Publishers Weekly - March 7, 2016

Thief! The Commons, Enclosures, and Resistance) celebrates the labor movement and bemoans the corporatization and alienation of modern life that combine to weaken workers’ bonds with their fellow workers and with the rejuvenating spirit of nature. Written to mark May Day, the international workers’ holiday, Linebaugh’s 11 playful and elegiac treatises motivate, enrage, and inform.

Many of the pieces circle back to the same themes and events, particularly watershed moments such as Chicago’s Haymarket massacre. In one essay, Linebaugh frames the genesis of America’s early identity in the ideological battle between Thomas Morton’s tolerant, ecumenical colony at Merry Mount and its more famous and famously ascetic Puritan neighbors: “Casting the struggle as mirth vs. gloom, grizzly saints vs. gay sinners, green vs. iron, it was the Puritans who won, and the fate of America was determined in favor of psalm-singing Indian-scalpers whose notion of the Maypole was a whipping post.” The penultimate contribution, “Ypsilanti Vampire May Day,” was something of an intellectual touchstone for the Occupy movement. Parallel strands of socialist activism animate Linebaugh’s lively entreaties: “Green is a relationship to the earth and what grows therefrom. Red is a relationship to other people and the blood spilt there among,” he writes.

“May Day is both.” (May)

★ The Romanovs: 1613–1918

Simon Sebag Montefiore. Knopf, $35 (816p)

ISBN 978-0-307-26652-1

Montefiore (Jerusalem: The Biography),
a popular novelist and historian of Russia,
describes this extensive account of the rise
and fall of the Romanov dynasty as a
“blood-spattered, gold-plated, diamond-
studded, swash-buckled, bodice-ripping,
and star-crossed... chronicle[s] of fathers
and sons, mega-
lomaniacs,
monsters, and
saints.” But
it also reveals
the author’s
imaginative gift
for storytelling
and research
acumen. From
the Romanov
dynasty’s inaus-
picious beginnings in a remote monastery
to its violent end in a provincial base-
ment, the family held the Russian crown
for just over three centuries, dramatically
expanding Russia’s borders and laying the
groundwork for what would become the
U.S.S.R. and the modern Russian
Federation. Montefiore addresses ques-
tions of great import as well as more pro-
saic but equally illuminating details of
life in the Romanov regime, examining,
for instance, how Catherine the Great
went from being “a regicidal, uxoricidal
German usurper” to becoming one of
Russia’s most successful rulers and “the
darling of the philosophes.” Echoes of his-
tory resonate through the pages and shed
light on the ruthless and autocratic ten-
dencies that have remained salient ele-
ments of Russian politics. Montefiore’s
compassionate and incisive portraits of
the Romanov rulers and their retinues, his
liberal usage of contemporary diaries and
correspondence, and his flair for the dra-
matic produce a narrative that effortlessly
holds the reader’s interest and attention
despite its imposing length. (May)

The Big Picture:
On the Origins of Life, Meaning,
and the Universe Itself

Sean Carroll. Dutton, $28 (496p)

ISBN 978-0-525-95482-8

Carroll (The Particle at the End of the
Universe), a theoretical physicist at Caltech,
marshals an impressive array of scientific
information to convince readers that the
universe and everything in it can be explained
by science. He posits “poetic naturalism” as
a philosophy, which for him serves as a way
to figure out “the best way to talk about the
world.” He distinguishes his poetic form
from other variants of naturalism by affirming
that there is an underlying physical reality
that exists independently of the human
mind, and that there are “many useful ways
of talking about it.” His determination to
counter supernatural ontologies drives the
book, and Carroll acknowledges that his
philosophy may seem like “an appealing
idea” to some and “an absurd bunch of
hooey” to others. Carroll can be repetitive,
and some of his the anecdotes, such as the
connection between Elisabeth of Bohemia
and René Descartes, are interesting but
tangential. Much of the material here will
be new to many readers, but regardless of
familiarity, Carroll presents a means through
which people can better understand
themselves, their universe, and their
conceptions of a meaningful life: “It’s
up to us to make wise choices and shape
the world to be a better place.” Agent:
Katinka Matson, Brockman Inc. (May)

The Bitter Taste of Victory:
In the Ruins of the Reich

Lara Feigel. Bloomsbury, $28 (448p)

ISBN 978-1-63286-551-9

In this colorful narrative, Feigel (The Love-charm of Bombs), a senior lecturer in English at King’s College, London, uses the lives of 20 American, British, and German cultural figures as a lens through which to examine post-WWII Germany, from the Nazis’ surrender to the early fall of 1949. Some of Feigel’s subjects are well known, such as novelist Thomas Mann, filmmaker Billy Wilder, and poet W.H. Auden; others, considerably less so, including photographer Lee Miller, journalist Martha Gellhorn, and novelist Rebecca West. Feigel is at her best in describing the immediate year after Germany’s defeat, when rubble was “spread for mile after mile, scattered with corpses,” and the occupiers treated civilians harshly. Vivid chapters address the Nuremberg Trials and the Berlin Airlift, and Feigel shows how the politics and sensibility of the early Cold War period led to a measure of growing Western sympathy for Germans and the abandonment of an in-depth denazification of German culture and society. Unfortunately, in her last three chapters, she focuses too heavily on Mann and his oldest children, Erika and Klaus; she also writes too little on life in the Soviet sector. Despite these flaws, this is a well-constructed, fascinating, and anecdote-rich work about the early Cold War and the influence of postwar Germany on Western culture. (May)