Roy Miller's Blog, page 190
May 15, 2017
How Do You Move Forward After Sexual Violence? : NPR
This content was originally published by NPR/TED Staff on 12 May 2017 | 12:58 pm.
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Thordis Elva And Tom Stranger: How Do You Move Forward After Sexual Violence?
Part 2 of the TED Radio Hour episode Forgiveness.
About Thordis Elva and Tom Stranger’s TED Talk
Tom Stranger raped Thordis Elva when they were dating in high school. Years later, they started a painful and painstaking dialogue about accountability and reconciliation.
About Thordis Elva and Tom Stranger
Thordis Elva is a writer, journalist and activist. Her work focuses on gender equality, fighting online bullying, and ending the silence associated with sexual violence. She has spoken to the United Nations and the Nordic Council of Ministers. Thordis is a co-author of South Of Forgiveness, a non-fiction dialogue between her and the man who raped her in high school.
Tom Stranger is the co-author of South Of Forgiveness. He hopes that telling his story will contribute to the growing public discourse about sexual violence. Tom will be donating all his profits from the book to a women’s shelter in Iceland.
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May 14, 2017
A New Look For New York
This content was originally published by on 12 May 2017 | 4:00 am.
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The 2017 editions of BookExpo and BookCon, set to run Wednesday through Sunday, May 31–June 4, at New York City’s Javits Center, reflect changes made by Reed to keep the shows relevant in a shifting market. The most significant changes have been made to BookExpo, which, for one thing, has dropped America from its name. On a more fundamental level, Reed has reduced the number of days the exhibit floor will be open from two and a half to two (although the floor will open to remainder buyers on the afternoon of May 31, the day before it opens to all exhibitors).
In lieu of a third day of BookExpo exhibits, Reed has loaded up Wednesday, May 31, with a full menu of panels and other events. ABA’s popular Celebration of Bookselling lunch, for example, will take place from noon to 1:30 p.m. in the Special Events Hall at Javits. The Global Market Forum will feature discussions on a range of topics concerning the international market. In addition, the Audio Publishers Association will hold its annual conference on Wednesday at Javits, and all 400 spots have already sold out.
Reed’s aim, says event director Brien McDonald, “is to create a more concentrated and focused B2B environment for everyone. The new format allows for more education sessions on Wednesday, which creates more time for attendees to be on the show floor on Thursday and Friday. The event is structured to allow you to do more business in less time.”
With an eye toward maximizing publishers’ interactions with their most important business partners, Reed instituted a more rigorous professional application process this year, something McDonald says has elevated the quality of BookExpo attendees. “We’re committed to having the right people, companies, and content represented at the event,” he explains. In addition to booksellers, retailers, and librarians, McDonald expects a healthy turnout from the media, rights agents, film and TV personnel, digital solution providers, and, of course, authors.
McDonald says Reed’s approach of building BookExpo around “the pillars of discover, engage, and learn has resonated with booksellers, librarians and retailers,” and he is confident attendance by these key participants will surpass the numbers in Chicago last year.
Reed is expecting a record turnout for BookCon, which will run June 3–4, with projections calling for more than 20,000 consumers attending. While millennial women are expected to be the largest group at BookCon, Reed has added features to draw a broader audience.
The reconfiguration of BookExpo and the expansion of BookCon is intended, McDonald says, to build “an end-to-end solution where publishers can launch their titles to the trade and consumers in one place. BookExpo is being recrafted as a focused professional environment that’s full of opportunities for trade professionals to connect and have meaningful interactions. BookCon connects fans, brands, and authors through authentic face-to-face interactions and unique experiences.”
McDonald says more and more publishers and other exhibitors are excited by the new vision, but acknowledges, “We have more work to do as this evolution continues. We are taking a very established event with a long history and trying to radically evolve it in real time. That takes patience to assure all of our customers are along for that ride.”
BookExpo 2017: Wild Rumpus is PW’s Bookstore of the Year
The Minneapolis-based Wild Rumpus, which is marking its 25th anniversary in September, is the first children’s bookstore to win the award.
BookExpo 2017: Anne DeCourcey is PW’s Rep of the Year
A longtime book veteran who says that she’ll die in this industry, DeCourcey was named the 2016 New England rep of the year and the 2015 and 2010 HarperCollins rep of the year.
