled with cocaine. Later he said he went on PCP binges because "it threw your perspective off, which I liked." Eventually he was overtaken by a dependence on crack cocaine that drained his talents, ruined relationships and led to regular stints in jail and rehab.

"Arrest records were the new records, and I was hitting the charts," he writes. "Court dates were my new concerts, and I was still just as good as arriving on time."

Hip-hop empresario Questlove, whose publishing imprint produced the book, writes in the introduction that "Sly has lived a hundred lives, and they are all here." Fans will certainly appreciate the vivid accounts from recording studios, concert stages and star-studded parties. But readers looking for personal insights will come away disappointed. Stone is self-aware but not particularly self-reflective.

However, even during his gloomiest days, Stone said he relied on his compositions to keep the darkness out, always remaining true to "the larger idea of music as a spiritual force."


# Book Review: Clever new novel uses museum wall labels to narrate life story of rich American woman
By **ANN LEVIN**
October 16, 2023. 11:02 AM EST

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Christine Coulson, who spent 25 years working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has written a short, clever novel that tells the story of a woman over the course of her life in a series of museum wall labels. In doing so, she acknowledges a sad but undeniable truth - that for much of the 20th century and perhaps even today, a certain kind of wealthy, white socialite in America was nothing more than an object to be critiqued, described, evaluated and displayed.

The woman's name is Caroline Margaret Brooks Whitaker, better known as Kitty, and she is indisputably the star of "One Woman Show." We are meant to read her life story as if we were walking through an exhibition at a museum like the Met, gazing at a set of related decorative objects laid out in chronological order in a series of vitrines.

At the start of the show, it is 1911 and Kitty, a girl of 5, is declared to be "a masterpiece," "all fireworks," a "golden child," depicted under the watchful gaze of her doting parents, Minty and Whit Whitaker. At age 10, she already has "porcelain manners" yet senses her "suffocating" future: "the fragile need to be forever cared for according to someone else's tastes and appetites."

For the rest of the novel, the object labels offer up a road map of her well-bred life: from the Chapin School on Manhattan's Upper East Side to Miss Porter's in Connecticut, where Kitty practices balancing books on her head to improve her posture. Then the "privileged bohemia" of Smith College where, like former first lady Barbara Bush, she drops out after freshman year to get married. In her case, to the heir to a Pittsburgh mining fortune, whom she met at an Egyptian-themed spring cotillion in 1925. She is excited about being the centerpiece of a "new dynastic collection."

Occasionally, Coulson inserts a page of dialogue to flesh out the motivations of the characters. But it is remarkable how much information she can convey about Kitty's life, including her infertility, multiple marriages and touch of kleptomania, solely using wall labels.

At the beginning of the novel Coulson slyly announces that the exhibition, "One Woman Show," opening Oct. 17, 2023 (when the book was to go on sale), was "made possible by gin, taffeta and stock dividends." The closing image is haunting: a wrapped and crated Kitty, warehoused for lack of interest. "A classical form ... Once flawless, inevitable. Now broken, irrelevant. Chipped, cracked, and packed away."


# Book Review: John Grisham brings back 'The Firm' star Mitch McDeere in 'The Exchange'
By **ROB MERRILL**
October 16, 2023. 10:03 AM EST

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Thirty-two years after "The Firm" launched his career as a legal novelist who churns out bestselling books that almost invariably become movies, John Grisham returns with a sequel starring Mitch McDeere.

In "The Exchange," it's 2000 and McDeere is now a high-powered partner at the world's largest law firm, Scully & Pershing, having "established a reputation as a sort of legal SWAT team leader sent in by Scully to rescue clients in distress." He lives a very privileged life in Manhattan with his wife and two young boys.

Grisham fans will love the first 37 pages, as McDeere travels back to Memphis for the first time since the events in "The Firm" and meets with an old friend. It's an excuse for Grisham to fill in the 15-year time gap since Mitch and his wife Abby fled Memphis on the run from the Chicago mob, who was hunting him for his role exposing crimes at Bendini, Lambert & Locke, but it's inconsequential to the new story Grisham has to tell.

That narrative kicks off when Mitch is called to Rome to take the lead on a case involving a Turkish company that built a $400 million bridge to nowhere in the Libyan desert that Colonel Gaddafi (yes, it's the year 2000 and the Libyan dictator is still alive) is now refusing to pay for. When Mitch assigns a London-based Scully associate to go on a fact-finding mission to the bridge, she is taken hostage and this legal thriller pretty much drops the adjective and just becomes a thriller.

Mitch's job is not to legally outsmart his colleague's captors, but to try and make sure she's not beheaded by terrorists by working every angle to come up with their ransom. The action skips from New York to Rome to London to Tripoli to Istanbul and it's very easy to imagine the establishing aerial shots in the movie version as the plot crosses continents.

Grisham fans will devour it; but there were times when this reader wished the action would slow down a little so we could spend some time with the characters. Mitch is always on the move - in a car, on a plane, in a boardroom - conversations are clipped, and the plot pace is furious.

