“The Iron Scar: A Father and Son in Siberia” by Bob Kunzinger of Deltaville (Madville, 168 pp., April 21) is, in my partial reading, a vivid and often poetic exploration of the personal and the historical, from poignant to hilarious.

Kunzinger, long a humanities professor in Hampton Roads, has written several other books and counts at least 28 trips to Russia, where he’s taught and led study abroad programs. In this book, Michael is 20; his father, in his 50s: “I want to figure out what is next as a father whose son is moving on and as a son whose father is moving on as well.” How to let go, to start over?

From Yekaterinburg to the Sea of Japan, the four-bunk fare means multiple Russian cabin mates and a “shared space which for most fathers and sons can be avoided at home.”

Influential here are Russian writers and laborers; writer Bob Shacochis; Michael’s skill with a harmonica; a game, “train songs”; “Moscow time” (it rules the trains, no matter which of seven time zones they’re in); other fathers and sons — czars, railroad engineers, and Dima with father Sergei, a decorated veteran of the Siege of Leningrad. Fleeting scenes say much: the cabin mate who, never looking up, ousts an intruder with a single word that makes the man blanch.

I’ll happily keep reading.

— Erica Smith

___

New from Tim Seibles, the nationally acclaimed Norfolk poet: “Voodoo Libretto: New and Selected Poems” (Etruscan Press). At 6:30 p.m. April 2, reading and Q&A. Taste, 407 W. 21st St., Norfolk. 757-416-6020.

___

Also local

Michael J. Hebert, Gloucester: “Ever Vigilant: Tales of the Vietnam War.” On his time in 1969-70 as an Army patrol boat operator in the 458th Sea Tigers. Hebert is a retired captain with the Miss Hampton II harbor tour. (Gunboat Press, 306 pp.)

Jeff Schnader, Norfolk: “The Serpent Papers.” One friend enlists to fight in Vietnam; the other goes to Columbia, with its counterculture and anti-war protests. (Permanent Press, 302 pp.)

Michael Shelton, Virginia Beach: “West Point Admiral: Leadership Lessons From Four Decades of Military Service.” Shelton is a retired rear admiral whose tours included four in Norfolk, three of them command tours. (Acclaim Press, 368 pp.)

In the pipeline

J.E. Tobin, Williamsburg: “When We Were Wolves,” a novel. A man has long kept a secret about his town’s celebrity coach. Then news breaks. (May 15, Williamsburg’s Pale Horse Books.)

D.M. (Debra) Frech, Norfolk: “Words from Walls,” a poetry chapbook. (June 21, Finishing Line Press.)

___

New and recent

Alex Kershaw, “Against All Odds: A True Story of Ultimate Courage and Survival in World War II.” On four of the most decorated Americans of the war, all in one unit in Europe: Maurice “Footsie” Britt, Michael Daly, Keith Ware and Audie Murphy. (Dutton Caliber, 368 pp.)

Also: Marie Yovanovich, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, “Lessons From the Edge” … Anne Tyler, “French Braid,” the story of a Baltimore family from the ’50s into the pandemic. … Lisa Scottoline, “What Happened to the Bennetts.”

___

Note to readers

After about 770 editions, the weekly Literary Notes column is hanging it up (as is its writer, the books section editor). Books coverage will continue in The Sunday Break and at PilotOnline.com and DailyPress.com. Please send notices of major author talks and festivals to daily.break@pilotonline.com. Thanks for reading.

— Erica Smith, erica.smith@pilotonline.com

___

Dear Bill,

You’re retiring and I miss you. Such treasures you’ve given me — commentaries, kindnesses and grace, and an erudition that, never arrogant, thrives on the well-crafted word and story.

By the time I was a junior in high school, you’d published two books: “Saint With a Gun,” on detective stories and what they show about America, and “Stalking the Feature Story” — which found me later, in a college classroom.

“Stalking” came out the year you joined The Ledger-Star. You wrote and wrote. When I joined The Ledger, I edited. Our paths didn’t cross.

Three decades later, in 2007, they did. You wrote book reviews; now I edited them. When I too wrote a review, you phoned: “You’re one of us!”

