Publishers Weekly - August 28, 2017

WWW.PUBLISHERSWEEKLY.COM115

Review_NONFICTION

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.)