Grisham certainly reflects the urgency of Mitch's mission in his writing, but some of the best parts of the book are when the story gets a chance to breathe a little, as in this scene on a boat off the coast of Maine:

"Tanner inched the throttle up a notch and the wake grew wider. They were nearing a cove with the Atlantic not far away. The water was deep blue and flat, but an occasional wave sent mist over the boat and refreshed everyone. With his left hand, Mitch reached over and took hers."

It's not much, but in this frenetic novel, it's a moment that conveys the love between Mitch and Abby without words and maybe, just maybe, the promise of an extended future where they aren't always on the run.


# Book Review: Film historian exploits tumult, gossip in gripping account of Hollywood in the '50s
By **KRYSTA FAURIA**
October 9, 2023. 12:59 PM EST

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When film historian Foster Hirsch began research for his latest book about the changing and turbulent movie landscape of the 1950s, he could not have known the timeliness of his subject matter upon the release of "Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties: The Collapse of the Studio System, the Thrill of Cinerama, and the Invasion of the Ultimate Body Snatcher."

Following a summer of historic Hollywood strikes and discussions about our own new technology, evolving studio framework and the increasing import of television, Hirsch looks to history to show us there is nothing new under the sun.

Though the decade gave us a host of classics still beloved by critics, Hirsch's epic historical account peels back the curtain to reveal the tumultuous uncertainty that characterized the Tinseltown of the '50s.

He meticulously contextualizes important historical details while artfully combining them with some good old-fashioned Hollywood gossip. The result is a gripping yet informative report on a time in show business where threats to the industry seemingly lurked around every corner of society.

While this book is not for the casually interested reader - Hirsch is a college professor likely writing for his industry-obsessed colleagues after all - it promises to entertain and educate movie lovers wanting to know more about the evolution of the film industry.

In conjunction with the book's release, Hirsch is co-programming " 50 from the '50s," a four-week film festival in New York beginning this week featuring some of the decade's most iconic films.


# Book Review: Isa Arsén delivers an unconventional love story in debut novel 'Shoot the Moon'
By **ROB MERRILL**
October 9, 2023. 11:10 AM EST

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If you're going to write a novel, why not do as the title of Isa Arsén's debut suggests? "Shoot the Moon" refers to the actual act of getting astronauts to the lunar surface, but this work of fiction also attempts to shoot the moon like a fearless player in a Hearts card game - thematically, there's bisexuality, loss, Daddy issues, and a unique wormhole that allows for some very specific time travel.

The bulk of the novel takes place in the late 1960s, as NASA is indeed trying to beat the Soviets to the moon. Annie Fisk is the lead character, a recent physics graduate whose father played a role developing the atomic bomb before dying young. By page five Annie is in love with an Apollo 11 astronaut named Norm she meets at a NASA Christmas party. And by page seven we've gone backwards 18 years and 8-year-old Annie is meeting a like-aged stranger named Diana in the back garden of her childhood home in New Mexico.

The plot only gets trippier from there. In 1968, Annie really does discover a wormhole behind a bunch of computer power units at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. To say much more about where it leads and how she and Norm test it and what ultimately happens is to spoil the aha! moments of the book. The best parts are when things click into place as Arsén connects earlier scenes to later ones. There are times when the achronological nature of the story gets confusing and you may have to flip back a chapter or three to orient yourself, but perhaps that's to be expected in a story involving time travel.

As for time, it's Annie's obsession. She either doesn't have enough of it, or regrets what she's already spent, or worries about the future. The wormhole makes her question the future because it repudiates everything she knows to be scientifically true, but it also helps her learn about her past. As one of her college professors puts it during a phone call about the anomaly she's discovered in Houston: "The greatest stunt reality ever pulled was convincing us there was any such thing as normal... That's the big secret, Annie: time goes on, agnostic of all our own mess, and it just keeps getting weirder."

This is a weird book, yes, but also a bold and unconventional love story. Arsén writes with real heart and certainly demonstrates talent as a storyteller. You can tell she cares for this character Annie she created, and readers should look forward to what she creates next.


# Book Review: 'Differ We Must' illustrates Abraham Lincoln's political skills
By **ANDREW DeMILLO**
October 3, 2023. 9:10 AM EST

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In "Differ We Must: How Lincoln Succeeded In a Divided America," Steve Inskeep is taking on one of the most challenging tasks for a biographer by profiling the nation's 16th president.

There's little new to be said or explored about Lincoln that's not already covered in the massive pile of biographies already out there. But Inskeep, co-host of NPR's "Morning Edition," tries an approach that illuminates Lincoln's political skill.

From the opening pages of the biography, Inskeep details how much Lincoln's political skill was a part of the late president's legacy and character. As Inskeep puts it, "Lincoln preserved the country and took part in a social revolution because he engaged in politics."

Inskeep illustrates that political skill by focusing on 16 encounters Lincoln had throughout his lifetime. They include well-known and well-chronicled figures in Lincoln's political upbringing, such as William Seward, George McClellan and Frederick Douglass.

