Featuring 308 Industry-First Reviews of Fiction, Nonfiction, Children'sand YA books KIRKUSVOL. LXXXIX, NO. 3 | 1 FEBRUARY 2021 REVIEWS Chang-rae Lee My Year Abroad is a wild, unexpected ride from this acclaimed novelist p. 14 Also in the issue: Kristin Cashore, Victor Wooten, and Cynthia Leitich Smith from the editor’s desk: Small Is Beautiful Chairman BY TOM BEER HERBERT SIMON President & Publisher MARC WINKELMAN John Paraskevas # Big books hog the spotlight, but sometimes a small book—short, sharp, Chief Executive Officer and stealthy—gets the job done more efficiently. This is especially true in MEG LABORDE KUEHN
[email protected] the nonfiction category, where long-winded biographies and histories (not Editor-in-Chief to mention memoirs such as former President Barack Obama’s TOM BEER A Prom
[email protected] , weighing in at nearly 800 pages) are the norm. But a small book, ised Land Vice President of Marketing whether a primer, an argument, or a short history, can wake up readers SARAH KALINA
[email protected] rather than merely exhaust them. Here are five nonfiction books out this Managing/Nonfiction Editor ERIC LIEBETRAU month, all less than 200 pages each, that offer a great return on investment.
[email protected] Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia by Elizabeth Fiction Editor LAURIE MUCHNICK Catte (Belt Publishing, Feb. 2): The author of What You Are Getting Wrong
[email protected] Tom Beer About Appalachia here offers a brief, disturbing history of the eugenics move- Young Readers’ Editor VICKY SMITH ment in her home state of Virginia.