NONFICTION me so much . . . as to find myself deserted in my old age by my only son; and not only deserted, but to find him taking up arms against me, in a cause wherein my good fame, fortune, and life were all at stake.” The gripping narrative illustrates the public issues that drove the father and son apart and illumi nates in detail the agonizing cost to each man. —ROGER BISHOP
POPULAR By Mitch Prinstein Viking $27, 288 pages ISBN 9780399563737 eBook available
PSYCHOLOGY
that the lure of status—especially the kind of easy but ephemeral visibility conferred through social media—may compromise “our ability to distinguish between good and bad.” Obviously, we don’t begin life knowing all this. So from infancy onward, we may find ourselves socially marginalized by our phys ical appearance, aggressiveness, defensiveness, inability to interpret social cues or kindred forms of maladjustments. While these flaws are by no means fatal to our future success, Prinstein concludes that they will almost certainly take a toll on our health, happiness and often our professional advance ment. The good news, he says, is that once we realize the negative impact these traits are exerting on us, we have ample opportunities to change how we react and, thus, make course corrections toward a sunnier horizon. —EDWARD MORRIS
Who knew that being a dweeb in high school could have such long-lasting influence on how we see the world and how it sees us? Ultimately, how well or how badly we fit in with others, Mitch Prin stein argues in his book Popular, is the dominant factor in what we become both professionally and personally. Now a professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Prinstein confesses to having been a social outsider himself as a teenager—and one who, like most of us, strove mightily to achieve peer acceptance. The drive to be popular is part of our evolutionary engine, he maintains. But popularity comes in differ ent guises. It may arise from status (dominant personality, wealth, athletic prowess, physical beauty, extraordinary intelligence, etc.) or from simple likability (character ized by openness, friendliness, an interest in others, a willingness to share or following the rules). Of these two types, Prinstein says, “likability continues to be relevant to us throughout our lives and has been shown to be the most pow erful kind of popularity there is.” Status is a shakier foundation on which to build. Indeed, he worries
Visit BookPage.com to read a Q&A with Mitch Prinstein.
THE BRIGHT HOUR By Nina Riggs
Simon & Schuster $25, 320 pages ISBN 9781501169359 Audio, eBook available
MEMOIR
“The beautiful, vibrant, living world goes on.” Nina Riggs, who died in February, realized this truth during a mundane moment: While teaching her son to ride his bike, she stumbles and releases him. As Benny rides forward, he shouts be hind him, checking on his mother. It’s a simple moment, but to Riggs, whose triple negative breast cancer had been deemed terminal, it encapsulated so much more. When she was diagnosed at age 37, doctors expected her disease to be curable. It was one small spot of cancer, that was all. But it metas tasized and, by age 38, Riggs knew the disease would kill her.
Riggs’ husband, John, longs for a return to normalcy. “I have to love these days in the same way I love any other. There might not be a ‘normal’ from here on out,” she responds. “These days are days. We choose how we hold them.” As she endures chemotherapy and radiation, Riggs faces those days with a clear-eyed determi nation to fully live. Riggs, herself a poet, examines her impending death through her own lyrical per spective, informed by the writings of her great-great-great-grand father, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and French philosopher Michel Eyquem de Montaigne. Part of living, though, is death. Riggs must face it even before her own cancer is deemed ter minal: Her mother’s multiple myeloma is fatal. The family concludes her mother’s funeral with an open-ended moment of silence, which Riggs struggles with. Shouldn’t they sound a gong or otherwise give those gathered permission to leave? No, her brother says. “It’s about honoring the unknowing and the awkwardness and the mystery of dying. It’s unsettling—and that’s okay.” Through this warmhearted memoir, Riggs writes her way to accepting her own death and the uncertainty that follows it. The Bright Hour is an introspective, well-considered tribute to life. As Riggs’ famed ancestor Emerson writes, “That is morning; to cease for a bright hour to be a prisoner of this sickly body and to become as large as the World.” —CARLA JEAN WHITLEY
AMERICAN ECLIPSE By David Baron
Liveright $27.95, 352 pages ISBN 9781631490163 Audio, eBook available
SCIENCE
In American Eclipse: A Nation’s Epic Race to Catch the Shadow of
the Moon and Win the Glory of the World, self-professed umbraphile (eclipse chaser) and author David Baron tells the tale of an eclipse that briefly darkened Denver and other parts of the American West in July 1878. As Baron acknowledges, a total solar eclipse, “in which the moon completely obscures the face of the sun, is exceptional.” Passing over any given location on earth just once every 400 years, it provides an experience that is “otherworldly.” Baron neatly weaves together the stories of three scientific visionar ies of the period: famous inventor Thomas Edison and astronomers James Craig Watson and Maria Mitchell. Edison hoped to use the eclipse to test his latest invention, a tasimeter (designed to measure the heat emanating from the sun’s corona), and promote his scien tific and creative reputation in the process. Watson was seeking to discover the elusive and mysteri ous planet Vulcan, which was said to lie between Mercury and the sun. Mitchell, a progressive trail blazer and professor of astronomy at Vassar, with a group of female students in tow, sought to prove that women were viable scientists and to expand women’s limited opportunities. In vivid detail, Baron unfolds their backstories and reveals what led each of them to make their way to the still unsettled Wild West to view this phenomenon. He deftly communicates the significance of the event within the era. It was the midst of the Gilded Age, and Americans were desperately trying to show the world they were com petitive and powerful. As Baron points out, “advancing science in the United States required con vincing the populace of the value of research—that it was worth promotion and investment.” American Eclipse will undoubt edly spur scores of readers to desire their own total solar eclipse experience. How auspicious that such an event takes place in Amer ica on August 21—the first total so lar eclipse to travel across America in 99 years. Baron will undoubtedly be watching. —BECKY LIBOUREL DIAMOND
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