Even though these chapters tread familiar ground, Inskeep manages to adeptly use them to show how Lincoln's mastery of politics adapted and evolved throughout his career.

But the most compelling chapters profile lesser-known figures and their connections to Lincoln. They include Mary Ellen Wise, who disguised her gender to serve as a Union soldier and confronted Lincoln to collect her back pay. As Inskeep recounts, Lincoln ensured Wise got her pay and the president also got news coverage that reinforced him as a man of the people.

In the last chapter, Inskeep uses Lincoln's at-times fraught marriage with Mary Todd to show how his rocky home life helped prepare him for leading a country during the Civil War.

"The skills he needed at home resembled some he needed for work," Inskeep writes.

The brisk biography, filled with lively anecdotes and interesting analysis, offers more than enough to stand out among recent additions to the collection of Lincoln biographies.


# Book Review: Sketch-comedy star Keegan-Michael Key breaks down the art form in hilarious new book
By **MIKE HOUSEHOLDER**
October 2, 2023. 3:31 PM EST

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Keegan-Michael and Elle know more than a few of the Key characteristics of successful sketch comedy.

Which means they would be the first to point out that lines like that don't pass muster.

Keegan-Michael Key, half of the famed "Key & Peele" comedy duo, and his wife, Elle Key, a writer, director and producer, have translated their award-winning podcast, "The History of Sketch Comedy," into a hilarious and informative new book.

"The History of Sketch Comedy: A Journey Through the Art and Craft of Humor" traces the art form from its earliest iterations hundreds of years ago to its current purveyors, including "Saturday Night Live" and "A Black Lady Sketch Show," among others.

In between, the authors deconstruct some of the medium's most notable examples. The Keys provide transcripts of some of these classics, such as "The Argument" from the "Monty Python" troupe. As Michael Palin and John Cleese banter back and forth, Keegan-Michael Key interjects every so often. "It's so stupid," he writes. "And by stupid I do mean awesome."

This is where the book is at its best, because it is clear the Keys love and appreciate the science behind a good sketch, which they point out requires the following: "characters, a premise, and some sort of comedic escalation or heightening."

It was a particular treat to read Key's breakdown of the famed (215 million views and counting on YouTube) "Substitute Teacher" sketch from "Key & Peele." Watching Key's Mr. Garvey character butcher names (A-A-Ron!) is laugh-out-loud funny. So, is reading about how he and Jordan Peele made that three minutes of comedy bliss come to life.

"The History of Sketch Comedy" also features essays from comic giants, and in some cases, famous fans - Peele, Mel Brooks, Carol Burnett, Jim Carrey, Stephen Colbert, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ken Jeong, Mike Myers, Gary Oldman and others.

Readers probably will feel as though they learned something by reading this book. They definitely will laugh throughout the process.


# Book Review: 'Extremely Online' shows how creators and influencers have shaped social media
By **ANDREW DeMILLO**
October 2, 2023. 3:19 PM EST

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There's no shortage of books published in the past several years that have focused on the recent history of social media companies and the founders of the tech giants running them.

In "Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet," Taylor Lorenz makes a valuable and entertaining contribution to that collection by telling the story through the prism of the users, creators and influencers who have shaped social media and its impact on our culture.

Lorenz, technology columnist for The Washington Post, has written what she calls a social history of social media that profiles the motley collection of figures who have had arguably more influence on the landscape of the modern Internet than most Silicon Valley executives.

From mommy bloggers to TikTok celebrities, Lorenz focuses on the users who "revolutionized new approaches to work, entertainment, fame, ambition in the 21st century."

As someone who has covered those new approaches over the years, Lorenz is well-positioned to chronicle that history. Lorenz tells the story of how tech companies struggled to adapt to users' needs and demands over the past two decades.

The book is an enlightening history of the pioneers of influencers such as bloggers Heather Armstrong and Julia Allison, as well as the rise and fall of platforms such MySpace and Vine.

She also explores the dark side of social media's rise, looking at how platforms have been weaponized from "Gamergate" to the rapid spread of misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. She lays bare the challenges created by the transformation of social media, noting that "tech founders may control source code, but users shape the product."


# Book Review: Romance strikes in 'Maybe Once, Maybe Twice' with quirky lines and an epic soundtrack
By **DONNA EDWARDS**
October 2, 2023. 12:47 PM EST

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On Maggie Vine's 30th birthday, she makes a marriage pact with the handsome, broad-shouldered, sunbeam-smile-having Garrett Scholl. Thing is, the struggling singer-songwriter had already made a similar deal with her first boyfriend, Asher Reyes, who's now an extremely successful - and attractive - actor. Thus the two great loves of Maggie's life come crashing back to her at 35.

Alison Rose Greenberg's second novel, "Maybe Once, Maybe Twice," is a long, luscious buildup of will-they-won't-they, love-triangling, song-writing, and trips down memory lane as the narrative hops back to teen Maggie and 20-something Maggie to flesh out her past.

