From Bill Gates to MLK’s mother: Dig into the best books of February

|
Penguin Random House
“How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need” by Bill Gates, Knopf, 272 pp.; and “Mike Nichols: A Life” by Mark Harris, Penguin Press, 688 pp.
  • Quick Read
  • Deep Read ( 3 Min. )

February fiction runs the gamut from a story about women starting over to an allegory about the Arab Spring. In nonfiction, a tripartite biography of Alberta King (mother of Martin Luther King Jr.), Louise Little (mother of Malcolm X), and Berdis Baldwin (mother of James Baldwin) explores the influence they wielded in their sons’ lives. Bill Gates points to high-tech solutions in “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.” And two major figures of the stage and screen – playwright Tom Stoppard and director Mike Nichols – are the subjects of outstanding biographies. 

Why We Wrote This

Books provide an oasis for contemplation and reflection, as well as the opportunity to commune with well-versed thinkers. Our picks for February touch on life passages, famous lives, and plain talk about climate change.

This month's fiction offerings span the globe – with stories set in Tunisia, Chile, and Britain – while the nonfiction titles tackle climate change and the labor movement.

1. The Narrowboat Summer by Anne Youngson

Anne Youngson follows her charming epistolary novel, “Meet Me at the Museum,” with another soothing, heartening read about the possibility of forging new connections and changing one’s life at any age. Two women, new acquaintances and both at a crossroads in their lives, agree to help a stranger by skippering her narrowboat some 300 miles north along England’s canals. In the course of their adventure, they meet some unusual people and untangle their thoughts about how they want to live going forward. Read the full review here.

Why We Wrote This

Books provide an oasis for contemplation and reflection, as well as the opportunity to commune with well-versed thinkers. Our picks for February touch on life passages, famous lives, and plain talk about climate change.

2. How to Order the Universe by María José Ferrada

When 7-year-old M skips school to accompany her father on his rounds as a traveling salesman in Chile during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, the two embark on an adventure that alters their lives. Their successful partnership soon deteriorates, and along with it, a way of life. María José Ferrada, whose previous work includes children’s books, imparts a tale that captures a child’s perspective on a world created and disrupted by adults.

3. The Ardent Swarm by Yamen Manai

Amazon Crossing
“The Ardent Swarm” by Yamen Manai, Amazon Crossing, 192 pp.

In a beautifully written novel that blends poetry with politics, Tunisian author Yamen Manai explores the era that followed the Arab Spring in the 2010s. In an allegorical tale, he writes of a devoted “bee whisperer” who finds one of his hives destroyed. Searching for answers, he ventures beyond his village and discovers a world filled with people with competing interests. 

4. My Year Abroad by Chang-rae Lee

Tiller Bardmon, the antihero of  “My Year Abroad,” returns to the U.S. from an international escapade. His discombobulating journey becomes an outstanding bildungsroman confronting identity, familial bonds, misplaced loyalty, and consumption culture. 

5. The Girl From the Channel Islands by Jenny Lecoat

Jenny Lecoat’s World War II novel follows Hedy Bercu, an Austrian Jew who escaped the Nazis in Vienna only to find herself working for them as a translator. Inspired by true events, this sweeping story of humanity and hope celebrates courageous individuals surviving oppression.

6. Mike Nichols: A Life by Mark Harris

This entertaining, illuminating biography of famed director Mike Nichols stays focused on his work, spanning his comedy improvisation duo with Elaine May and his direction of several Neil Simon plays along with movies such as “The Graduate” and “Silkwood.”

7. The Three Mothers by Anna Malaika Tubbs

Macmillan Publishers
“The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation” by Anna Malaika Tubbs, Flatiron Books, 272 pp.

This eye-opening debut corrects the erasure of Alberta King (Martin Luther King Jr.’s mother), Louise Little (Malcolm X’s mother), and Berdis Baldwin (James Baldwin’s mother) from the historical record. Each woman was a strong influence on her famous son; all three buried their sons as well.

8. Tom Stoppard: A Life by Hermione Lee

In this near-perfect combination of author and subject, Hermione Lee crafts a biography of one of the greatest living playwrights. Stoppard’s work includes not only plays (“Arcadia”) but also films (“Shakespeare in Love”). The book will surely be the jumping-off point for all future studies of Stoppard.

9. Midnight in Vehicle City by Edward McClelland

Fed up with erratic pay and dangerous working conditions, workers at the General Motors plant in Flint, Michigan, went on strike in late 1936. Edward McClelland vividly recounts how the strikers fought off local law enforcement to maintain control of the plant, enabling the fledgling United Auto Workers to negotiate one of the biggest labor victories in U.S. history.

10. How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates

Bill Gates offers a clear summary of the climate crisis and argues, unsurprisingly, that technological innovation is the solution to the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced. The book is a treat for technophiles, and a crash course for nature lovers on how our civilization works. Still, the book provides little guidance on how to mobilize the political will or the personal resolve to live more sustainably. It is a sobering yet hopeful assessment, and a call to arms.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to From Bill Gates to MLK’s mother: Dig into the best books of February
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/2021/0216/From-Bill-Gates-to-MLK-s-mother-Dig-into-the-best-books-of-February
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe