heroine of Daniel Defoe’s Roxana: A
Fortunate Mistress, that anything “resistible”
isn’t rape and questions how she could be
sexually alluring at 50. Nevertheless,
Coetzee’s many strong and provocative
essays, along with the clarity of his writing
and the literary biographies he weaves into
his analyses, make this in general a worthwhile work of literary criticism. Agent: Peter
Lampack, Peter Lampack Agency. (Jan.)
The Monk of Mokha
Dave Eggers. Knopf, $28.95 (368p)
ISBN 978-1-101-94731-9
Eggers (Heroes of the Frontier) tells the
exciting true story of a Yemeni-American
man’s attempts to promote his ancestral
country’s heritage, giving both a timely
gloss on the traditional American dream
and a window into the nightmare of contemporary political instability. The book
first finds Mokhtar Alkhanshali as an
ambitious but unfocused 25-year-old who
has held a series of odd jobs in the Bay
Area—including as a car salesman and
doorman. He finds unexpected direction
in 2013, when he learns that coffee originated 500-years earlier in his family’s
native country, under the oversight of the
titular Sufi holy man. This revelation
sends him on an entrepreneurial quest to
revitalize the long-dormant Yemeni coffee
industry. Alkhanshali’s education in the
coffee business provides a fascinating
glimpse at how coffee is grown and processed today, but his path takes a startling
turn in 2015 when Alkhanshali visits
Yemen to make final importing arrangements just as the country collapses into
civil war. The narrative turns into an
increasingly surreal account of
Alkhanshali’s efforts to elude imprisonment and even death in order to get the
coffee-bean samples he has secured back to
America. Eggers’s book works as both a
heartwarming success story with a winning central character and an account of
real-life adventures that read with the vividness of fiction. (Jan.)
The Road Not Taken:
Edward Lansdale and the
American Tragedy in Vietnam
Max Boot. Liveright, $35 (784p) ISBN 978-0-
87140-941-6
Military historian and neoconservative
commentator Boot (Invisible Armies) out-
shines everything ever written about the
legendary CIA operative Edward Lansdale
(1908–1987) in this exhaustive, fact-
filled, and analytical biography. Lansdale
was initially an OSS man who was instru-
mental in defeating a Communist insur-
gency in the Philippines known as the
Huk Rebellion in the early 1950s. He
then headed the first undercover U.S.
operation in the nascent nation of South
Vietnam in June 1954, remaining an
important voice in Vietnam War policy
until the early 1960s as the debate raged
over how to stop North Vietnam and the
Vietcong. According to Boot, Lansdale
consistently advocated what has come to
be known as counterinsurgency—winning
“hearts and minds”—and strongly
opposed bringing in massive numbers of
U.S. combat troops. Throughout, Boot
argues forcefully that ignoring Lansdale’s
advice was a big reason that the Vietnam
War turned out to be a disaster. In his
afterword, Boot urges American leaders to
adopt a form of “Lansdalism”—learn,
like, and listen—and apply it to foreign
interventions as was done in 1980s El
Salvador and 2000s Colombia. This is a
detailed, warts-and-all examination of
Lansdale’s complex professional and per-
sonal lives. Maps & illus. (Jan.)
Silver Road:
Essays, Maps and Calligraphies
Kazim Ali. Tupelo, $16.95 trade paper (115p)
ISBN 978-1-936797-99-8
Poet Ali (The Far Mosque) combines
smatterings of verse with memoir-tinged
prose in an exploration of our spiritual and
physical connections, or lack thereof, to the
Earth and one another. He transforms
readers into his companions on his travels
around the globe and on an interior philosophical quest. Are humans essentially
alone, the book asks, or does this essential
loneliness connect us all? Ali pulls in scientific concepts, comparing the “intuitive
leaps that quantum and particle physics
make about the nature of reality” to those
made by poets, and spiritual concepts such
as the Islamic tenet of kismet, which he
parses as the “net of infinite relationships”
★ Written in Blood: Courage and
Corruption in the Appalachian War of
Extraction
Edited by Wess Harris. PM, $19.95 trade paper (264p)
ISBN 978-1-62963-445-6
This slender but powerful anthology from labor histo- rian Harris (with William C. Blizzard, When Miners March) relates a people’s history of conflict between mining companies and the workers of Appalachia
from the late 19th century to early 20th century. The collection draws on an eclectic array of sources, including
the folk songs of Sarah Ogan Gunning, who calls for
miners to “sink this capitalist system into the darkest pits of hell”; interviews with
a whistle-blower, a miners’ defense lawyer, and miners’ families; and a reproduction
of a pamphlet on the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain produced by the coal operator’s
union. The book is especially strong on gender issues, such as the exploitation of
young “comfort girls” in remote mining camps and the Esau scrip system, in which
the wives or widows of miners exchanged sex for the ersatz money used at the company store. Some of the Appalachian history here is well established, but the book
offers invaluable insight into organized labor’s power in one of America’s most dangerous industries, the collusion of state power and big business, and the resilient
spirit of miners and their families. Examining the region’s history and future prospects, Harris’s volume offers deeply researched and ethically sound perspectives on
an industry that has become a 21st-century political flash point. (Dec.)