Greenberg writes exceptional characters who still fit into the ordinary world, like our protagonist. Maggie Vine is the chic, All The Feels, folk-singing heroine we wanted but secretly didn't believe could exist so tastefully. She's got humor and sorrow, pride and doubt, good moments and bad, and a model-gorgeous, standoffish-yet-lovable best friend for a sidekick.

Maggie wants it all: love, a kid, and a career. And, honestly, why can't she have it?

When Maggie learns that Asher will be co-producing a film adaptation of her favorite novel, it could be the key to unlocking all her dreams. She can reconnect with Asher, prove herself as the best musician to write the songs for it, and, with the kind of money she'd make on a movie deal like that, she could start a family.

Greenberg's style is sharp and funny, with quirky lines like "Stop trying to make me fall in love with Dave Matthews!" and "Progressive grandmas are national treasures."

For as fun as the story is, you can almost forget that it still takes place in an insidious industry that often uses women's bodies and minds for the gains of the men at the top. Except Maggie can't forget.

After more than 100 pages, we get the name of the man who had dangled a career in front of her before ripping it apart: Cole Wyan.

The tone turns downright ominous surrounding this Chekhov's gun of a man who we readers hope against all hope doesn't find his way back into the pages of this book.

But Greenberg doesn't leave us hanging in despair. Maggie Vine always chooses hope, and finally, FINALLY, maybe it's possible that a woman does all the right things and actually comes out better for it; rewarded for fighting back and going to therapy and telling the truth.

Ripe for a super-meta film adaptation (about the novel about a film adaptation of a novel), "Maybe Once, Maybe Twice" is everything you want in a smart romantic comedy: deep, tear-inducing emotions; sharp, sardonic humor; steamy sex scenes played by even steamier leads; and an epic soundtrack underneath it all.

Musically, it's hands-down five stars, complete with an accompanying playlist on Spotify. Musical mentions range from Dolly Parton to Fall Out Boy to Olivia Rodrigo. And, of course, Stevie Nicks - the novel's very title is an homage to the great musical prowess of the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer.

The story wraps up quickly - a sudden halt at the end of a roller coaster that leaves you wondering what that ending really means, and whether lightning strikes three times.


# Migrant caravan slogs on through southern Mexico with no expectations from a US-Mexico meeting
By **EDGAR H. CLEMENTE**
December 26, 2023. 10:06 PM EST

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**HUIXTLA, Mexico (AP)** - Under a beating sun, thousands of migrants in a caravan continued to trudge through southern Mexico on Tuesday, with some saying they expect nothing good from an upcoming meeting this week between American and Mexican officials about the migrant surge at the U.S. border.

The migrants passed by Mexico's main inland immigration inspection point outside the town of Huixtla, in southern Chiapas state. National Guard officers there made no attempt to stop the estimated 6,000 members of the caravan.

The migrants were trying to make it to the next town, Villa Comaltitlan, about 11 miles (17 kilometers) northwest of Huixtla. In the past, Mexico has let migrants go through, trusting that they would tire themselves out walking along the highway. No migrant caravan has ever walked the 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) to the U.S. border.

U.S. officials are expected to press Mexico to stop more migrants at a meeting scheduled for Wednesday.

The meeting "will be between fools and fools, who want to use women and children as trading pieces," said migrant activist Luis García Villagrán, one of the organizers of the caravan. "We are not trading pieces for any politician."

"What Mexico wants is the money, the money to detain and deport migrants," Villagrán said.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador confirmed last week that U.S. officials want Mexico to do more to block migrants at its southern border with Guatemala, or make it more difficult to move across Mexico by train or in trucks or buses - a policy known as "contention."

But the president said that in exchange, he wants the United States to send more development aid to migrants' home countries, and to reduce or eliminate sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela, noting "that is what we are going to discuss, it is not just contention."

Some on the caravan, like Norbey Díaz Rios, a migrant from Colombia, said turning back was not an option. Díaz Rios, 46, said he left his home because of threats from criminal gangs, and plans to ask for asylum in the U.S.

"You know that you are walking for a purpose, with a goal in mind, but it is unsure if you are going to make it, or what obstacles you will find along the way," said Díaz Rios. "I can't return to Colombia."

"They should give me a chance to remain in a country where I can get papers and work and provide for my family," he added.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and White House homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall will travel to Mexico City for the talks.

This month, as many as 10,000 migrants were arrested daily at the southwest U.S. border.

The Mexican government felt pressure to address that problem, after U.S. officials briefly closed two vital Texas railway border crossings, claiming they were overwhelmed by processing migrants.

That put a chokehold on freight moving from Mexico to the U.S., as well as grain needed to feed Mexican livestock moving south. The rail crossings have since been reopened, but the message appeared clear.

The caravan started out on Christmas Eve from the city of Tapachula, near the border with Guatemala, and migrants spent Christmas night sleeping on scraps of cardboard or plastic stretched out under awnings, in tents, or on the bare ground.

The migrants included single adults but also entire families, all eager to reach the U.S. border, angry and frustrated at having to wait weeks or months in the nearby city of Tapachula for documents that might allow them to continue their journey.

Mexico says it detected 680,000 migrants moving through the country in the first 11 months of 2023.