On the occasional Sunday, you’d drop by the office and hang out in the room stuffed with books, books that publishers and authors wanted, impossibly, reviewed. (You: glee. Me: despair.) After some hours you’d depart with a few, leaving a note that always ended with a cheerful cartoon, a man in spectacles. He is, I think, holding a staff. It’s topped with a heart.

Once I asked: Want to write about the 50th anniversary edition of Strunk & White? (Hardcover, bigger, a foreword by Roger Angell. Of course you might.)

You answered; I took notes:

“It’s an adipose book!” you said, pitch rising.

“The whole charm of it,” you said, pitch falling, “was that you could keep it in your pocket.” The central point, you said, is simple: “Words matter; use them carefully.”

Later you gave me three of your E.B. White books: “Here is New York,” and two editions of Strunk & White. Tonight this jumps out: In the fourth edition, Page 33, a dark blue arrow extends from one instructive line,

Home is the sailor.

The arrow arcs down the left margin to your annotation “RLS” and eight more lines of dark blue. They fill the bottom, then head up the right.

You knew the entire, aching, exquisite poem.

Of course you did.

You knew, young, how good literature helps us connect. On teaching rowdy, athletic upperclassmen in Cincinnati clamoring for Christmas break:

I told the Wild Bunch that I’d arm wrestle the first volunteer. If he won, we’d cancel the class, but if I won, it would be the wrap-up on Chaucer.

Bang! He let me win. We did Chaucer. I asked him about that after.

“I liked you,” he told me, “because you dint give up on us.”

“Didn’t,” I said.

“Didn’t.”

Of course you didn’t.

You know the power of story. Of an annual confab that calls you to Tennessee, the National Storytelling Festival: We listen to storytellers for the same reason we read books, to see life. But reading is solitary. Storytelling is communal. Writing was invented to save us a seat.

And the power of sharing. During layoffs, 2009: I am reminded of the Cyclops, who, when asked by Odysseus what was his reward, responded: I will eat you last. …

Bill, your column retires, along with the worries it brings. But I suspect you’ll find ways to keep sharing and teaching, as you have long taught me.

— Erica Smith, erica.smith@pilotonline.com

“Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage” by Alfred Lansing. (McGraw-Hill, 1959; 2015, Basic Books.) Lansing drew on diaries, other personal accounts, and interviews. “What gives Lansing’s account special power is that he does not pull his punches,” Walter Sullivan wrote in the New York Times Book Review, April 19, 1959. “How do men behave, confronted with months of unbroken suffering?” The reader comes away, he wrote, “with new faith in the resourcefulness of man, his almost indefatigable will to live and, above all, his ability to fight back despair.” (Other reviewers, considering books on survival, cite Lansing’s: “incomparable,” Mary Roach; “one of the best adventure stories ever written,” Michael O’Donnell.)

“The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition” by Caroline Alexander. (Knopf, 1998, with the American Museum of Natural History.) “Elegant, subdued” storytelling by Alexander, who drew on newly available journals and other documents, and previously unpublished images by expedition photographer Frank Hurley. “Many of the photographs are not only quite beautiful, particularly of the Endurance as it sits icebound yet under desperate full sail, but also moving, with crew members putting on their best faces as death sat waiting just outside the picture frame,” wrote Kirkus.

“Shackleton” by Roland Huntford. (Scribner, 1986.) “Superb,” Sara Wheeler said in an aside in The Wall Street Journal. It’s a detailed (800-page) biography of the Irish-born explorer, including historical context, “the complexities of Anglo-Irish identity,” and psychological analysis, she wrote, reviewing a new book lacking that context (“Shackleton,” Ranulph Fiennes).

___

Ukraine/Russia reading: Civilians are under siege, without food and water; safety measures at Chernobyl, in Russian forces’ hands, is deteriorating. Consider, again, “Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine,” Anne Applebaum (2017; more than 3 million Ukrainians died in that 1936 famine). Also “Midnight in Chernobyl,” Adam Higginbotham (2019; the 1986 nuclear disaster and what it showed about the Soviet system). (NYT, WSJ)

Don’t mess with …: “Students across Texas are forming banned-book clubs and distribution drives,” the Texas Tribune wrote on Twitter, as state GOP lawmakers “target books that focus mostly on themes of race, gender and sexuality.” The Texas Library Association formed a coalition to fight bans there: Texans for the Right to Read, Publishers Weekly said.

In case you missed it: Unpublished sketches by Dr. Seuss will be the inspiration for a series of kids’ books by a diverse group of emerging artists. Last year, Seuss Enterprises said it would stop publishing certain Seuss classics because of racist imagery and stereotypes. (NYT)

From Bob Dylan: “The Philosophy of Modern Song,” November. (Pitchfork via Publishers Weekly)

___

New and recent

“Super Volcanoes: What They Reveal about Earth and the Worlds Beyond” by Robin George Andrews, a volcanologist and science journalist. (Norton, 336 pp.) A take on volcanoes that are best described as the “biggest, highest, hottest, coldest, oldest, weirdest, fastest, farthest,” writes geosciences professor Robert M. Thorson. In the interest of storytelling, Andrews sometimes discounts how much scientists do know, but it’s an illuminating and enthusiastic book. (WSJ)

— Erica Smith, erica.smith@pilotonline.com

Among the outraged voices protesting Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine: bookish types, including PEN International and the American Booksellers Association. The ABA promised “to amplify Ukrainian authors and books; offer support directly to Ukrainian booksellers; and promote organizations working to resist, inform, and offer aid.” The Frankfurt Book Fair and the Bologna Children’s Book Fair have cut ties to Russian state-sponsored publishers.

Particularly interesting is the opposition in Russia, where dissenting publicly can be fatal, and in former Soviet republics. From one letter, signed by several hundred people (translated):

“We, Russian book publishers, booksellers, editors, translators, critics, illustrators, designers, typesetters, proofreaders, printers, librarians, and booksellers, protest against the war unleashed by the Russian authorities in Ukraine. The war must cease immediately, and the initiators and participants of the military aggression must be stripped of their ranks and titles and brought to justice.

“Books are one of the main forms of preserving and transmitting human experience. And all this experience accumulated over the centuries teaches us: war is a crime, and the value of human life is unconditional.”

In Georgia — the former Soviet republic attacked by Russia in 2008 — the Publishers and Booksellers Association expressed its “unconditional support for the fight of the Ukrainian people against Putin’s Russia.” (At the 2008 Frankfurt Book Fair, the furious Georgians — their booth across from Russia’s — took books off the Russian stand, ripped out pages, and “bombed” the Russians with paper airplanes made from their own books.) (Shelf Awareness, Publishers Weekly)

Recommended: “The Gates of Europe,” Serhii Plokhy (2015). A history of Ukraine across centuries, empires, independence struggles. (NYT)

___

Visiting: Oge Mora, children’s author and collage artist, March 12, Virginia Beach Central Library. Her picture book “Thank You, Omu!” was a 2019 Caldecott winner. Collage workshop (10:30 a.m.; few slots left). At 2 p.m., talk, Q&A and signing. Free, but register: workshop, tinyurl.com/VBcollage; talk, tinyurl.com/VBtalk. 4100 Virginia Beach Blvd., 757-385-0150.

Doris Kearns Goodwin: The Norfolk Forum has individual tickets for the presidential historian and the cookbook author Ina Garten. Goodwin: 7:30 p.m. March 15, Chrysler Hall; $50 plus fees. Garten, May 24, $75 plus fees. thenorfolkforum.org.

___

New and recent

Margaret Atwood, “Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004-2021? (Doubleday, 496 pp.). Some smart pieces, but the speeches, printed verbatim, “quickly capsize the boat, threatening to drown even the good material.” (NYT)

Bill Barr, “One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General” (William Morrow, 595 pp.). The Washington Post: Barr “blasts Trump and Giuliani — and ignores his own partisan excesses.”

Garrett M. Graff, “Watergate: A New History” (Avid Reader, 832 pp.). Lively, wide-ranging, detailed. Averse to speculation — so “it’s notable that he suggests the C.I.A. might have set up the voice-activated system that sank Nixon’s ship,” writes Douglas Brinkley. (NYT)

Regional titles: Bobby Raye Huntley, “The Shaping of Our Future Generation: Putting a Plug in the School to Prison Pipeline!” Reflections on 19 years working in Virginia Beach public schools, including 14 as director of the Gentlemen’s Club, a mentoring and character development group. (B. Raye Huntley Enterprises, 245 pp.) … Charles Oldham, “Ship of Blood: Mutiny and Slaughter Aboard the Harry A. Berwind, and the Quest for Justice.” Based on the 1905 murder of the white captain and crewmen for which three Black crewmen were blamed. The trial was in Wilmington; the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court. (Beach Glass Books, 272 pp.)

— Erica Smith, erica.smith@pilotonline.com

In the fraught 1990s, Newport News’ Christopher Phillips started a movement: He created Socrates Cafe, a group and a model for people to meet and discuss life’s big questions respectfully and thoughtfully. A bestselling book, “Socrates Cafe,” followed, as did hundreds of groups worldwide. Other initiatives ensued — Democracy Cafe, Constitution Cafe, Philosophers’ Club, Declaration Project.

So did other books. His newest is “Soul of Goodness: Transform Grievous Hurt, Betrayal, and Setback into Love, Joy, and Compassion” (Prometheus, 232 pp.). It stems from the unexpected and devastating death of Phillips’ father, and the aftermath.

On March 7, Phillips and mentor Cornel West — the professor, philosopher and activist, who wrote a foreword to the book — will discuss it in a livestreamed event about 6 p.m. D.C.’s Busboys and Poets bookstore is the host. Free; for a Zoom link, sign up at tinyurl.com/CPgoodness. Other options: busboysandpoets.com

___

Mark your calendar: Earl Swift, March 29, discussing “Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island” — a talk postponed two years ago, early in the pandemic. “Requiem” was on several “best of 2018? lists, including Smithsonian’s. 5:30 p.m., Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts, 110 W. Finney Ave. Groups working on sea level rise will have booths. Free. Register: suffolkcenter.org. Masks required. 757-923-0003.

Events for kids, grades three through eight: Through the Virginia Beach Central Library. Free; registration required. 4100 Virginia Beach Blvd., 757-385-0150: In person, Lev Grossman, author of the Magicians trilogy, discussing “The Silver Arrow.” 2 to 3 p.m. March 5. Register: tinyurl.com/VBLev. … Virtual: Sci-fi/fantasy writer Greg van Eekhout (“COG”), 6:30 p.m. March 2. tinyurl.com/VBGreg … DC Comics’ Kate Karyus Quinn and Demitria Lunetta (“Anti/Hero”), 6:30 p.m. March 3. tinyurl.com/VBAnti

Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ina Garten: The Norfolk Forum has individual tickets for the presidential historian and the cookbook author. Goodwin: 7:30 p.m. March 15, Chrysler Hall; $50 plus fees. Garten, May 24, $75 plus fees. thenorfolkforum.org.

___

Explaining Ukraine/Russia: Seven books, chosen by The Wall Street Journal:

“Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine,” Anne Applebaum

“Who Lost Russia? How the World Entered a New Cold War,” Peter Conradi (how Russia went from potential partner in the mid-1990s to adversary)

“In Wartime: Stories From Ukraine,” Tim Judah

“The Border: A Journey Around Russia Through North Korea, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, Norway and the Northeast Passage,” Erika Fatland (translator Kari Dickson)

“War in 140 Characters: How Social Media Is Reshaping Conflict in the Twenty-First Century,” David Patrikarakos

“The Return of the Russian Leviathan,” Sergei Medvedev (translator Stephen Dalziel)

“Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation,” Serhii Plokhy

You Saw It Coming Dept.: Britney Spears. Book deal. Tell-all. $15 million-ish. Good grief.

___

New and recent

Arthur C. Brooks, “From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life.” The social scientist and writer for The Atlantic: If you “have worked hard to be exceptional at what you do, you will almost certainly face … decline and disappointment — and it will come much, much sooner than you think.” He told NPR: “We can find a new kind of success if we’re willing to make some jumps and some changes and show some humility and have an adventure that’s better than the first half.” (Portfolio, 272 pp.)

