Ian Kumekawa’s new book, “Empty Vessel,” promises in its subtitle to tell “the story of the global economy in one barge.” Along those lines, you could think of our recommended books this week as the story of the global economy in one list: Besides Kumekawa’s book, we suggest fiction and nonfiction set in Mexico, Germany, England and Singapore, along with one book about multilevel marketing right here in America. Happy reading. — Gregory Cowles
Tequila Wars:
José Cuervo and the Bloody Struggle for the Spirit of Mexico
by Ted Genoways
José Cuervo’s name has become synonymous with tequila, but — as Genoways notes in this textured and densely packed biography — “many people today do not even realize he was a real person.” By drawing on family, newspaper, government and university archives, as well as the extant scraps of Cuervo’s professional and personal correspondence, Genoways (a James Beard Award-winning author) is able to paint a nuanced portrait of an elusive figure and ensure that he will live on as more than just a brand name. Read our review.
The Dazzling Paget Sisters:
The English Twins Who Captivated Literary Europe
by Ariane Bankes
Identical twins who were born in 1916, orphaned at 12 and educated unconventionally, Celia and Mamaine Paget grew up to be vivid but fragile poppies among tall waving wheat stalks of midcentury intellectualism, as they became friends and sometime love interests to George Orwell, Arthur Koestler, Albert Camus, Edmund Wilson and others. This sparkling double biography, written by Celia’s daughter, contains enough mad capers, heaving proposals and dramatic death throes to be a veritable Harlequin romance for the literary set, with a dash of Sweet Valley High. (“Even Sartre was hoodwinked by Celia pretending to be Mamaine on a later trip to Paris.”) Read our review.
Little Bosses Everywhere:
How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America
by Bridget Read
This exposé by a reporter and features writer for New York magazine reads like a thriller as it investigates the birth and growth of multilevel marketing, a shadowy and sprawling industry that polished up door-to-door sales with a new veneer of all-American entrepreneurialism. Almost 8 percent of Americans, or 17 million people, have been involved in these businesses at some point in their lives, nearly as many as those recovering from a substance use disorder. Yet a 2011 study of 350 multilevel marketing businesses found that 99 percent of participants lost money. “Little Bosses Everywhere” lays out an almost prosecutorial case against many multilevel marketing schemes, explaining why regulators need to take the industry seriously, and the larger story it tells about whom the economy has set up to fail. Read our review.
The Original Daughter
by Jemimah Wei
Through the earnest and often knotty relationship between two sisters growing up in Singapore in the late 1990s and early 2000s, this novel lays bare the claustrophobia of familial love, the ache of unfulfilled dreams and the costs of repressed emotion. Wei writes with a maturity that belies her status as a debut author. Precise, layered and moving, “The Original Daughter” is a book not to miss. Read our review.
The Director
by Daniel Kehlmann
Movie stars and Nazis are irresistible ingredients in any book. “The Director,” Kehlmann’s smartly entertaining new novel about the great Austrian filmmaker G.W. Pabst, offers both, detailing their once intimate, often symbiotic ties. Kehlmann’s Pabst is a gifted psychologist when it comes to directing actors but a stranger to himself in all other matters, a genius who thinks in motion pictures but is unable to direct the flow of his own life. This novel is a marvelous performance — not only supple, horrifying and mordantly droll, but fluidly translated and absolutely convincing. Read our review.
Eternal Summer
by Franziska Gänsler
Set in a fictional counterpart to the spa town Baden-Baden, this slim, stunning first novel by a German author takes place in an unspecified year when climate collapse has left the formerly lush, healing region so ravaged by wildfires it is virtually uninhabitable. In the town’s last remaining hotel, two lonely women form a tenuous and unlikely bond. Gänsler builds tension, both personal and existential, with astonishing control and care. Read our review.
The Peepshow:
The Murders at 10 Rillington Place
by Kate Summerscale
The stranger-than-fiction case unpacks a series of sensational murders that rocked 1950s London. Summerscale, the multiple-award-winning author of five previous books, brings a novelist’s eye and a sociologist’s understanding to a trove of thrilling material.
Empty Vessel:
The Story of the Global Economy in One Barge
by Ian Kumekawa
When the pandemic arrived five years ago, Americans who were trying in vain to procure protective gear like face masks got an unwanted lesson in the intricacies of global supply chains. Today, in the midst of tariffs and an escalating trade war, the exact locations of container ships have become a matter of grim fascination. In his new book Kumekawa, a historian at Harvard, tethers the abstract workings of the global economy to one ship in particular: a barge made of steel that weighs 9,500 deadweight tons. The result is elegant, enlightening and impressive. Read our review.
The post 8 New Books We Recommend This Week appeared first on New York Times.