BookExpo 2017: Wednesday’s Offerings
Informative, educational, and forward-looking panels, along with the Global Market Forum, are on the menu for Wednesday’s selections.
BookExpo 2017: All Ears on APAC
The Audio Publishers Association Conference expects a full house on May 31, and will highlight new spoken-audio data, trends, and strategies.
BookExpo 2017: Author Highlights
When BookExpo’s show floor opens on June 1, there will be lots of ways to interact with authors. Here are some sure-to-be favorite events.
BookExpo 2017: Welcome to the Library
For librarians, BookExpo has become the best place to really connect with publishers, books, and authors.
BookExpo 2017: More of the Same but Better at BookCon
BookCon returns to New York’s Javits Center with two full days of programming, and is determined to pass the 20,000 mark this coming June with an if-it-ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-it approach.
BookExpo 2017: Adult Galleys to Grab
Here’s your go-to list for the show’s big galley giveaways.
BookExpo 2017: Children’s Galleys to Grab
An early look at the unmissable books that children’s and young adult publishers will showcase at BookExpo.
BookExpo 2017: Around the Booths
Our guide to select exhibitors at BookExpo.
BookExpo 2017: Grab a Cup of Coffee
Where to get a great cuppa joe while visiting New York City.
A version of this article appeared in the 05/15/2017 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: A New Look For New York
The post A New Look For New York appeared first on Art of Conversation.
‘The Captain Class’ Defines The Greatest Sports Teams Ever Based On One Character : NPR
This content was originally published by on 14 May 2017 | 9:56 pm.
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NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly talks with author Sam Walker about his book The Captain Class, which takes a look at the common qualities of elite athlete team leaders, and how they create winning teams.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
There is no better, faster way to start a barstool argument with another sports fan than to trot out a list of the world’s greatest teams. That’s a line from the new book “The Captain Class.” The author is Sam Walker, and he set out to produce exactly such a list, the all time best sports teams. He settled on 16 of them, then he set about figuring out what they had in common. Sam Walker is in the NPR New York bureau. Hey there.
SAM WALKER: Hi, Mary Louise.
KELLY: Hi. So people should know you have watched a lot of good sports teams in action over the years as a sports writer and editor for The Wall Street Journal. What makes a team the greatest, greatest ever?
WALKER: Well, I’ll start with what doesn’t which came as a great shock to me. I assumed it would be superstar talent or the coach or, you know, a lot of money or great tactics. But when I finally isolated this sample of 16 teams, I realized that none of those things apply equally to all of them. In fact, there was only one and only one thing that they all had in common, and their winning streaks were very closely bracketed by the presence of one player.
And this player in all cases was – or would eventually become the captain or the leader of the team. And these captains were, you know, interesting characters because they weren’t the captains you thought. It’s not Michael Jordan and Derek Jeter or Pele or big superstars. A lot of them were people I’d never heard of and who really played in the shadows and were not famous people.
KELLY: Michael Jordan, Chicago Bulls didn’t make the cut – what? – six titles in eight years wasn’t good enough for you?
WALKER: Yeah. Well, you know what? It’s funny. I mean, everyone remembers then they were so spectacular and what they did was incredible. But, you know, one of the criteria I use to define the greatest teams ever is that what – their accomplishments were completely unique inside their own sport. And I’m sorry the Bulls won six titles in eight years, but, you know, the Boston Celtics of the ’50s and ’60s won 11 titles in 13 years including eight in a row…
KELLY: OK. So you had to do something nobody else has done before to make this list.
WALKER: Yes, yes. Exactly.
KELLY: Tell me about the moment that it came to you that the secret was all down to the captain, who, as you say, is not necessarily the superstar on these teams.
WALKER: Well, you know, it jumped right out. It was the first thing I noticed about these teams because I looked at all their rosters, and I realized that there was always uncannily one player that kind of ran the course of the streak. And I thought it was just way too simple, and it couldn’t possibly be that obvious.
So I went through all the other possibilities, you know, and I found that some teams had great coaches. Some didn’t. Some were tactically advanced. Some were not. Some had a lot of money. Most of them had none. So there was no other factor that they shared, and it was really obvious in the end that the only common thread was the character of the captain.
KELLY: So you were watching a team and looking and they would be middling or good, but not great, and then one captain would come in and the years that that captain was running the team, you saw a difference, you saw the breakthrough?
