In For You, Mom, Finally (Penguin, $13), food critic and writer Ruth Reichl shares the lifelong regrets that dogged her mother, Mim. After her mother’s death, Reichl reads Mim’s letters and personal notes and discovers the deep remorse that had long plagued her. Instead of pursuing a fulfilling career, Mim buckled under parental and societal pressure to marry and raise a family. Mim’s depression is also the malaise of a generation of middle-class women who glimpsed during WWII the freedom and independence available in work outside the home, but who were forced back into domesticity immediately after the war. Reichl presents Mim’s unhappiness with generosity and warmth. For You, Mom, Finally is a touching book that recognizes a mother’s sacrifices and her hope that her daughter would not face the same limitations.
When Skateboards Will Be Free (Dial Press, $15) is a lilting, blackly funny memoir of a most unusual adolescence. Said Sayrafiezadeh’s Iranian father and American Jewish mother were zealous socialists, and they raised their son in a militant wing of the Socialist Workers Party. Sayrafiezadeh grew up in the peculiar, politically charged cocoon of Brooklyn and Pittsburgh of the 1970s and ‘80s; due to his parents’ single-minded fervor, he often suffered crippling poverty and neglect. But his dark humor softens the pathos--as do the glimpses we get of the adult Sayrafiezadeh auditioning for commercials and working for Martha Stewart. It’s one of the many ironies this talented writer plays with but never overplays.
Barack Obama’s upbringing and political development have been well documented, but David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, delivers a riveting presentation of Obama’s “political, racial, and sentimental education” in The Bridge (Harper Collins, $29.95). An outstanding example of “biographical journalism,” Remnick’s book follows his subject through all phases and locations of his life, examining how Obama grew from “Barry” to Barack, how he defined himself vis-a-vis each of his parents, how he honed his public and private personalities through community organizing and relationships with mentors such as Chicago mayor Harold Washington, and the way he brought his diverse experiences to bear on his run for the presidency.
