Publishers Weekly - May 18, 2015

their writings along with her own. Faced with many disadvantages—the dangers posed by violence, AIDS, and poverty; low rates of completing school, due to broken or unstable households—these girls might be expected to be grim and discouraged. Yet they are also the “Free Borns,” the first generation born and raised since the collapse of apartheid, and intent on fulfilling the promise of that distinction. Readers come to know a few of them well—Annasuena, who is raped and left HIV-positive by her uncle, and Sharon, who manages to complete her education, among others. Through their stories, readers will understand what life is like for many young women in South Africa. While their circumstances are difficult, the girls have dreams of futures that include work, family, love, and self-respect. This is a troubling but inspiring read. 15 photos. (Aug.)

Does This Beach Make Me Look
Fat? True Stories and Confessions

Lisa Scottoline and Francesca Serritella.

St. Martin’s, $21.99 (272p) ISBN 978-1-250- 05994-9

Scottoline, the prolific and bestselling
author of two dozen novels, and her
daughter, Serritella (with whom she writes
a weekly column for the Philadelphia
Inquirer), pile plenty of laughs and a few
tears into the latest volume in their humor
series. Super-organized single parent
Scottoline lives in the Philadelphia suburbs
with her menagerie of pets, not far from her
beloved Mother Mary, her sassy mother,
who has a couple of marriages under her
own belt. Mother Mary, food (especially
Mary’s spaghetti sauce), and close friends
get a lot of coverage in Scottoline’s writing.
Her daughter, another animal lover, calls
New York City home, where she deals with
issues that will click with a lot of city
dwellers: mice, gym membership gouging,
and noisy early morning construction.
When 90-something Mother Mary sud-
denly falls ill with advanced lung cancer,
the writing takes on a note of sweetness and
poignancy without becoming maudlin or
treacly. Unable to talk comfortably in her
final weeks, Mary uses a dry erase board to
curse up a storm, demand that the family
not talk about any end-of-life business, and
share some hard-earned wisdom. This
breezy, thoughtful book offers funny and
lovely family moments that mothers and
daughters will savor. (July)

Fear and the Muse Kept Watch: The Russian Masters—from Akhmatova and Pasternak to Shostakovich and Eisenstein— Under Stalin

Andy McSmith. New Press (Perseus, dist.), $27.95 (352p) ISBN 978-1-59558-056-6

In this study of artists living in the U.S.S.R. during Stalin’s reign, journalist McSmith (No Such Thing as Society) probes the question of why a “disproportionate amount of the great art of the 20th century came from a regime where to think freely was to risk death.” In addition to the creators mentioned in the title, the book delves deep into the lives of numerous poets, novelists, composers, and playwrights, including the likes of Isaac Babel, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Osip Mandelstam. The suffering is awfully apparent as McSmith describes each artist’s struggles—for the right to create, for artistic integrity, and for survival—“in a state where anybody could be punished for anything.” The persistence of both artists and appreciators of the arts is humbling. For example, Nadezhda Mandelstam, a widow in her 70s, preserved Mandelstam’s life’s work by memorizing all of it. The book stays strictly focused on the Soviet state, never segueing into a larger discussion of the social and political role of art under repressive regimes. Nevertheless, McSmith pieces together many stories in a way that is thoroughly engaging from start to finish. (July)

A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety

Jimmy Carter. Simon & Schuster, $28 (272p)

ISBN 978-1-501115-63-9

While there’s no gainsaying Carter’s
active and selfless post– White House life,
this uneven volume is largely a superficial
treatment of events and personalities cov-
ered elsewhere in more depth, including by
the former president himself. Readers
unfamiliar with his almost 30 other books
may find something new, but even they are
likely to be frustrated by passing references
to major life events. How did a young
Carter feel when his close friend in the
Navy killed himself after a hazing? What
led him to fall in love instantly with his
future wife, Rosalynn? Why was a weekend
with a dying Hubert Humphrey among
the most “interesting” of his life? Carter
doesn’t say. He also seems to credit the suc-
cessful passage of the 1978 Camp David
Accords, perhaps his most significant pres-
idential achievement, to his fortuitous
decision to make a thoughtful gesture to
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s
grandchildren. Carter’s rise from poverty to
the most powerful office in the world is
inspiring, but this book, complete with
average-at-best poetry and artwork, reads
more like a vanity project than a lasting
source of inspiration and information.
Agent: Lynn Nesbit, Janklow & Nesbit. (July)

Genghis Khan:
His Conquests, His Empire,
His Legacy

Frank McLynn. Da Capo, $32.50 (688p) ISBN 978-0-306-82395-4

Prolific British historian and biographer McLynn (Captain Cook) seeks to determine how a seemingly insignificant nomadic tribe from the remote, arid, subArctic steppe became world conquerors. He relies heavily on The Secret History of the Mongols, an enigmatic Mongol hagiography, and on contemporary Arab and Persian authors who had their own evident biases. “The history of Genghis Khan and the Mongols can sometimes seem no more than an endless recital of massacres with pyramids of skulls,” McLynn writes, but he enlivens the litany of destruction with explorations of animal husbandry, traditional religion, and other anthropological topics—sections that are often more interesting than those recounting military exploits. Mongol diplomatic strategy also bears recounting, particularly the drinking binges forced upon Song dynasty envoys. Although the author exhibits a great deal of sympathy for his subject, his opinions on the Mongol nation are not particularly positive: “While the Mongols’ military achievements were stupendous, they were otherwise totally parasitic,” he notes. They also “produced no cultural artefacts... and did not even bake bread; they essentially relied on the captive craftsmen and experts for everything.” McLynn’s work is sweepingly ambitious and persistently intriguing, even if it is not always clear how reliable his sources may be. Maps & illus. (July)