WALKER: Uncannily so. I mean, there was – one of the first teams I looked at was the Boston Celtics and Bill Russell. You know, the moment he showed up his rookie season, they won their first title. And they won their last of that streak the year before he retired. And after that, they fell off. They’d never won a championship before he showed up, and it took them a long time to get back there after he left. And this happened over and over. Every team I looked at, there was a real clear cutoff that was readily apparent.
KELLY: So what is it that makes a great captain?
WALKER: Well, you know, it’s not what you think. You know, we – I think if we were asked to construct a captain in a laboratory, we would pick a superstar. We’d pick someone who is charismatic, a celebrity. But what I discovered was that the great captains of these teams were not obvious people. They were rarely stars. They did the grunt work. They also had other surprising characteristics, like they embraced dissent and conflict inside their teams.
It can be really problematic when they thought something wasn’t going well, and they were really relentless. And they hated giving speeches. They had a different style of communication that was much more low-key and individual. And they had incredible emotional control. I mean, to an extreme, and they also had this tendency to test the rules. I found all these examples of unsportsmanlike things they did in competition, and it took me a long time to figure…
KELLY: Unsportsmanlike things they did.
WALKER: Unsportsmanlike – they would do things like insult the opponent as a strategy or, you know, they would do very physically aggressive things or even push the rules to the limit. And this confused me. But I did a lot of research and looked into science and looked more closely, and I realized that in all these cases, these captains only did this in competition.
Off the field, they were completely different. They shunned attention and never got in trouble, so this was something that they did within the confines of the rules of sports and competition.
KELLY: One thing you said there surprises me which is that great captains embrace dissent, embrace conflict on their team. Give me an example of a team where you saw that.
WALKER: The Soviet hockey team in 1980 famously lost to the U.S. in what was called the Miracle on Ice. On the flight back to Moscow, the coach of the team started trashing a lot of the individual players and blaming the loss on them. Now, a veteran defenseman named Valeri Vasiliev overheard this and just went bonkers, ran over, started choking his coach and threatened to throw him off the plane if he didn’t take it back.
So, you know, he could have been sent to the gulag for this clearly. And, you know – and probably should have been, but, you know, the interesting thing that happened was they went from there to put on this incredibly dominant run for four years. But they were almost unbeatable. And, you know, that’s a great example of, you know, there’s a certain kind of conflict and dissent inside a team that I found over and over again, this kind of conflict that’s actually really essential to forming a great team.
KELLY: When you share this theory that you’ve arrived at, that it’s all down to the captain, when you share that with current athletes what do they say? Do they buy it?
WALKER: You know, the captaincy is a funny thing. In fact, it’s fallen out of fashion. You know, a lot of teams are not naming captains. They’re naming a group of captains. They’re very suspicious of the tradition. Some of this is economics because as television supports sports, there’s an emphasis on putting on a good show. And these are the kinds of bankable stars that put, you know, butts in seats to be blunt about it.
So what’s happened is that the superstar and the coach tend to be this sort of two poles of power on a team. And the captain’s role is really fascinating. It was always a middle manager. It was an intermediary between the players and the coaches. It wasn’t necessarily the best player. So a lot of teams simply give the captaincy to the best player, but that’s not the model that’s been successful over the years.
KELLY: That’s Sam Walker. His book is “The Captain Class: The Hidden Force That Creates The World’s Greatest Teams.” It’s out next Tuesday. Sam Walker, thank you so much.
WALKER: Thanks, Mary Louise.
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Anne DeCourcey is PW’s Rep of the Year
This content was originally published by on 12 May 2017 | 4:00 am.
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In the not-too-distant past, being a good sales rep was as straightforward as the ABCs. As Alec Baldwin’s character explains in the film Glengarry Glen Ross: “(A) always, (b) be, (c) closing. Always be closing!” But with the advent of technology, the way reps now sell involves creating a partnership that connects publishers and booksellers.
As HarperCollins field rep Anne DeCourcey—PW’s 2017 Sales Rep of the Year, who also was named the 2016 New England rep of the year, and the 2015 and 2010 HarperCollins rep of the year—notes, “The key and most unique aspect of this job is the relationship building.” It’s also, she adds, “what brings me my greatest joy. It’s not always [talking] about HarperCollins books. It’s life; it’s politics, especially when you’re on the road so much. You have to have that connection.” That can mean discussing the challenges of parenting adolescents, taking a ritual trip to the coffee shop with buyers, or enjoying a beer at lunch with Josh Christie of Print in Portland, Maine, who wrote a guide to Maine beer.
