Our recommended books this week take you to the top of the world (via Daniel Light’s history of mountaineering) and into the trenches of world politics (via Angela Merkel’s memoir and Rahul Bhatia’s study of India), with detours to Broadway, the megamall and an apocalyptic take on “King Lear.” Happy reading. — Gregory Cowles
THE WHITE LADDER:
Triumph and Tragedy at the Dawn of Mountaineering
Daniel Light
When asked by a reporter why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, George Mallory famously replied: “Because it is there.” In “The White Ladder,” an engaging and agreeably ornate history of earlier mountaineering, the British author Light paints a vivid picture of this seemingly innate need and those who first heeded its call.
AMERICAN BULK:
Emily Mester
In this unsettling and eye-opening debut, a collection of personal essays about consumption, Mester considers why she, and we, seek satisfaction by obsessively choosing, buying and rating the objects we desire.
FREEDOM:
Angela Merkel with Beate Baumann
In her candid memoir, the former German chancellor reflects on her political rise and defends her record as the outlook for her country turns grim.
THE NEW INDIA:
The Unmaking of the World’s Largest Democracy
Rahul Bhatia
Bhatia’s study of modern-day India explores how the world’s largest democracy slid toward authoritarianism, combining personal history and investigative journalism to account for his country’s turn to militant Hindu nationalism.
PRIVATE RITES
Julia Armfield
In this apocalyptic updating of “King Lear,” a visionary architect’s death leaves his three queer adult daughters to grapple with his legacy, his divisive will and his “easy cruelty” in a London drenched by catastrophic flooding.
HOW SONDHEIM CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE
Richard Schoch
This incisive and heartwarming essay collection by a professor of drama at Queen’s University Belfast and a former New York theater director offers a show-by-show analysis to examine the extraordinary career of the master of the musical and, at least notionally, to extract usable takeaways from the Sondheim canon.
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