possibilities for
“women, free
blacks, and
slaves” in the
new country.
Jefferson’s pres-
ence looms
throughout,
but Kerrison
foregrounds the
daughters’ sto-
ries, brilliantly
recapturing the patterns of Southern wom-
en’s lives. Martha and Maria lost their
mother at an early age and bounced from
place to place before settling into homes
of their own as married women. Harriet’s
story is the most captivating and reveals
much about the web of family connections
woven in bondage. Harriet never knew
Maria and Martha ignored Harriet at
Monticello. When Harriet turned 14,
Jefferson put her to work in Monticello’s
weavers’ cottage. But in 1822, he facili-
tated Harriet’s departure to Washington,
after which she passed as a white woman.
Incisive and elegant, Kerrison’s book is at
once a fabulous family story and a stellar
work of historical scholarship. Maps &
illus. Agent: Howard Morhaim, Howard
Morhaim Literary. (Jan.)
Late Essays: 2006–2017
J. M. Coetzee. Viking, $28 (304p) ISBN 978-0-
7352-2391-2
In this collection of 23 essays, Coetzee
(The Schooldays of Jesus) offers striking,
imaginative insights into a varied group
of writers, from German poet Friedrich
Hölderlin (1770–1843) to modern-day
master Philip Roth. Coetzee’s entries,
roving from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
to Leo Tolstoy, Samuel Beckett, and Patrick
White, raise numerous questions: Why do
novels lie to us? What makes Samuel
Beckett like Herman Melville? How do
translators make choices? In his essay on
playwright and fiction writer Heinrich von
Kleist, Coetzee reflects on the author’s enigmatic novella The Marquise of O, asking
whether there can be aspects of a story
that remain unknown even to the author.
Yet there are limits to Coetzee’s scope: the
authors in this collection are, except for
Irene Nemirovsky, male. Moreover, Coetzee
reveals a blindness to the female experience,
as made apparent when he writes, about the
engrossing story of a self-made man. Agent:
David P. Halpern, Robbins Office. (Jan.)
Here Is Real Magic:
A Magician’s Search for
Wonder in the Modern World
Nate Staniforth. Bloomsbury, $28 (256p)
ISBN 978-1-63286-424-6
Magician Staniforth, best known for his
Discovery show Breaking Magic, wonderfully captures the joys and struggles of
becoming a working magician and what
happened to him when his fascination
with his craft faded. From an early age,
ever since he made a coin disappear on the
playground, Staniforth knew he wanted to
be a magician, not only because of the
“open-mouthed wonder” his playground
trick evoked from his audience but also
because the moment was even “far more
amazing for” him than it was for them.
But as he strove to be like his heroes
Houdini and David Copperfield,
Staniforth burned out on the traveling
magic circuit and lost touch with the
reason he became a magician in the first
place. Asking himself, “Where do you find
wonder after you have lost it?” he traveled
to India to watch magic shows and feel like
he did when “he didn’t know the secrets.”
In New Delhi, he meets and old street
magician who says: “The real magic is your
hard work. If you do hard work, that will
show you magic.” During the course of his
trip, Staniforth rekindled his passion. He
ends his books with suggestions on how to
“bring wonder back into your ordinary
life.” The result is a personal story that
conjures up the wonder and magic of life
without any trickery or deceit. (Jan.)
★ Jefferson’s Daughters:
Three Sisters, White and Black,
in a Young America
Catherine Kerrison. Ballantine, $28 (432p)
ISBN 978-1-1018-8624-3
Kerrison (Claiming the Pen), associate
professor of history at Villanova University,
richly textures this tale of the lives of
Thomas Jefferson’s three daughters. Two
daughters, Martha and Maria, came from
Jefferson’s marriage to Martha Wayles
Skelton. The other, Harriet, was born to
the enslaved Sally Hemings. Kerrison
demonstrates her deep understanding of
post-Revolution America, marshaling an
impressive array of sources to illustrate the
the underworld.” Hanbury-Tenison meets
Nyapun, an indigenous Penan nomadic
hunter-gatherer, and makes a lasting con-
nection. Revisiting excerpts from diaries
he kept in the field, Hanbury-Tenison
finds depictions of “the excitement and
passion we all felt at the time.” He con-
cedes that other entries are little more
than a “boring chronicle of the logistics of
the day.” Hanbury-Tenison concludes
with a look at ways in which Mulu has
changed since he first visited: trees have
been “ripped out over vast tracts of
country, leaving behind logging roads,”
and rivers that were once filled with fish
have turned brown. Celebrating Borneo’s
biodiversity and cautioning against its
degradation, Hanbury-Tenison captures
some of the beauty before its almost cer-
tain disappearance. (Jan.)
The Gambler:
How Penniless Dropout Kirk
Kerkorian Became the Greatest
Deal Maker in Capitalist History
William C. Rempel. Dey Street, $28.99
(416p) ISBN 978-0-06-245677-9
Investigative reporter Rempel (At the
Devil’s Table) delivers a solid biography of
billionaire Kirk Kerkorian. After
Kerkorian’s death at the age of 98 in 2015,
Rempel faced a wall of silence from
Kerkorian’s family, friends, and associates.
Using the sources available to him,
including a very public paternity suit when
Kerkorian was in his 80s, Rempel reveals
Kerkorian as a man with the nerves of steel
needed to build business empires in transportation, gambling, and film. During
WWII Kerkorian was employed by the
British air force to fly new American-built
warplanes across the Atlantic. After the
war, Kerkorian created a cargo-flight business by purchasing surplus aircraft. An
enthusiastic gambler, Kerkorian entered
the high-risk field of Las Vegas real estate,
eventually owning many of the city’s best-known hotels and casinos. The chapters on
Las Vegas stand out, both for Rempel’s
telling of the tale and for the fascinating
stratagems Kerkorian used against rivals,
among them Howard Hughes. Although
Kerkorian’s private life—his multiple marriages and many romances, his need for
anonymity, and his demanding personality—receives short shrift due to the
author’s limited sources, this is still an