“I temper corporate expectations with trust in the relationships I’ve got,” DeCourcey says. “I best manage myself and honor a buyer’s decision when I’ve got a good feeling for who my buyer is and trust that they have their customers and booksellers in mind.” That doesn’t mean she doesn’t push a buyer to up an order for some books. DeCourcey says that she gets especially excited when one of those books works, like Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik’s Notorious RBG, which some buyers initially met with skepticism. And if a book turns out not to be right for a store, she points out, “that’s why books are returnable.”
DeCourcey’s a longtime book veteran who says that she’ll die in this industry. In part, that’s because she found out how “wrenching” it was when she left the business briefly to sell advertising for a TV station in Colorado, a decision she regards as “the worst mistake.” What she missed, she says was “community. There can be such joy in putting the right book in the right hands.” She comes from bookselling stock. Her mother, Marilyn Hollinshead, is a children’s book author and owned Pinocchio Bookstore in Pittsburgh, where DeCourcey worked part-time after graduating from Oberlin College. DeCourcey’s name can even be found alongside those of her sisters, Ellen and Dana, on the dedication page of Will You Sign Here, John Hancock? by a friend from Hollinshead’s writing group, Jean Fritz. Before becoming a rep, DeCourcey worked at the now closed Barillari Books in Somerville, Mass., and at the Children’s Bookshop in Brookline Village, Mass., as well as for the New England Booksellers Association.
DeCourcey says that despite her bookselling background, she prefers being on the publishing side, where she had earlier stints at Penguin and Norton, among others, before joining HarperCollins in 2007. “I am in complete admiration of booksellers who can put a book in someone’s hand. Bookselling to me was terrifying. I felt woefully inadequate in front of someone age nine looking for the next book,” she says.
DeCourcey says the thing that has changed most in recent years is the sheer busyness of being a rep: “The size of the list and the size of the territory—and the expectations… I do more marketing. I need to follow through and make sure we get IndieNext nominations and people are reading galleys. It is incredibly busy.”
Over the past five years, Harper, and other publishers, have begun to emphasize the sales rep’s role in getting as much buzz for a book before and around on-sale date. That translates into more staff presentations, consumer talks, and help with preorder campaigns. Then there’s keeping up with the sheer volume of books. Harper has a three-season year, and publishes roughly 600 titles a season.
Then, too, there is back-office work. “There’s an outdated perception that once we’ve made our sales calls, we play golf,” DeCourcey says. “That’s a misperception, since I don’t particularly like golf. And once I come off the road, I need to prep for the next season and finish up.”
That prepping can take the form of finding YouTube links for her Edelweiss markups to engage booksellers viewing Harper’s digital catalogue. Sometimes she plays so much loud metal music to find the right songs that her kids will come downstairs to her basement office and ask, “Mama, are you working?” Musical interludes such as a duet with Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga for Life Is a Gift: The Zen of Bennett or viewing parenting comics by Terri Libenson for her debut book, Invisible Emmie, enliven DeCourcey’s sales calls, which can take anywhere from two to eight hours, depending on the buyer and the store.
Despite these changes, DeCourcey still heeds three pieces of advice that she was given by John Dally and Gary Hart when she took her first rep job, with Penguin: “Don’t suggest numbers. Don’t take the prime parking space right in front of the store. And thank the account. They just spent a good portion of their time and budget.”
A version of this article appeared in the 05/15/2017 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Anne DeCourcey: PW’s Rep of the Year
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Rare, Handwritten Copy Stolen In U.K. : The Two-Way : NPR
This content was originally published by Colin Dwyer on 12 May 2017 | 1:53 pm.
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A muggle mystery is afoot in the U.K.
Sometime over a span of a week and a half in mid-April, a burglar (or several) broke into a property in a Birmingham suburb, stealing jewelry and one item that’s even more valuable — certainly to Harry Potter fans, at least: an 800-word, handwritten prequel to the series, scrawled on a postcard by J.K. Rowling herself.
“The only people who will buy this unique piece are true Harry Potter fans,” West Midlands Police announced in a statement Friday. “We are appealing to anyone who sees, or is offered this item for sale, to contact police.”
The rarity sold for roughly $32,000 at a 2008 auction to benefit Dyslexia Action and English PEN, an advocacy group for free speech and human rights. The postcard is signed by Rowling and, according to CNN, graced with this postscript: “From the prequel I am not working on — but that was fun!”
The New York Times sums up the story contained within the card’s modest dimensions:
“The prequel, set shortly before the birth of Harry Potter, centers on his father, James, and his mentor, Sirius Black. The men have a dustup with a pair of police officers, from whom they escape on broomsticks, according to reports in the British news media.”
Now, both law enforcement and Rowling are asking not only for information on its whereabouts, but also for self-restraint among any superfans who happen to be offered the card.
“PLEASE DON’T BUY THIS IF YOU’RE OFFERED IT,” Rowling tweeted Friday.
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10 New Books We Recommend This Week
This content was originally published by on 11 May 2017 | 4:35 pm.
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WHAT IT MEANS WHEN A MAN FALLS FROM THE SKY, by Lesley Nneka Arimah. (Riverhead, $26.) Originality and narrative verve characterize the stories in this first collection by a British-Nigerian-American writer. A witty and mischievous storyteller, Arimah can compress a family history into a few pages as she moves between comic distancing and insightful psychological realism. She is especially interested in the cruelty and losses brought about by clashes between women, particularly girls.
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DEMOCRACY: Stories From the Long Road to Freedom, by Condoleezza Rice. (Twelve, $35.) The promotion of democracy should shape America’s foreign policy in the 21st century, the former secretary of state writes in this important new book, even though she recognizes that it’s “really, really hard.” It remains, she insists, both an inescapable moral responsibility for the United States and the only policy that, long-term, has the potential to safeguard American security.
BETWEEN THEM: Remembering My Parents, by Richard Ford. (Ecco/HarperCollins, $25.99.) In two discrete sections written 30 years apart, Ford describes his parents’ lives and deaths by turn, driven by his curiosity about who they were. This slim beauty of a memoir is a remarkable story about two unremarkable people — and a reminder, as Cheryl Strayed writes in her review, that “we all have a dazzling lack of authority about the inner lives of even the people with whom we are most intimate.”
BORNE, by Jeff VanderMeer. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) A climate change survivor in a post-apocalyptic city in a sea of toxicity tries to adopt a nonhuman life-form capable of changing and learning. Her companion, along with a defunct (probably) biotech company and a flying bear, also make appearances. This coming-of-age story signifies that eco-fiction has also come of age.
FEAR CITY: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics, by Kim Phillips-Fein. (Metropolitan/Holt, $32.) Phillips-Fein narrates the story of the fiscal crisis of the 1970s with fresh eyes, suggesting that the transformation of New York into two cities — one of great wealth, the other of searing poverty —was not an inexorable evolution but a political choice. The young Donald Trump makes a cameo appearance as an emblem of the new New York.
STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND: Searching for Gershom Scholem and Jerusalem, by George Prochnik. (Other Press, $27.95.) When he embraced Jewish tradition as a source of meaning, Prochnik sought out Scholem, a scholar who introduced the kabbalah to secular society. To describe his book as part biography and part memoir is to miss the point; it is instead a hunt through the crevices of one life in search of clues that might unlock the mysteries of another.
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NOTES OF A CROCODILE, by Qiu Miaojin. Translated by Bonnie Huie. (New York Review Books, $15.95.) First published in 1994, this cult classic novel depicts a group of quick-witted and queer friends, students at a university in Taipei, and an obsessive love. The author took her own life at the age of 26, but her novel is about finding the will to live, both through creative means and the sheer vulnerability of being intimate with another person.
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Spotlight on Minotaur Signature Editions
This content was originally published by on 12 May 2017 | 4:00 am.
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In September, Minotaur will launch Minotaur Signature Editions, a line of classic Minotaur mysteries and thrillers by bestselling authors, as well as U.S. debuts from overseas sensations, all priced at $9.99 (Sponsored)
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A Knight’s Epic Quest, and the Perils of Chivalry
This content was originally published by MAILE MELOY on 11 May 2017 | 5:00 pm.