In May, Mexico agreed to take in migrants from countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba who had been turned away by the U.S. for not following rules that provided new legal pathways to asylum and other forms of migration.

But that deal, aimed at curbing a post-pandemic jump in migration, appears to be insufficient as numbers rise once again, disrupting bilateral trade and stoking anti-migrant sentiment.


# Drummond, DeRozan lead the way as Bulls hold off Hawks 118-113
By **ANDREW SELIGMAN**
December 26, 2023. 10:42 PM EST

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**CHICAGO (AP)** - Andre Drummond had season highs of 24 points and 25 rebounds in his first start of the season, DeMar DeRozan scored 25 points and the Chicago Bulls cooled off Atlanta's Trae Young somewhat in beating the Hawks 118-113 on Tuesday night.

Young finished with 21 points and 13 assists after tying Oscar Robertson's record of seven consecutive games with at least 30 points and 10 assists.

The Bulls won for the ninth time in 13 games with Zach LaVine sidelined because of inflammation in his right foot. And they did it this time with center Nikola Vucevic out because of bruised muscles around his left hip and groin.

DeRozan scored 11 points in the fourth quarter, including four in the final 26 seconds to help Chicago come away with the win.

Drummond made 11 of 13 shots and played 39 minutes with Vucevic sidelined. Coby White and Ayo Dosunmu each scored 19. White missed all seven 3-pointers and the Bulls were 7 of 25 from beyond the arc, but they made enough shots to bounce back from a loss to injury-riddled Cleveland on Saturday.

Bogdan Bogdanovic led Atlanta with 22 points. Dejounte Murray finished with 17 after scoring 20 or more in five straight games, and the Hawks lost their third in a row.

The game was tied at 106-all when Alex Caruso nailed a 3 with just under four minutes remaining and the Bulls were up 111-110 when DeRozan hit a 14-footer with 1:42 left.

Murray then got called for a charge. With a chance to make it a two-possession game, White missed a 3 and Caruso came away with a steal, only to miss a 3 and a layup.

Young then cut it to 113-111 when he made a free throw with 43 seconds remaining. But DeRozan spun for a finger roll to bump Chicago's lead to four with 26 seconds left, and the Bulls hung on from there.

But Chicago could be down two key players at least for a little while, with Vucevic joining LaVine on the sideline.

Coach Billy Donovan was not sure how long Vucevic will be out. The two-time All-Star had an MRI on Tuesday.

Vucevic was hurt trying to defend a dunk by Cleveland's Max Strus during the Bulls' loss to the Cavaliers on Saturday. Strus' right knee struck Vucevic in the groin area.

Vucevic, averaging 16.7 points and 10.4 rebounds, missed his first game this season. He played in all 82 games last year.

LaVine, meanwhile, started doing some light cutting on Tuesday.

## UP NEXT
Hawks: Host Sacramento on Friday.

Bulls: Host Indiana on Thursday.


# Markkanen has 31 points and 12 boards as Jazz roll to 130-118 win, handing Spurs 5th straight loss
By **RAUL DOMINGUEZ**
December 26, 2023. 10:41 PM EST

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**SAN ANTONIO (AP)** - Lauri Markkanen had 31 points and 12 rebounds, and the Utah Jazz overcame a slow start to beat the San Antonio Spurs 130-118 on Tuesday night.

Jordan Clarkson added 24 points, Collin Sexton had 20 and Walker Kessler scored 11 for Utah.

Keldon Johnson led San Antonio with 26 points, Devin Vassell had 22, Jeremy Sochan added 19 and Victor Wembanyama had 15.

The Spurs (4-25) have lost five straight since snapping a franchise-worst 18-game losing streak.

The Jazz (13-18) have won three in a row and six of eight after starting the season 2-7.

Wembanyama returned after missing two of the past three games with a right ankle injury. He was scheduled to play Saturday in Dallas but stepped on a ball boy during warmups and was held out as a precaution.

Wembanyama was 6 for 15 from the field and had seven rebounds, five blocks and four assists in 25 minutes.

San Antonio brought Johnson, a longtime starter, off the bench for the second time this season and the change keyed a 15-point lead in the first quarter.

Starting in place of Johnson, Julian Champagnie had eight points in the first two minutes. He opened with a 3-pointer off a feed from Wembanyama and soared for a dunk on Sochan's assist.

Champagnie finished with 16 points.

San Antonio opened 6 for 7 on 3-pointers in building a 28-15 lead eight minutes into the game. The Spurs finished 16 for 35 on 3s.

That fast start dissipated as Utah went on a 23-9 run bridging the first and second quarters. Clarkson capped the spurt with a pair of free throws as the Jazz captured their first lead at 38-37 with eight minutes remaining in the first half.

Markkanen and Clarkson combined for 18 points on 6-for-8 shooting in the second quarter.

It was another successful return for Clarkson to his hometown. He entered the game averaging 16.7 points in 26 games against the Spurs.

The Spurs have the worst record in the Western Conference and are second in the league to the Detroit Pistons (2-28), who have lost 27 straight - a single-season record.