— Erica Smith, erica.smith@pilotonline.com

Mark Esper’s memoir of his time as Donald Trump’s Army secretary and fifth defense secretary — ending in his firing by tweet after the 2020 election — is on for May.

The Pentagon has reversed itself on redacting most of what it had deemed classified, said his attorney, Mark S. Zaid, and Esper dropped his lawsuit. That suit (November) said the Pentagon had “unlawfully imposed a prior restraint” by “delaying, obstructing and infringing” on his right to publish his unclassified manuscript. DOD’s cut of 50-plus pages from “A Sacred Oath,” Zaid said, “gutted substantive content and important story lines.” Other former officials also have fought prepublication restrictions on their writing about their time in the Trump administration, especially about private interactions with Trump.

The Wall Street Journal noted that “some former officials and government-transparency activists have long argued that the system is too broad and cumbersome, results in unreasonable publication delays or overzealous redactions and is unevenly applied.” Several groups have petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn a 1980 ruling that created the standards. (NYT, WSJ)

___

Raymond Harper — a longtime area historian who focused on Chesapeake; South Norfolk and Norfolk County (which merged to form Chesapeake in 1963); and Colonna’s Shipyard — died Feb. 2. He was 93, his obituary said. He wrote more than 13 books, including a three-volume history of South Norfolk since 1661 from The History Press; he also wrote “According to Harper,” a column for The Clipper, a Virginian-Pilot section for Chesapeake readers. Have a look: online, his columns on the roots of the Great Bridge Bridge (1770 at the latest); the momentous Battle of Great Bridge; and the origins of South Norfolk.

Other lives to admire (obituary notes): Jason Epstein was 93. He was a prominent editor of major authors; he proposed making costly hardbound classics available as inexpensive paperbacks, a first (1953), and the Library of America series of classics (1982). When a strike shut seven New York newspapers in 1962-63, he proposed an independent section to fill the gap left by The New York Times Book Review. The first issue of The New York Review of Books included a piece by Newport News’ William Styron. … Ashley Bryan — “a celebrated children’s author whose joyous, vividly illustrated picture books pulsed with the rhythms of modern poetry, African folk tales and Black American spirituals” — was 98. Said Jason Reynolds, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature: Bryan also “had this way about him as a person that made it feel inclusive to every kid. That we could celebrate Black children and the history and legacy of Black Americans in this country, and that it was something for all of us to celebrate.” (NYT, Washington Post)

___

New and recent

Martha Beck’s “The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self” is Oprah’s new book club pick. It shows how “to recognize what we actually yearn for versus what our culture sells us,” the publisher says.

From Dick Carlsen of Virginia Beach, “Revenge in Monkey Bottom,” his fifth novel (AuthorHouse, 256 pp.). It’s the sequel to “Monkey Bottom,” a Norfolk-based tale in which an officer is forced out of the Navy over an affair that also leads to a murder and a fatal accident. In the sequel, he’s moved away in disgrace but returns as a civilian to help get a liquor contract for a prospective casino, and is targeted by revenge seekers.

— Erica Smith, erica.smith@pilotonline.com

You wanted to see Jason Reynolds speak in Virginia Beach on Feb. 18.

And so, we see, did everyone else. Of course: He’s the bestselling author of several books for young readers, and he’s coming to discuss “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You,” the teen-oriented bestseller he wrote with Ibram X. Kendi.

But space is gone. Audience slots for his talk, announced publicly Feb. 1, filled “within hours,” and the wait list is full too, the Central Library’s Christine Brantley said by email Feb. 3. The library budget allowed an extra fee only to livestream the event to meeting rooms outside the auditorium, she said. The session won’t be recorded.

It’s part of the library’s community read, which ends this month and focuses on the Reynolds/Kendi book (a Parents Magazine book of the year); Kendi’s influential bestseller, “Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America”; and a kids’ edition, “Stamped (for Kids): Racism, Antiracism and You,” by Sonja Cherry-Paul, Reynolds and Kendi.

