Liz

Fans of excellent memoirs (and of Levantine Jewish history) will remember Lucette Lagnado from her bestseller, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: the story of her father’s imperious Syrian-Egyptian family and an elegy for their sparkling, vanished Jewish Cairo. In The Arrogant Years, Lagnado turns to her mother, Edith—the beautiful prodigy who read all of Proust by age 15, who grew up in the twisting alleyways of Cairo’s poorest Jewish ghetto, who was mentored by the king’s closest advisor. But this world of books and “happy arrogance” was shattered with Edith’s disastrous marriage and the family’s forced exile in the 1960s. The memoir’s second half is a poignant, thoughtful treatise on immigration, as Lagnado stumbles through her own girlhood among the insular Middle Eastern Jewish communities of Brooklyn.

If you are standing in Politics & Prose reading this staff recommendation right now, then you are going to adore this book. Lewis Buzbee, inveterate reader and long-time bookseller, composed this lovely ode to bookstores at a different time in the publishing industry—when “kindle” was still a verb and “nook” nothing more than a place to curl up and read—but his observations on the literary life are timeless and welcome. “For the past several days, I’ve had the sudden and general urge to buy a new book,” he confides, despite the “tower of perfectly good unread books next to my bed... I find myself, maddeningly, hungry for the next one, as yet unknown.” So he wanders into his neighborhood bookshop to satisfy this craving and discover his newest perfect book. Could this one be yours?

What’s the only thing funnier than reading Tina Fey’s new memoir? Listening to Tina Fey read Bossypants! Kick back to hear the inimitable Tina Fey be Tina Fey—with her pitch-perfect deliveries, unedited clips from SNL and side-splitting impressions of the Second City improv troupe and 30 Rock cast and crew. The Bossypants audiobook feels like a glorious mix of top-notch stand-up comedy and after-work gabfest with your wickedly smart, hilarious best friend. I can attest that it will fill hours of highway driving with laughter and delight, but don’t wait for your next road trip to enjoy it!

Do you want to experience student life in 1930s Paris and linger in the classrooms and cafés of a bustling, vibrant, youthfully impoverished Latin Quarter? Have you ever wondered about studying in an architectural atelier, designing sets for a Parisian theater, or teaching ballet in the wealthy Marais? (All this vivid living and striving a welcome counterpoint to the grim news emerging from Germany and Spain.) You might be more interested in the precise conditions of work camps on the Eastern Front, and the subversive diversions their inmates created to cope with backbreaking, dehumanizing labor. Or perhaps you'd prefer one of the most moving, honest and unconventional love stories in recent memory. The Invisible Bridge absorbed me completely; I can't remember anything else I did the week I read it. Through the entwined fates of three Hungarian Jewish brothers, Julie Orringer creates a universe soaring in its scope and extraordinary in its intimacy. It will make you forget every other novel you've read about World War II.

Through four beautifully intertwined novellas, Margot Livesey traces the lives of the artists and academics who reside at 41 Fortune Street, in the Brixton neighborhood of London. Livesey’s writing is so graceful that her tales of missed connections—between lovers, spouses, and friends—are never weighted down by melancholy. Despite their disappointments and betrayals, Fortune Street’s group portrait shimmers with a sense of hope. Be careful about bringing it on your Metro commute: The characters’ progress through lovingly detailed descriptions of London, Oxford and rural Scotland are so completely engrossing you may miss your stop.

ALL OTHER NIGHTS plunges into a fascinating and little-known world: the network of Jewish spies who served on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line during the Civil War. From New York’s German-Jewish merchants to the slave-owning families of Richmond and New Orleans, Horn deftly captures an insular yet deeply divided community. The richly populated cast stars Jacob Rappaport, who flees his father’s business to join the Union Army, and Eugenia Levy, a talented actress and magician who may or may not be a Confederate agent. We also meet real-life historical figures like Judah Benjamin, the Confederacy’s Jewish Secretary of War, and a secret coalition of slaves and African-American spies. Prepare to be enchanted and amazed.