## UP NEXT
Jazz: At New Orleans on Thursday.

Spurs: At Portland on Thursday.


# Franz Wagner scores 28 to lead the Magic to a 127-119 win over the Wizards
By **MATT SUGAM**
December 26, 2023. 10:39 PM EST

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**WASHINGTON (AP)** - Franz Wagner had 28 points, nine assists, and eight rebounds, rookie Anthony Black scored a career-high 23 points and the Orlando Magic defeated the Washington Wizards 127-119 on Tuesday night.

"We're playing good ball right now, and I'm just trying to focus on that, honestly," Black said. "It's going to come game-by-game, getting more comfortable. So I'm just trying to keep doing things that's helping us win."

Paolo Banchero overcame a slow start to finish with 24 points and eight assists and Jalen Suggs returned from a two-game absence due to a left wrist injury to score 11.

"He looked good. His conditioning was on point, he was out there defending the right way, crawling into the basketball, trying to do a lot of the right things," Magic coach Jamahl Mosley said of Suggs. "Having a couple of games off, there wasn't as much rust as we'd thought there'd be."

Jordan Poole had 30 points to lead the Wizards, who have lost four of their last five, and Tyus Jones added 22.

Trailing by as many as eight, Washington's bench came up with 12 points in the first quarter, and a 14-4 run tied things at 33 after one.

The Magic went on a 7-0 run to take a 45-38 lead in the second quarter and force Washington to call timeout with 6:44 left in the half.

The Wizards' Corey Kispert came off the bench and started the game 6 of 6 including 3 of 3 on 3-pointers for 15 first-half points as Washington fought back from down nine to trail 63-60 at the half.

The Magic led by as many as nine several times in the third before Banchero hit a left-handed layup for the last shot of the third quarter to give Orlando a 98-88 lead.

Washington trailed by as many as 17 in the fourth quarter, but an 11-0 run capped by Jones' 3-pointer made it 117-111 with 3:10 remaining. Poole hit a pair of free throws with 2:02 remaining to cut the deficit to four and did so again on a dunk with just under a minute to play, but that's the closest Washington got.

"It's the togetherness that we have, our poise, our communication," Wagner said. "We have guys that like playing with each other and for each other and I think that shows in the last couple of minutes when stuff isn't going our way that we come together and kind of find our groove again."

The Magic had 70 points in the paint and caused 21 turnovers. They've won the first three games of a four-game regular season series with the Wizards.

"Overall, I think schematically we did the right things," Wizards coach Wes Unseld Jr. said. "Clean up on a couple of those turnovers and some of the transition opportunities and paint points, I think it's a different ballgame."

Daniel Gafford had 13 points and 13 rebounds while Kyle Kuzma had 17 for the Wizards. However, he was only 6 of 18 from the field while accounting for six turnovers.

"I just didn't play well," Kuzma said. "If I would have found more of a rhythm, we probably would have won because everybody else played well."

## UP NEXT

Magic: Host Philadelphia on Wednesday night.

Wizards: Host Toronto on Wednesday night.


# Brian Holloway returns 2 picks for TDs, Texas State beats Rice 45-21 in First Responder Bowl
December 26, 2023. 9:54 PM EST

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**DALLAS (AP)** - Linebacker Brian Holloway returned two interceptions for touchdowns, Jahmyl Jeter ran for three scores, and Texas State beat Rice 45-21 in the First Responder Bowl on Tuesday in the Bobcats' first bowl appearance as an FBS program.

Holloway had a 36-yard pick-6 early in the second quarter and returned his second interception 48 yards for a TD in the third that made it 38-21. Both picks came against AJ Padgett, who was intercepted three times overall. Shawqi Itraish relieved Padgett in the fourth quarter and threw two more picks as Texas State forced seven turnovers.

Jeter had a 29-yard touchdown run and two scores from 1 yard out. Nash Jones, a 6-foot-5, 320-pound offensive tackle, scored on a 3-yard run for the Bobcats (8-5), who are in their 12th FBS season.

Dean Connors scored on runs of 3 and 28 yards for the Owls (6-7), who fell short of their first winning season and first bowl victory since 2014.

Ismail Mahdi rushed for 122 yards on 24 carries for the Bobcats.

Texas State led 14-7 when Holloway stepped in front of tight end Boden Green between the hash marks, and the senior ran in untouched.

Holloway's second score occurred less than two minutes after Jones caught T.J. Finley's lateral from the opposite side of the field and jogged in for a 31-21 lead. Holloway made the grab amid midfield traffic, ran toward the right sideline and raced in to become the first Texas State player with two interceptions for touchdowns in a game.

Finley was 15 of 29 for 152 yards.

Padgett was 10 of 21 for 81 yards and a touchdown in addition to the three picks.

## THE TAKEAWAY

Texas State: Mahdi, a sophomore, went into the bowl season with an FBS-leading average of 167.8 all-purpose yards per game. He had 34 yards on kick returns to finish with 153 yards, a total diminished by his minus-3 yards receiving on one catch.

