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featuring dynamite and unfolding before
thousands of picnicking spectators, eager
to witness justice. While the criminals
themselves are certainly fascinating,
equally so are Rirette Maîtrejean and
Victor Kibaltchiche, young lovers caught
up with the wrong crowd and arrested and
tried under France’s “scoundrel laws,”
which ensured harsh punishments for
criminal collaborators. In addition to his
vivid portrayals of the principal characters
and events, the author provides informative context to the crimes, outlining the
severe exploitation of workers in this supposedly idyllic time in Parisian history.
This is a nuanced and fascinating dissection of the events by a riveting storyteller
with a sympathetic (but unsentimental)
view of the anarchists’ cause. (Oct.)
Birding Without Borders: An
Obsession, a Quest, and the
Biggest Year in the World
Noah Strycker. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $27
(336p) ISBN 978-0-544-55814-4
Strycker (The Thing with Feathers), a
birder and adventurer, chronicles the
record-setting year he spent trekking the
globe, succeeding in his aim “to see 5,000
species of birds—about half the birds on
Earth—in the ultimate round-the-world
journey.” He begins in Antarctica on Jan.
1, 2015, and ends on December 31 in
Australia, traveling to every continent
and spotting more than 6,000 species.
Strycker traces his lifelong interest in
ornithology to his Pacific Northwest
childhood and a fortuitous set of bird-related events that took place in his life at
age 10. In this volume Strycker tracks
what he saw during his “big year” and
describes his planning process and the
ground rules he established. Every bird he
counted, for example, would need to be
“seen by at least one other person.” His
companions had to be local, too, “living in
the same country where we went birding
together.” This would prevent loneliness
on his solo trip and help to give him the
inside scoop. Even readers who wouldn’t
know a marvellous spatuletail from a
southern ground hornbill will be awed by
Strycker’s achievement and appreciate the
passion with which he pursues his
interest. Photos. Agent: Russell Galen,
Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary. (Oct.)
Dennis Maruk: The Unforgettable
Story of Hockey’s Forgotten
60-Goal Man
Dennis Maruk, with Ken Reid. ECW (Legato,
U. S. dist.; Jaguar, Canadian dist.), $25.95
(200p) ISBN 978-1-77041-331-3
Fast-moving and short could describe
both Maruk and his memoir. At five feet
eight, the Toronto native entered the
NHL in the 1975–1976 season with the
lowly California Seals. As an 18-year-old
rookie, he wasn’t expected to make the
team, but he took the advice of NHL
player Dave Hutchison to “be a prick” on
the ice to heart, sporting a Fu Manchu
mustache to help him look and feel
tougher. His entire career, aside from two
stints in Minnesota, was spent playing for
teams based in Oakland, Washington,
D.C., and Cleveland, cities where it was
hard to sell hockey. “I was a guy who
played for teams that just couldn’t put
fans into seats,” he laments. Written with
broadcaster Reid (Hockey Card Stories), the
book is cleverly divided into 60 chapters
to reflect Maruk’s achievement of 60
goals in a season, though that often means
that sections are brief and end abruptly.
Maruk writes honestly about his failed
marriages, his battles with depression,
and his difficulty finding a posthockey
life, and there’s enough insight into the
business side of the game (including the
bizarre merger of the Barons and North
Stars), his teammates, and on-the-road
hijinks to please any hardcore hockey fan.
Agent: Brian J. Wood. (Oct.)
Fire on the Track: Betty Robinson
and the Triumph of the Early
Olympic Women
Roseanne Montillo. Crown, $27 (304p)
ISBN 978-1-101-90615-6
Against the backdrop of the Great
Depression, Montillo (The Wilderness of
Ruin) traces the fascinating story of Betty
Robinson, an Olympic-track-and-field
trailblazer. Montillo is a brilliant story-
teller who introduces Robinson in 1931,
as she is being driven to a local funeral
home, assumed dead, after a devastating
plane crash that puts her life—and future
Olympic hopes—in jeopardy. As a high
school athlete, Robinson came just a tenth
of a second short of the U.S. indoor track
record. Robinson went on to join the first
female track-and-field team to compete in
the 1928 Olympics and won gold for the
U.S. In telling Robinson’s story, Montillo
ably traces women’s fight for inclusion
and equality in competitive sports while
unearthing decades-old examples of the
biases and challenges women in competi-
tive sports still face to this day (some
detractors claimed that the Olympics
were creating “ ‘manly’ women”; others
questioned an athletic woman’s gender).
Montillo also includes riveting portraits of
Tidye Pickett and Louise Stokes—the first
female African-American runners. Montillo
has written an engaging, insightful look
at an era in women’s sports. (Oct.)
Future War: Preparing for the
New Global Battlefield
Robert H. Latiff. Knopf, $25 (208p) ISBN 978-
1-101-94760-9
Latiff, a retired U.S. Air Force general
with a background in military weapons
systems, emphasizes the need to understand the moral and ethical dimensions of
the development of sophisticated military
technologies and to craft policy with the
potential dilemmas these technologies
could cause in mind. He cautions that
technology is addictive and seductive,
and that human societies have a history of
developing technologies without adequately thinking about the consequences.
Latiff sees future wars being fought
largely by armies of robots; humans will
play a part in future war, but it will
increasingly be through remote control.
He also believes that new technologies
will affect future soldiers, who will be
isolated from their wider societies and
biologically enhanced to be stronger,
faster, and smarter than their nonmilitary
peers. The nature of the future battlefield
and warrior, he contends, will make war
more brutal than ever. Latiff states that
education, understanding, and expertise
on military matters and science must be
shared by all segments of society, particularly by the U. S. civilian population,
media, and political leadership, as a bulwark against the relentless tide of technological advancement. This is a quick and
stimulating read, and its focus on ethics
makes it an important part of the growing
literature related to managing the continuing acceleration of technological
development. (Oct.)