To read The Hakawati is to tumble into a heady maze of stories within stories within stories. Rabih Alameddine intersperses his saga of a 20th century Lebanese family with fantastical, reimagined tales from the 1001 Nights, The Bible, The Qur’an, the Odyssey, and The Metamorphoses. In his wry, masterful telling, these familiar fables acquire new heft and bite. The drama of the al-Kharrat family—an elite, cosmopolitan clan whose fortunes and illusions crumble with the country’s civil war—is no less compelling.

Laurie Sandell had long suspected that her magnetic, charismatic father—a small-time economics professor who claimed to have advised Henry Kissinger, fought with the Green Berets and corresponded with the Pope—was something of a fraud. But it wasn’t until she was an adult, interviewing celebrities for Glamour magazine, that she uncovered the depths of his deception. In this spellbinding graphic memoir, Sandell describes how her filial adoration became a struggle to disentangle herself from lies. It’s a personal, colorful odyssey that encompasses New York, L.A., a Texas rehab center, and a secretive Jewish community in Argentina. With Sandell’s keen wit and wonderfully expressive drawings, you’ll be hooked every step of the way.

Join journalist Tony Horwitz on the most unusual American road trip you can imagine. Horwitz journeys throughout the former Confederacy to investigate the lingering, persistent fascination with the Civil War—and shows us why we should pay attention. Among other adventures, he brunches with the Daughters of the American Revolution and enlists with a particularly zealous bunch of "hardcore" reënactors (the guys who other Civil War reënactors think are crazy). Tony Horwitz is ever mindful of the subtext of race, rural poverty and the strange, powerful beast of public memory. The War Between the States is not as over as you might think.

It’s always a pleasure to sink into a Sarah Waters novel, and the Booker Prize finalist Little Stranger is no exception. There is a ghost, along with a slippery narrator and enough sinister creepiness to make Edgar Allen Poe jealous, but the book’s real subject is the fate of England’s social classes after the Second World War. Despite massive social upheavals—the gentry’s sprawling estates are razed to make homes for the poor; a country doctor warily marks the approach of the National Health Service—Waters’ characters remain obsessed with the minute calibrations of class. In this world, the hem of a cocktail dress and the tone used with servants are as blaringly indicative of pedigree as your accent or your alma mater. Every sentence is exquisitely crafted and polished to perfection, and Waters’ restrained, seeping dread is remarkable. This is spookiness to savor.

I spent the summer lost in Philip Kerr's brilliant evocation of 1930s Berlin, a city caught in the tightening vise of fascism, repression and fear. With unprecedented numbers of disappearances, it's ripe terrain for a private investigator. Enter the smart, shrewd Bernie Gunther, an ex-cop who never lets his private disgust for the Nazis stand in the way of a few deutschemarks. Bernie's moral ambiguity makes him the perfect Virgil into Berlin's underworld, a place where no one is a hero and everyone complicit, in some way, in Hitler's crimes. His cases bring us from the seediest dens to the Third Reich's most secret branches, from the 1936 Olympics to Kristallnacht in 1938. Kerr's outstanding postwar follow-ups to Berlin Noir are every bit as gripping and sophisticated, as a haunted Bernie roams Germany's ravaged Occupied Zones and uncovers a fugitive Nazi colony in Peronist Argentina.

My trip to Paris would have been a lot less delicious without Clotilde Dusoulier's handy, expert little guide. In addition to detailed descriptions of favorite restaurants in each arrondissement (recommendations that read like friendly confidences), Clotilde points you to the best markets, grocers and specialty stores. She's also sensitive to a range of budgets and dietary needs. Get pain au chocolat from Eric Kayser and macarons from Pierre Hermè. Indulge with crepes at Breizh Cafe and a prix fixe at Bistro Paul Bert. Picnic at Lutèce after picking up cheese, meats and baguettes from the outdoor market on rue Monge. And when you get home, re-create these meals with recipes from Clotilde's excellent Parisian cooking blog, Chocolate & Zucchini.