Rice: In addition to being intercepted five times, the Owls muffed a pooch kickoff and muffed a punt.


# Pistons set single-season record with 27th straight loss, as Cunningham's 41 not enough against Nets
By **DAVE HOGG**
December 26, 2023. 10:36 PM EST

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**DETROIT (AP)** - The Detroit Pistons set an NBA single-season record with their 27th straight loss Tuesday night, as Cam Johnson scored 24 points and Mikal Bridges added 21 to lead the Brooklyn Nets to a 118-112 victory.

Cade Cunningham scored 41 points but the Pistons (2-28) broke a tie with the 2010-11 Cleveland Cavaliers and 2013-14 Philadelphia 76ers. The 76ers hold the overall mark at 28, a skid that started in the 2014-15 season and carried over into 2015-16.

"A lot of this load is trusted to me, on the court and in the locker room," Cunningham said. "Every day, I try to lead the squad, and I haven't been successful at that - 2-28. It's only right that I speak for it and be the face of it."

Cunningham scored 37 in the second half and shot 15 for 21 from the field, but Bojan Bogdanovic was the only other Pistons player with more than 15. Cunningham's teammates shot 36.2% (25 for 69), including 28.6% (6 for 21) on 3-pointers.

"You have to be real about where we are," Pistons coach Monty Williams said. "Nobody wants something like this attached to them, and the bottom line is it is my job. Coaches are graded on their records."

Nic Claxton and Day'Ron Sharpe each added double-doubles for the Nets, who beat the Pistons for the second straight game.

"I didn't sleep very well last night, anticipating how tough this game was going to be," Nets coach Jacque Vaughn said. "Any time you play a team back-to-back like that, it is really tough to (win)."

Dorian Finney-Smith's 3-pointer capped a 13-0 run that put the Nets up 105-97 with 4:53 to play. Cunningham missed a pair of free throws, but came back with a 3-pointer and a three-point play to pull Detroit within 109-106 with 1:54 left.

After Johnson's 3-pointer, a pair of layups from Cunningham made it 112-10. Finney-Smith, though, hit a baseline 3 to put the Nets up 115-110 with 38 seconds left.

"We had a little bit of execution and composure down the stretch," Johnson said. "It didn't always go our way, but we were able to pull it out."

Alec Burks missed a 3-pointer, and the Nets clinched the game from the free-throw line as fans chanted "Sell the team! Sell the team!"

Brooklyn took an 11-point lead early in the third quarter, but the Pistons responded with an 11-0 run to tie the game at 71. Cunningham scored 18 of Detroit's 31 points in the period, keeping Detroit within 88-85 going into the fourth.

The Pistons started the game with a 22-8 run, giving hope to a large crowd, but the Nets outscored them 53-32 in the rest of the first half.

"To have a start like that and then kind of let it go in the second quarter - that's the quarter that put us in the hole," Williams said. "I think we had six turnovers in the second quarter. That's something that has plagued us all year long."

## UP NEXT

Nets: Host Milwaukee on Wednesday

Pistons: At Boston on Thursday.


# Missing pregnant Texas teen and her boyfriend found dead in a car in San Antonio
December 26, 2023. 10:14 PM EST

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**SAN ANTONIO, Texas (AP)** - A missing pregnant Texas teenager and her boyfriend were found dead in a parked car Tuesday in San Antonio and police said they may have been there for days.

Savanah Nicole Soto, 18, and Matthew Guerra, 22, were reported missing by police in Leon Valley, a few miles northwest of San Antonio suburb.

Two bodies were found in a Kia Optima matching the description of one belonging to the boyfriend and they may have been there for three or four days, Police Chief William P. McManus said at a news conference.

He didn't identify the bodies pending confirmation by the medical examiner but said they were believed to be those of the missing couple.

McManus didn't provide other details and said he didn't know whether a weapon had been found in the car.

"What we're looking at right now is a very, very perplexing crime scene," the chief said.

"Detectives right now are looking at this as a possible murder but we don't know for sure," he said. "Because of the complexity, the complex crime scene, we can't say for sure what we have."

The bodies were found Tuesday afternoon after someone spotted the car in the parking lot of an apartment complex in San Antonio and alerted the family, KENS-TV reported. Relatives then called police.

Soto was a week overdue to deliver and was scheduled to have an induced labor at a hospital last Saturday night, her family told the station.

Gloria Cordova said she last heard from her daughter on Friday afternoon and got no answer when she knocked on her Leon Valley apartment door Saturday afternoon.

Leon Valley police issued a CLEAR Alert for Soto on Monday and later said her boyfriend also was missing. Soto's family organized a search of the area near her apartment on Christmas night.

"Savanah was so, so happy because she was going to be a mommy. It breaks my heart," her mother told KENS-TV.


# The death toll rises to 18 in a furnace explosion at a Chinese-owned nickel plant in Indonesia
By **MOHAMMAD TAUFAN**
December 26, 2023. 6:55 AM EST

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**PALU, Indonesia (AP)** - The death toll following the explosion of a smelting furnace at a Chinese-owned nickel plant on Indonesia's Sulawesi island rose to 18 on Tuesday, as police ordered the plant to stop operations until an investigation is completed.