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The callow young Yvain, as a protagonist, isn’t learning to be king, like Arthur is, or even learning to be good. But Anderson is interested in the overlooked aspects of epic stories. His National Book Award-winning “The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation” is the story of a young slave raised by philosophers in colonial Boston, who becomes part of an uprising — the American Revolution — that won’t extend its hard-won liberty to him.
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“Yvain” begins with a knight, Calogrenant, pouring water on a magical weather stone, bringing storms to devastate a French lord’s land. The lord says, “You attack my home! My wood! My castle! If a man has been wronged, it’s his right to complain.” Calogrenant is beaten in the fight, and limps home to tell his story to Arthur’s court. To avenge his cousin, Yvain pours more water on the stone and kills the freshly annoyed lord. When he sees the grieving widow, Laudine, he falls in love, in knightly fashion.
Yvain’s efforts to become worthy of Laudine, with the help of her sorceress servant, Lunette, are guided, and often misguided, by chivalric code. Laudine struggles with political necessity, while Yvain is diverted by side quests, with a rescued lion beside him.
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Trained falcons open and close the book, fierce but constrained, like the human characters. The humans are angular in flowing clothes and armor, passing from forest to tent camp to castle, weighing questions of honor and loyalty.
Some passages are wordless, told with Andrea Offermann’s swirling double-page spreads. She uses tapestries — the graphic novels of the Middle Ages — for recounted stories. And a tapestry-making sweatshop with captive women is one of the wrongs Yvain has to right. Offermann choreographs fights with slashing swords, horses charging from both pages toward the center, and Yvain’s devoted lion leaping in.
The result is a sharp critique of medieval social strictures, with stunning battle scenes, monsters and blood. My nephew devoured all 134 pages of it.
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I finally asked him: “Why do you think TOAFK is better?”
“Because it’s longer,” he said.
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‘A Face Like Glass,’ By Frances Hardinge : NPR
This content was originally published by Amal El-Mohtar on 13 May 2017 | 11:00 am.
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Let me begin by stating that this is a perfect book.
I don’t say this lightly. It’s perfect in the way that excellent clockwork is perfect: intricate, precise, and hiding all its marvels in plain sight. Imagine a clear box full of interlocking gears and springs and pulleys — you can follow all their movements, trace every tooth’s bite, but what it produces in chimes or bursts of colour and light are mysteries to surprise and delight you.
Caverna is an underground world of crafts so masterful they’re also magical. Wine can improve or obliterate your memory, Perfume controls thoughts, and Cheese can give you visions of the future — or explode. But most curiously, the people of Caverna are born with faces that are blank canvases; they must be taught expressions by Facesmiths, choosing them out of catalogues and paying handsomely for the service. Thus the wealthy can call on a large variety of Faces to express (and conceal) their thoughts, while the poor are taught only faces that the wealthy want to see: faces of cheerful subservience and quiet deference.
It’s perfect in the way that excellent clockwork is perfect: intricate, precise, and hiding all its marvels in plain sight.
Neverfell has no Face and no memory when Grandible, a master cheesemaker, finds her in a vat of curds and makes her his apprentice. What she does have is a boundless energy, profound curiosity, and a fascination with machinery of which Grandible despairs. She longs to explore the world beyond his tunnels, but something about Neverfell’s face is terribly wrong, so wrong that Grandible has her wear a mask whenever there’s any chance of someone seeing her. For seven years, he’s kept her hidden from the rest of Caverna, where courtiers play at murder as easily as cards — but when a rabbit that refuses to be milked escapes through a crack in a wall, Neverfell chases it, tumbling headlong into a web of plots within plots all rooted in her vanished history.
This is a book that writes the story of itself into its smallest corners. The prose is so purely delightful that I kept folding down pages to return to. I laughed at exceptional turns of phrase, only to find myself tearing up a few passages later, as if the book were itself a catalogue of Faces for me to try on. The magical crafts are endlessly inventive and full of startling enchantment: “The Addlemeau still needed to develop its undertones of vanilla, and the Smogwreath had not overcome its fear of strangers,” while the eccentric Cartographers speak of “melancholy basalt” and reckon silver by sung degrees.
The prose is so purely delightful that I kept folding down pages to return to. I laughed at exceptional turns of phrase, only to find myself tearing up a few passages later.
