April 2018 Vol. XXX, No. 3 Nancy Dreher, Editor THE FRONT LINE CALENDAR The days are getting longer and there is a hint of green on THURSDAY, APRIL 5 the trees. I’m glad to have winter (almost) behind us and 6:30 pm, Poetry reading at the store am looking forward to spring. April is National Poetry RACHEL SLOTNICK and VALERIE WALLACE Month, and we’ll be featuring poets and poetry all month Help us launch our celebration of National Poetry long. On Thursday, April 5 at 6:30 pm, Valerie Wallace and Month with these two outstanding young Chicago- Rachel Slotnick will be reading from their collections, based poets. Ms. Slotnick will read from her debut House of McQueen and In Lieu of Flowers, respectively. volume of poetry, In Lieu of Flowers. Ms. Wallace’s On Sunday, April 22, we host poet Faisal Mohyuddin, who new book of poetry is House of McQueen. will read from his latest book, The Displaced Children of Displaced Children. He will be joined by our own Book Stall staffer and SATURDAY, APRIL 7 poet Jacob Zawa. 10:30 am, Saturday Morning Story Hour Launch The last Saturday of April will be the 5th annual nationwide Independent We’re delighted to inaugurate a new weekly story Bookstore Day. IBD began as a way for bookstores to say thank you to hour at the store for kids age 3 – 6. See page 6. their customers and communities for their support and patronage and to MONDAY, APRIL 9 remind people of the importance of local enterprise. We’ll celebrate with activities and prizes for kids and adults alike. We have special 4:30 pm, Storytime at the store literary-themed merchandise that will be available in limited quantities. DAVID WIESNER Guest authors will stop by in the afternoon to offer book suggestions I Got It! and chat about their work. See details on page 8. Three-time Caldecott winner David Wiesner brings his trademark artistry and imagination to his new The Family Action Network (FAN) has some great programming this picture book celebrating the game of baseball. Free spring. Journalist Sam Quinones will discuss his book, Dreamland, which and open to the public. We request you purchase a documents the opiate crisis, on April 9 at 7 pm at Evanston Township High School. Wendy Mogel, author of The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, copy of Mr. Wiesner’s book from The Book Stall to will present her newest book, Voice Lessons for Parents, on Friday, April 20 enter the signing line. See also page 6. at 7 pm at New Trier High School Northfield. Our library partners have 7 pm, a FAN event some great authors coming: Wilmette Public Library hosts Amor Towles Evanston Township High School, 1600 Dodge Ave. at Wilmette Junior High on Sunday, April 22 at 3 pm for a talk about A Gentleman in Moscow, which continues to sell well at the store. SAM QUINONES Towles’ presentation will only enhance your appreciation of his amazing Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s novel. On Wednesday, April 18 at 7 pm, the Glencoe Public Library Opiate Epidemic presents Jennifer Palmieri, Hillary Clinton’s communications director, Journalist, author, and storyteller Sam Quinones for Dear Madam President, a book of advice for young women speaks on the subject “Dreamland: America’s Opiate considering political life. Finally, our great friend Cory Franklin will Epidemic and How We Got Here,” based on his be in the store for his new book, The Doctor Will See You Now, on National Book Circle Award-winning book. Saturday, April 21 at 3 pm. TUESDAY, APRIL 10 We’re excited about all the new titles in the store. Readers loved Madeline 6:30 pm at the store Miller’s Song of Achilles, and her newest, Circe, is great. Told from Circe LINDA GARTZ the sea witch’s point of view, Miller conjures the classical world and the Redlined: A Memoir of Race, gods, nymphs, and mortals that inhabit it. Curtis Sittenfeld, author of Change, and Fractured Community American Wife, has published her first short story collection, You Think It, I’ll Say It. Sittenfeld is a literary novelist with a sly wit and a compelling in 1960s Chicago voice. Another short story collection worth a read is Anjali Sachdeva’s We welcome Emmy Award-winning timely and socially relevant All the Names They Used for God. And I look TV producer and author Linda Gartz forward to starting Meg Wolitzer’s latest The Female Persuasion, her for a discussion of her fascinating follow up to The Interestings. My husband Roger is enjoying Racing the new book. Set on Chicago’s West Devil, one of Charles Todd’s mysteries set in England shortly after World Side against the backdrop of the Civil Rights War I. Katie (21) is halfway through Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend, about