by Peter Fritzsche ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 23, 2025
An admirable and useful addition to the history of World War II.
How global conflict made a world of outcasts.
Churchill and Roosevelt had signed the Atlantic Charter in August 1941, promoting a robust defense for free trade and promising national self-determination. However, not all of the charter’s consequences were intended. The more conventional aspects of this study focus on the three main theaters of war: El Alamein, Guadalcanal, and the Battle for Stalingrad—the latter accounting for 10% of all battlefield deaths during the entire war. The less conventional aspect leaves the exclusively military story not so much ignored as supplemented. Cultures that were previously almost unknown to each other fought side by side or clashed—often, both. With the exception of continental Europe, most action was overseas, with over 1 million men at sea. One sixth of the American population was mobilized, and in addition to producing munitions, battleships (one per week), and bombers, they changed the sheer speed and scale of warfare. The enormous shipyards in Richmond, California, drew migrants from the South, and with them, the lingering heritage of Jim Crow. Recruits needed dental care and education. Literacy rates were surprisingly low. “The war effort nationalized America’s race problem,” writes Fritzsche, a University of Illinois historian. The Japanese invasion of Singapore led to the collapse of Burma and added fuel to the “quit India” campaign. The British Empire, home to a quarter of the world’s population, began to seem contingent rather than inevitable. Fritzsche tells of the effects of war in South Africa, the Philippines, and China. Along with India, China suffered famine as a result of prioritizing military rather than civilian provisioning. Back in Europe, those beneath the bombings were left homeless and destitute. Jews were evicted and deported. Mass labor shortages pressed occupied territories into slave labor, promoting increased resistance. Migration becomes the main thesis of the book. Certainties and political structures crumble, Fritzsche argues, when everyone is from somewhere else.
An admirable and useful addition to the history of World War II.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781541603219
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
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by Steve Martin illustrated by Harry Bliss ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 17, 2020
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
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The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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by David Sedaris ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 29, 2018
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
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In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
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