10 New Books We Recommend This Week
May 6, 2021
Our recommended books this week offer revisionist views of a couple of historical figures: In “The Invention of Miracles,” her biography of the often-lionized Alexander Graham Bell, the writer Katie Booth takes a dim view of his efforts to eradicate deafness and its culture, while in “The Bomber Mafia,” Malcolm Gladwell looks favorably on the much-criticized Gen. Curtis LeMay and his ruthless Japanese bombing campaign late in World War II. We also like a posthumous essay collection from the beloved travel writer Jan Morris and a new graphic memoir from the brilliant Alison Bechdel that explores her obsession with physical fitness, along with a lot of fiction: story collections by John Lanchester and Te-Ping Chen, and new novels from Rachel Cusk, Helen Oyeyemi, Ben Hopkins and J. Robert Lennon.