___

When a book is banned, read it: After the Board of Education in McMinn County, Tennessee, voted Jan. 10 to ban “Maus” from the eighth-grade curriculum, word spread and the book shot onto bestseller lists. In Knoxville, the owner of Nirvana Comics offered 100 copies to give to anyone in the county. The project snowballed, aided by social media and Penguin Random House. He started a GoFundMe campaign to give the book to any student in the U.S. “Maus was a book that opened my eyes and changed my worldview, because I grew up in a small town in Tennessee where I honestly don’t know if to this day there is a single Jewish person,” Rich Davis, who is not Jewish, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

His goal: $20,000. Raised by Feb. 3: $104,591.

Art Spiegelman wrote “Maus” — which won a Pulitzer — to convey what happened to his father in the Holocaust and to connect that to their troubled relationship. Surely eighth-graders needn’t learn about that. (Shelf Awareness, news reports)

___

Kellyanne Conway’s memoir of her work as White House counselor to Donald Trump, and of her family life, is “Here’s the Deal,” is due May 24.

Honors: The PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature, $50,000, to Kenya’s Ngugi wa Thiong’o (“A Grain of Wheat,” “Weep Not, Child”). … The UK’s Costa Book Award, 30,000 pounds ($39,627) to a former teacher for her sonnets about her sixth-form students: Hannah Lowe, “The Kids.” Said the chair of judges, “It’s joyous, it’s warm and it’s completely universal.” (The Guardian)

Obituary notes: Dave Wolverton, a bestselling sci-fi and fantasy author known particularly for his Runelords and Ravenspell books, was 64. He also wrote as David Farland. (Shelf Awareness)

___

New and recent

From Anne Rice and son Christopher, their last book: “Ramses the Damned: The Reign of Osiris.” Anne Rice died Dec. 11.

Also: From Jennifer Haigh, “Mercy Street,” a timely novel about the disparate lives that intersect at an abortion clinic … From Per Petterson (“Out Stealing Horses”), “Men in My Situation,” on a bereaved man’s dark night of the soul, and in paperback, his first novel, “Echoland.” … Toni Morrison‘s stand-alone story, “Recitatif,” in which she offers no hints about the races of her main characters and leaves the implications for readers to ponder. … Gish Jen, “Thank You, Mr. Nixon,” stories.

— Erica Smith, erica.smith@pilotonline.com

Nathan Harris’ “The Sweetness of Water,” his debut novel, has won yet more acclaim, this time the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. The tale, set as the Civil War winds down, chronicles the unlikely bond between two freed men and a Georgia farmer. That bond alters each of their lives.

Harris said he’s always been fascinated with historical fiction about that war, including “Cold Mountain” and “Gone With the Wind.”

“I had never read a story, personally, that was set immediately after slaves were freed,” said Harris, now 29. “So I started to read some oral histories that discussed that time when the gate was opened and people had to decide whether to stay or go. I couldn’t imagine what that would be like, so I put that to paper and began to explore.”

Harris, a native of Ashland, Ore., who lives in Seattle, said he’s been writing all his life.

“I was one of those elementary kids who wasn’t good at math or science or sports, though I tried,” he said. “But I could always keep people interested in my stories. I kept at it through high school and college and here we are.”

The Baton Rouge Area Foundation presents the $15,000 award annually to an emerging Black fiction writer to honor Gaines, whose stories gave voice to African Americans in rural areas. Among his novels: the acclaimed “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and “A Lesson Before Dying.” (AP)

Laurie R. King is the new Grand Master named by Mystery Writers of America. Readers might begin with “The Beekeeper’s Apprentice” (1994), the launch of her Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes mysteries. Here the gawky, orphaned 15-year-old, reading Virgil on Sussex Downs, runs across Holmes, who’s retired and a beekeeper. As for King, she calls herself “probably the only writer to have both an Edgar and an honorary doctorate in theology.”

For young readers, honors from the American Library Association include the John Newbery Medal for the year’s best children’s book, to Donna Barba Higuera’s “The Last Cuentista.” It’s a post-apocalyptic tale of a girl who must preserve the memory of Earth’s history. (Ages 10 through 14.) Also, the Randolph Caldecott Medal for outstanding children’s picture book, to “Watercress,” by Andrea Wang and Jason Chin, illustrator. Here, a Chinese-American girl learns about her heritage.

