Publishers Weekly - August 28, 2017

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Review_NONFICTION

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.)