To identify any aspect of this book is necessarily to sing its praises. The characters are engrossing, their relationships moving and lovely; Neverfell’s innocence and capacity for love and kindness carry her through enormous social upheavals, while the mystery of her lost memory burns hot and furious and hidden inside her. But above anything else what astonished me about A Face Like Glass was its construction, its pure perfect pace, the mechanical gravity of its plot moving through its beat with meticulously crafted finesse.
As the book teeters on the brink of its denouement, Neverfell says “A machine is sort of like magic. You spend ages planning it out, and put all the cogs in place, and then bing! you pull a lever and away it goes. And the amazing bit is that the person who pulls the lever to start it doesn’t need to understand how it works. They don’t even need to know what’s going to happen.”
A novel is sort of like a machine — and A Face Like Glass is everything like magic.
Amal El-Mohtar is the author of The Honey Month and the editor of Goblin Fruit, an online poetry magazine.
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Hemispheric Pressure: As Asian Powers Rise, How Should the West Respond?
This content was originally published by THOMAS J. CHRISTENSEN on 12 May 2017 | 9:00 am.
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Rachman gets the big picture in Asia right, but he sometimes gets important details wrong. For example, China’s recent military modernization means forward-deployed American forces and bases in the region are vulnerable to attack in ways they were not during the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1995–96. It is incorrect and somewhat dangerous, however, for him to argue that Beijing “backed off” after the Clinton administration sent two aircraft carrier battle groups toward Taiwan in early 1996. Beijing apparently had no plan to escalate anyway. Nationalism is indeed an important part of the Chinese Communist Party’s domestic legitimacy that influences Beijing’s foreign policies, but that phenomenon long predates the brutal crackdown on protesters on June 4, 1989. Beijing and Washington have worked out peaceful methods to handle their difference over Taiwan since 1972, but the United States never formally accepted Beijing’s One China policy, as Rachman states. Instead Washington adheres to its own version, with intentional ambiguity in regard to Taiwan’s legal status in relation to mainland China.
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Like many, Rachman sometimes seems hamstrung by historical knowledge. In 1914 an archduke’s murder in Sarajevo caused economically interdependent states in Europe to fight a giant war of survival, so why can’t disputes over Asian rocks, reefs and artificial islands create a massive conflagration today? This is a good question, but many differences exist between these two worlds. There are no tightly knit alliance blocks in contemporary East Asia. Today all great powers have either nuclear weapons or nuclear-armed allies, a deterrent to massive conventional escalation. Perhaps most important, globalization in the past few decades has produced fundamentally different and deeper economic interdependence than in the past. The massive investment flows between the industrial economies, the rise of intra-industry trade and the creation of complex transnational production chains are all forces for peace today that were missing in 1914 Europe.
Rachman’s “Easternization” process matters, but so far mainly as a subset of the larger process of globalization that enabled it in the first place. The growing pains of the East pose threats of instability to a highly integrated global system, not directly to the West itself. No Asian actor can currently project military power other than ballistic missiles and cyber volleys very far from home. Serious East-West military clashes, then, would have to occur in the East. Unfortunately, Rachman is correct that Western comfort stops there. Asia is now a vital organ in the globalized system on which we all depend; challenges to Asian stability are real, and Western actors have less wherewithal than in the past to contribute actively to maintaining stability there.
“Easternization” has implications not only for war and peace but also for global governance. Institutions created after World War II have not adjusted smoothly to eastward shifts in power, nor have they kept up with the global demand for cooperation to counter climate change, financial instability, underdevelopment and nuclear proliferation. China has recently taken the lead to fill some of those institutional holes with cooperative ventures like the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank and the “One Belt, One Road” initiative. Beyond the region, Asian states’ growing trade and financial relations with Africa and Latin America are generally positive developments. They come, however, with few strings attached and can thereby undercut recent American and European efforts to condition development aid on improvements in governance.
Rachman’s book concludes with some optimism about the West’s continuing influence. The integrated global economy gives enormous power advantages to institutionally sound governments in the United States and the European Union. China’s insecure single-party state is politically unwilling and structurally unable to replace the American dollar as the world’s reserve currency or Western Europe as a global banking center. Moreover, as long as leaders in the East need growth to stay in power, they should be reluctant to weaken ties to a highly integrated global marketplace. We should then expect considerably less great power conflict during 21st-century easternization than there was in the very bloody 20th century of Western dominance.
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