___

A Kwame Alexander trilogy launches Sept. 27 with “The Door of No Return” (Little, Brown). The books follow the lives of Kofi, 11, and his family from pre-colonial Ghana to the “woes and wonders” they face in Europe and America. “I wrote this one because people need to know that the middle (passage) was not our beginning. I wanted to speak the truth about the history of African Americans,” said Alexander, a Chesapeake native. His book “The Crossover” won the Newbery Medal for best children’s book of 2015. (AP)

Obituary notes: Thich Nhat Hanh — the Buddhist monk from Hue, Vietnam, who brought the concept of mindfulness to Western audiences with books including “The Miracle of Mindfulness” and “Peace Is Every Step” — was 95. In the 1960s he was exiled from Vietnam for opposing the war. … Dennis Smith — a juvenile delinquent, veteran, firefighter and bestselling author of “Report from Engine Co. 82? and “Report from Ground Zero” — was 81; he died of COVID-19.

New and recent

Isabel Allende, “Violeta.” Toward the end of her century-long life, Violeta Del Valle tells her story in a letter. Major events have shaped her: two pandemics; wars, economic calamity; joys large and small. A novel inspired by Allende’s beloved late mother; translated by Frances Riddle. (Ballantine, 336 pp.)

Also: “Unthinkable,” U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin’s memoir of his son’s suicide, the Capitol insurrection a week later, and Donald Trump’s impeachment. … From “Masterpiece Mystery!” host Alan Cumming, “Baggage,” a memoir. … “The House of Love” by Adriana Trigiani, illustrated by Amy June Bates. The first kids’ picture book by the native of Big Stone Gap.

— Erica Smith, erica.smith@pilotonline.com

Two new books look at the project to overturn the 2020 presidential election and whether Jan. 6 — the attack on Congress — was a blip or an omen: “The Steal: The Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election and the People Who Stopped It” by Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague, and “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them” by Barbara F. Walter.

Jacob Hacker, a political science professor at Yale, assessed them in The Washington Post. They agree, he wrote: “2020 was a lucky break. The guardrails held, but only barely. Without fundamental reforms, they may not hold longer. And the very forces that weakened those guardrails make repairing them extremely hard.”

“The Steal” (Atlantic Monthly Press, 304 pp.): “A marvel of reporting,” with insight into motivations; “a kaleidoscope of stories about how officials and activists in pivotal states like Arizona and Georgia responded to Trump’s false claims of election fraud” — people who work the polls, count ballots, certify results, consider legal challenges and oversee that work for the political parties. “In 2020 on the Republican side, that oversight veered more and more into interference.”

“How Civil Wars Start” (Crown, 320 pp.): This analytical book sold Hacker, a skeptic, on the likelihood of another such war. Walter, “a leading scholar of civil wars,” updates their dominant image: They “rarely involve armed forces on both sides” and are far more likely in weak democracies (not, say, in weak dictatorships). “They’re also highly contingent on the role of social media and the quality of political leadership.” So, think right-wing paramilitaries and a war “decentralized, drawn-out and defined by terrorism.”

On why civil wars start, three factors: “eroding political institutions; extreme racial and ethnic factionalization, especially when previously privileged groups are losing power; and the capacity of prominent leaders to foment violence, with social media their current (and highly effective) weapon of choice.” Civil war will or won’t happen “based on what we do now,” Hacker wrote. “This is a book that everyone in power should read immediately.”

___

Back to cash again: We’re eager to spot a Maya Angelou quarter — the first in the American Women Quarters Program. Seekers should ask their bank in late January or early February when the quarters will circulate locally, the U.S. Mint says. (Smithsonian)

In the pipeline: Memoirs from Bill Barr, attorney general under George H.W. Bush and Donald Trump, due March 8; Mark Esper, on his time as Trump’s defense secretary, May; Kathleen Buhle, ex-wife of Hunter Biden, June; Chelsea Manning, WikiLeaks whistleblower and transgender advocate, October.

Obituary notes: Terry Teachout — a dauntingly well-read cultural critic whose wide-ranging writing included biographies of H.L. Mencken, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington — was 65.