a Movement in the 1960s, it exposes the racist lending woman who inherits a friend’s dog. Nicky (19) says he’s learning a lot rules that refused mortgages to anyone in areas from the classic The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. Lexy is with even one black resident. But Ms. Gartz’s re-reading an old favorite, Falling into Place by Amy Zhang. parents chose to stay in their integrating Finally, we’re excited to launch Saturday Morning Story Hour at The neighborhood, overcoming previous prejudices Book Stall every week at 10:30 am. Bring your kids ages 3-to-6 to hear as they met and formed friendships with their stories read by Book Stall staffers. See page 6 for details. African-American neighbors. Happy Spring! We look forward to seeing you in the store. Calendar continues on page 4 THE INSIDE LINE AIMEE ANDERSON gospels. Understanding the New Testament (or the Bible, or Everything Happens for A the Koran, for that matter) is important to understanding the Reason: And Other Lies I’ve beliefs and values that underlie Christianity. As arguments Loved by Kate Bowler ($26). swirl about what the New Testament says and means, a literal Every once in a while, I read a translation grounds the discussion in "first principles." book that is so thought-provoking, so inspirational, so moving, so The Collector of Lives: Giorgio Vasari and the poignant that I immediately want Invention of Art by Ingrid Rowland and Noah to read it again, to experience the Charney ($29.95). Giorgio Vasari himself was a rush of insight one more time. Everything Happens for a sculptor, painter and architect. But he is best Reason is that book. The author is an assistant professor at known for Lives of the Artists, a new genre of Duke Divinity School. Her graduate work and primary biography that focused on artists’ lives as well as expertise centers around the Prosperity Gospel, a creed that their art. Perhaps more importantly, his writing sees fortune as a blessing from God and misfortune as a mark changed the way artists were perceived. Art was of God’s disapproval. At the age of 35, when her life was considered a technical skill possessed by craftsmen and otherwise abundant with blessings, she was diagnosed with decorators. In Vasari, art is elevated to an intellectual and stage IV colon cancer. As she realizes that life, and her disease, aesthetic pursuit that at its highest expression is driven by cannot be controlled by positive thinking and a can-do genius. Modern scholarship has noted many errors in Vasari's attitude, she is forced to confront the question “What does it biographies. But without these early portraits, we would have mean to die in a society that insists everything happens for a little contemporary insight into the lives of Raphael, reason?” Bowler takes the reader on a very personal, often- Michelangelo, or Leonardo. Vasari was the first to recognize humorous, often-difficult journey through her struggle to for posterity the creative genius of these and other artists. accept that without the Prosperity Gospel, life can be difficult And, as Rowland and Charney show, Vasari's own life was but also incredible. often no less interesting than his subjects. KATHLEEN CRAWFORD The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War by The Only Story by Julian Barnes Benn Steil ($35). At the end of WWII, much of ($25.95, out April 17). From the Europe was in a state of collapse. Looking to Man Booker Prize-winning expand his control, Josef Stalin was solidifying author of The Sense of an Ending his gains and seeking to exploit the weaknesses comes this novel about a young of an exhausted region. The Marshall Plan was man becoming enmeshed in a conceived as a way to aid the recovery of Europe May-December love affair. Paul and as a bulwark against the spread of communism. is recalling how in the 1960s—as In operation beginning in April 1948, it was not primarily a a 19-year-old looking to escape living with his humanitarian effort, although one of its best-remembered acts, parents—he fell for a married 48-year-old woman looking to the Berlin airlift (June 1948 – September 1949), certainly was. escape her loveless and abusive marriage. Told in three parts More central to the purpose was the creation of NATO and covering a decade, Paul grows and evolves slowly while the commitment of a permanent U.S. military presence in trying to maneuver the discovery and subsequent pain and Western Europe. Steil describes the thrust and parry of Cold anguish of loving someone with a severe addiction. An War relations as Stalin sought to drive the Americans out of excellent book group choice for people who love Barnes.