8 New Books We Recommend This Week
March 11, 2021
Sometimes a book sells itself: Oh, Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel is a mournful allegory about artificial intelligence and the challenges of human connection? Sign me up, please! (But even if you’re on the same page, do make time to read Radhika Jones’s lovely review of the book; you’ll be glad you did.) Other times a good review makes all the difference. That was the case this week with Mary Roach’s wonderful take on “This Is the Voice,” by John Colapinto, an in-depth nonfiction book about the larynx. Trust me, you’ll want to read it after you read the review.
"There are men of character in the U.S. Congress, both House and Senate. There are women of character, too. But the evidence for 'character' needs to be
Biden’s tricky tango with Congress
“There are men of character in the U.S. Congress, both House and Senate. There are women of character, too. But the evidence for ‘character’ needs to be something other than the iteration of the word itself,” writes Marjorie Garber in her book “Character: The History of a Cultural Obsession.”
That is a useful frame for trying to make sense of the dramas that proliferated on Capitol Hill this week as Congress took up multiple nominations to President Joe Biden’s Cabinet and held its first hearing on the January 6 insurrection. As Garber notes, the translation of individual traits into a “national character” most often occurs at “times of stress, as a marker not so much of social progress as of social and cultural anxiety.”