___

New and recent

Joseph J. Ellis, “The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents, 1773-1783.? (Liveright, 400 pp.) The last in the trilogy that began with “Founding Brothers.” Ellis explores prominent and lesser known figures of the time (white, Black, American, British); the military and political action; and the ideologies that clashed under the necessarily accommodating umbrella of “the cause.” A “carefully wrought, highly engaging reality check on the elusive character of the American Revolution,” historian Andrew Burstein wrote in The Washington Post.

Also: Jonathan Evison, “Small World,” stories from today and the mid-1800s of an amalgam of people, together on a train. … Laura Lippman, stories: “Seasonal Work” … Kathryn Schulz, a memoir of grief, “Lost & Found.”

— Erica Smith, erica.smith@pilotonline.com

For the scorekeepers among us: “The very best of the best books of 2021.? The final tally is based on 63 “votes” from “a variety of highly selective lists, award nominees, bookseller and librarian picks and more,” the editors of industry site Publishers Lunch said in a newsletter. The list:

1. “The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois,” Honoree Fanonne Jeffers; and “Empire of Pain,” Patrick Radden Keefe. (Two-way tie for book of the year.)

3. “Klara and the Sun,” Kazuo Ishiguro; “Harlem Shuffle,” Colson Whitehead; and “Crying in H Mart,” Michelle Zauner. (Each was only two votes behind the No. 1 books.)

6. “Cloud Cuckoo Land,” Anthony Doerr

7. “Matrix,” Lauren Groff

8. “All That She Carried,” Tiya Miles

9. “Great Circle,” Maggie Shipstead

10. A five-way tie.

___

Teachers and librarians in Iowa could be charged with a felony for providing minors material deemed obscene, if two legislators succeed in their push. (Quad Cities Gazette via Publishers Weekly)

___

In Case You Missed It, 1: Manuscript con. For five years or more, authors and others have been bedeviled by someone conning them into sharing unpublished manuscripts — hundreds of them. The impersonator never sought ransom. Jan. 5, the FBI arrested a rights coordinator with Simon & Schuster UK after he landed at JFK airport in New York. As for motive, The New York Times took a stab: “Early knowledge in a rights department could be an advantage for an employee trying to prove his worth.” More: tinyurl.com/BkFraud

ICYMI, 2: A rarely seen story by Toni Morrison comes out as a book Feb. 1. “Recitatif,” written in the 1980s, follows two women from childhood to their contrasting fortunes as adults. One is Black, one is white, and Morrison doesn’t permit easy conclusions about racial identity. The story was included in “Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women” (1983), co-edited by poet-playwright Amiri Baraka and now out of print. New publisher: Knopf; introduction by Zadie Smith. (AP)

___

Bookstores and others unionizing: Image Comics has become the first unionized comic book publisher in the U.S., says its bargaining unit, Comic Book Workers United. Other recent union OKs: D.C.’s Politics and Prose bookstores and four Half Price Books stores in Minnesota. The moves reflect increased labor activism because of pandemic safety issues. (Publishers Weekly, AP)

The Muse Writers Center spring class schedule runs Feb. 1 through May 1. Classes are online, via Zoom, and require a stable internet connection, webcam and microphone. the-muse.org.

In the Pipeline: From Michael Fanone, a memoir, “Hold the Line.” He’s the now-retired D.C. police officer who, in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, was pulled into the mob, beaten and tased, and suffered a heart attack and brain damage. (Publishers Lunch)

Iranian dissident poet and filmmaker Baktash Abtin, who received the 2021 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award, has died of Covid-19 contracted in prison. He was 48. (Reuters)

New and recent

David Guterson, “The Final Case” (Knopf, 272 pp.). An adopted child from Ethiopia dies outside her home north of Seattle; her parents, white fundamentalist Christians who left her outside as punishment, are charged. The mother’s attorney: an octogenarian at the end of his career. The narrator: his son, who chauffeurs him. From the author of “Snow Falling on Cedars.”

Also: From bestselling author Jami Attenberg, a memoir, “I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home” … Alafair Burke, “Find Me.”

— Erica Smith, erica.smith@pilotonline.com