The blast, which occurred on Sunday, was the latest in a series of fatalities at nickel smelting plants in Indonesia that are part of China's ambitious transnational development program known as the Belt and Road Initiative.

Nickel is a key component in global battery production for electric vehicles.

Four Chinese and nine Indonesian workers died instantly on Sunday when the furnace exploded while they were repairing it, Central Sulawesi police chief Agus Nugroho said. Three more victims died a day later while being treated at a local hospital.

Two more workers died on Tuesday while hospitalized, bringing the total number of fatalities to 18, including eight workers from China, said Deddy Kurniawan, a spokesperson for PT Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park, known as PT IMIP, the parent company of PT Indonesia Tsingshan Stainless Steel, where the explosion occurred.

The plant is in the Bahodopi neighborhood of Morowali regency.

"We have ordered PT Indonesia Tsingshan Stainless Steel to stop its operation until our entire investigation is completed," said Nugroho, the police chief, adding that authorities had set up a team to determine whether negligence by the company led to the deaths.

The blast was so powerful that it demolished the furnace and damaged parts of the side walls of the building, Nugroho said.

The head of central Sulawesi's manpower and transmigration office, Arnold Firdaus, said that joint investigation team is made up of 18 members, and it includes officials from the central government in Jakarta and a working group from the Chinese Embassy.

PT IMIP said in a statement on Sunday that the furnace was under maintenance and not operating at the time of the explosion. However, "residual slag in the furnace" came into contact "with flammable items," causing the furnace walls to collapse and the remaining steel slag to flow out.

Rescuers extinguished the fire and evacuated workers after a nearly four-hour operation, Kurniawan said.

About 41 workers were still being treated at a hospital and the company's clinic on Tuesday with serious to minor injuries, including 11 Chinese nationals. Three of them who suffered serious burns will be flown to China for further treatment, Kurniawan said.

In a news briefing on Monday, Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning expressed condolences for the victims and said that China is "saddened by the casualties caused by the accident."

She said her ministry is working closely with authorities in Indonesia and has instructed the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta to assist in the aftermath, including ensuring medical treatment is provided to the injured and helping to determine the cause of the explosion.

A three-member working group from the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta has arrived at the site on Monday to guide the company to carry out aftermath care and "follow-up work," Mao said.

It was the third tragedy this year at Chinese-owned nickel smelting plants in Central Sulawesi province, which has the largest nickel reserves in Indonesia.

Two dump truck operators were killed when they were engulfed by a wall of black sludge-like material following the collapse of a nickel waste disposal site in April.

In January, two workers, including a Chinese national, were killed in riots that involved workers of the two nations at an Indonesia-China joint venture in neighboring North Morowali regency.

Last year, a loader truck ran over and killed a Chinese worker while he was repairing a road in PT IMIP's mining area, and an Indonesian man burned to death when a furnace in the company's factory exploded.

Nearly 50% of PT IMIP's shares are owned by a Chinese holding company, and the rest are owned by two Indonesian companies. It began smelter operations in 2013 and is now the largest nickel-based industrial area in Indonesia.


# Afghan schoolgirls are finishing sixth grade in tears. Under Taliban rule, their education is over
By **MOHAMMAD HABIB RAHMANI**
December 25, 2023. 1:35 AM EST

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**KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)** - Bahara Rustam, 13, took her last class at Bibi Razia School in Kabul on Dec. 11 knowing it was the end of her education. Under Taliban rule, she is unlikely to step foot in a classroom again.

In September 2021, a month after U.S. and NATO troops withdrew from Afghanistan following two decades of war, the Taliban announced that girls were barred from studying beyond sixth grade.

They extended this education ban to universities in December 2022. The Taliban have defied global condemnation and warnings that the restrictions will make it almost impossible for them to gain recognition as the country's legitimate rulers.

Last week, U.N. special envoy Roza Otunbayeva expressed concern that a generation of Afghan girls is falling behind with each day that passes.

Last week, an official in the Education Ministry said Afghan girls of all ages are allowed to study in religious schools known as madrassas, which have traditionally been boys-only. But Otunbayeva said it was unclear if there was a standardized curriculum that allowed modern subjects.

Bahara is holding onto her education and pores over textbooks at home. "Graduating (from sixth grade) means we are going to seventh grade," she said. "But all of our classmates cried and we were very disappointed."

There was no graduation ceremony for the girls at Bibi Razia School.

In another part of Kabul, 13-year old Setayesh Sahibzada wonders what the future holds for her. She is sad she can't go to school anymore to achieve her dreams.

"I can't stand on my own two feet," she said. "I wanted to be a teacher. But now I can't study, I can't go to school."

Analyst Muhammad Saleem Paigir warned that excluding women and girls from education will be disastrous for Afghanistan. "We understand that illiterate people can never be free and prosperous," he said.

The Taliban have barred women from many public spaces and most jobs, all but confining women to their homes.