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greatest threat to Israel’s survival, he
asserts, is a prime minister, Netanyahu,
who has created a space for “the ideologues, the sectarians and the extremists”
intent on dismantling the delicate social
threads that have stitched the country
together since its inception. Carlstrom’s
engrossing book doesn’t trade in dire
warnings but offers a sobering look at
contemporary Israel and its future. (Dec.)
The Accidental President: Harry
S. Truman and the Four Months
That Changed the World
A. J. Baime. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $30
(448p) ISBN 978-0-544-61734-6
Journalist and editor Baime (The
Arsenal of Democracy) carves out a slice of
the Truman presidency and serves up an
attractive tale for fans of both presidential
and WWII history. He opens with an
acknowledgement of Truman’s divisive
legacy, then sidesteps the debate by
arguing that, whether the Missourian is
considered among one of the best or the
worst presidents, “the first four months of
his administration should rank as the
most challenging and action-packed” of
any president’s. When F.D.R. decided to
run for an unprecedented fourth term, he
selected Truman, a senator from Missouri
whom he barely knew, as his vice president. The position didn’t afford Truman
access to Roosevelt’s inner circle and, after
F.D.R.’s death, Truman found himself
unprepared for the presidency. He proved a
quick study, however, and Baime’s account
centers on how Truman brought the U.S.
through the end of WWII. He writes
admiringly of Truman’s negotiations with
Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin over
the future of postwar Europe and of his
decision to use an atomic bomb on Japan
to end the war in the Pacific. Baime opens
a clear, if narrow, window on a pivotal
moment in history. Illus. Agent: Scott
Waxman, Waxman Leavell Literary. (Oct.)
Al Capone and the 1933 World’s
Fair: The End of the Gangster Era
in Chicago
William Elliott Hazelgrove. Rowman &
Littlefield, $36 (250p) ISBN 978-1-4422-7226-2
Hazelgrove (Forging a President: How the
Wild West Created Teddy Roosevelt) adds
little insight to the life and legacy of Al
Capone in this superfluous history of the
end of the notorious mobster’s career in
the lead-up to the 1933 World’s Fair in
Chicago. The book is a thinly sourced
account that attempts the same equation
as Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City by
integrating a social history of a world’s fair
with a true-crime story. Unfortunately,
Hazelgrove’s account is weakened by fic-
tionalized perspectives and the use of
sources that he himself takes with a grain
of salt, as when he describes the last
thoughts of a murder victim who did not
speak with anyone after his face was shot
off. Later, he uses a quotation from Capone
about a biography of Napoleon, but then
writes that “it’s hard to believe Al Capone
said any of this.” Most strikingly,
Hazelgrove provides no sources whatsoever
for the chapters that follow the point of
view of burlesque dancer Sally Rand. Given
the numerous written accounts on the sub-
ject of Al Capone in Chicago, readers are
better off skipping this one in favor of a
more authoritative account, such as John
Binder’s Al Capone’s Beer Wars: A Complete
History of Organized Crime in Chicago During
Prohibition. (Oct.)
★ American Radical: Inside the
World of an Undercover Muslim
FBI Agent
Tamer Elnoury and Kevin Maurer. Dutton, $28
(368p) ISBN 978-1-101-98615-8
A Muslim American working as an
undercover agent in a counterterrorism
unit in the FBI grapples with his faith
while posing as a jihadi sympathizer in
this multifaceted, action-packed account
of real-life spycraft. Elnoury, writing
under a pseudonym, opens the book on
the evening of Sept. 10, 2001, as he pre-
pares to intercept a major drug deal while
working undercover narcotics in New
Jersey; it isn’t until 2008 that he begins
his work with the FBI’s counterterrorism
undercover unit. Written with journalist
Maurer (coauthor of Mark Owen’s No Easy
Day: The Autobiography of a Navy SEAL),
the book largely focuses on Elnoury’s
attempt to penetrate into a plot to blow
up train tracks on the route between
Toronto and New York City. The plot is
led in part by Chiheb Esseghaier, a
Tunisian doctoral student living in
Montreal, who was flagged by the Feds
after contacting al-Qaeda operatives
online. Elnoury heightens the suspense in
vividly described scenes, such as when he
nearly gets run over by a train while
scouting locations for the attack with two
suspected terrorists, and provides insight
into the worldview and intentions of al-
Qaeda affiliates. There is never a dull
moment in this intimate story of an
American Muslim going to great lengths
to serve and protect his country. (Oct.)
The Art of Confession: The
Performance of Self from Robert
Lowell to Reality TV
Christopher Grobe. New York Univ., $32.50
(320p) ISBN 978-1-4798-8208-3
Grobe, an assistant English professor at
Amherst College, traces the history and
evolution of modern American confessional
art in this impressive and wide-ranging
debut. His analysis primarily focuses on
how artists have approached the act of
candid personal revelation as a self-conscious performance. The book’s movement
through recent history demonstrates the
politically charged nature of this artistic
approach and its intersection with questions of identity. He argues that the current
American preoccupation with confession in
art began with mid-20th-century figures
such as Robert Lowell exercising the white
male “privilege... to strike a delicate balance—to seem both private and public,
both personal and social, both unique and
representative.” According to Grobe’s
analysis, this privilege was upended by the
feminist movement and avant-garde queer
artists. Fast forward to today, and confessional performance can be easily practiced
by the many, not just an artistic elite, on
social platforms such as Twitter. Devoting
close readings to examples including Ann
Sexton’s poetry, Eleanor Antin’s autobiographical performance art, and Spalding
Gray’s monologues, Grobe demonstrates
how the form has fascinated audiences and
artists as a way of exploring “conceptions of
the self.” Grobe’s book is an engrossing,
dense work of literary scholarship for the
21st century, or, as he refers to it, “the age
of aggregation.” (Nov.)
★ Black Tudors: The Untold Story
Miranda Kaufman. Oneworld, $27 (352p)
ISBN 978-1-78607-184-2
The very concept of black Tudors may
sound unlikely, but in this highly readable yet intensively researched book,