Review_NONFICTION
60 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ OCTOBER 14, 2019
Review_NONFICTION
An officer, later revealed to be Maj. John
Armstrong Jr., distributed an anonymous
letter calling for the army to defy orders to
either disband (if peace came) or fight (if
war resumed). Head convincingly
debunks theories that the letter was part
of a conspiracy hatched by “nationalist-
minded” politicians, including Alexander
Hamilton, who wanted greater powers for
the federal government, and finds no
evidence that officers sought to overthrow
Washington. He praises the commander’s
ability to restore order, and thoroughly
details how the army came to terms with
Congress. This accessible history illumi-
nates an obscure but significant chapter in
American history. (Dec.)The Crowd and the Cosmos:
Adventures in the Zooniverse
Chris Lintott. Oxford Univ., $25.95 (288p)
ISBN 978-0-198-84222-4
Oxford astrophysics professor Lintott
(The Cosmic Tourist) recounts helping to
start a new wave of citizen science with
the Galaxy Zoo crowdsourcing platform
in this spirited scientific memoir. “With
more data, you need more scientists,” he
explains, adding, “And that, dear reader,
is where you come in.” Overwhelmed
with the amount of data returned by the
Sloan Digital Sky Survey, Lintott and
colleagues formed a plan in 2007: build a
simple website and “give talks to local
astronomical societies, including
increasingly desperate pleas to help with
galaxy classification.” It worked—so well
that other scientists gave over their data
sets about moon craters, Antarctic pen-
guins, and gazelles for counting and
classifying. With deep dives into each
project, Galaxy Zoo’s designers received
ad hoc science lessons on the subject
under investigation, from the “cosmic
web of clusters and of filaments which
wind their way
around enor-
mous empty
voids,” to
Hubble’s law.
Ultimately,
Lintott’s team
“found that for
almost any real-
istic case, com-
bining human
and machineescaped Paris in 1940 when the Germans
occupied the city. Seeking refuge in
southern France, Frenkel experienced
threatening situations while Nazis were
“hunting” humans and was smuggled
from one safe house to another. She wit-
nessed children
being separated
from parents
and Jews being
shipped to
camps; while
trying to sneak
into Switzerland
in 1942, she was
arrested and
held in a French
detention
center. She was tried for attempting to
illegally cross the border and acquitted,
and in 1943 successfully found her way
into Switzerland, where she began
writing her memoir, No Place to Lay One’s
Head. After the war—and the book’s
publication—Frenkel returned to Nice.
Frenkel, who died in 1975, writes that it
is “the duty of those who have survived to
bear witness to ensure the dead are not
forgotten.” Frenkel’s remarkable story of
resilience and survival does just that, and
will truly resonate with readers. (Dec.)A Crisis of Peace:
George Washington, the
Newburgh Conspiracy, and the
Fate of the American Revolution
David Head. Pegasus, $28.95 (320p) ISBN 978-
1-64313-081-1
Revolutionary War buffs will be
intrigued by this meticulous, narrowly
focused account of the two years following
British Army general Charles
Cornwallis’s surrender to Continental
Army commander-in-chief George
Washington in October 1781. University
of Central Florida professor Head
(Privateers of the Americas) explains that,
with peace under negotiation in Paris,
British forces still occupied New York
City, and 10,000 Continental troops
“stood duty” in the vicinity of
Newburgh, York. During the winter of
1782–1783, army officers grew anxious
about their pensions, which had been
promised by Congress but were now in
doubt because the country was “deeply in
debt” and taxes were “deeply unpopular.”Will
Will Self. Grove, $26 (400p) ISBN 978-0-8021-
2846-1
A drug-addled youth dissipates itself in
this vivid if flawed memoir. English nov-
elist Self (Great Apes) revisits his life from
1979 to 1986, a period dominated by his
use of marijuana, acid, amphetamines,
cocaine, and much heroin. Written in the
third person, these vignettes include his
first snort of heroin at age 17; an episode
of heroin withdrawal in New Delhi that
juxtaposed uncontrollable nausea and
diarrhea with hearing a Christian passion
play next door; getting punched back
into consciousness by a woman after an
overdose; an excessiveness of drug-taking
at Oxford, culminating in a narcotics
bust that ended his chance at graduate
school; and a stint in rehab that felt like a
totalitarian 12-step cult. Along the way
Self offers jaundiced, sardonic recollections
of his parents’ marriage, casual hookups,
meaningless jobs, and soulless suburbs.
Self writes in his usual dazzling, impres-
sionistic whirl studded with piquant
character sketches and travelogue.
Unfortunately, his literary firepower can’t
overcome the fact that drugs are pretty
boring unless one is on them. (He and two
friends “lay back, massaging their aching
biceps as the methadone flowed thickly
between their three minds, emulsifying
them into a single sticky puddle of semi-
being... splurged across the scrofulous
carpet, staring blankly at the fly-blown
heavens.”) The result is an amped-up but
often tedious and uninvolving confessional
that loses itself in callow sensation. (Jan.)A Bookshop in Berlin:
The Rediscovered Memoir
of One Woman’s Harrowing
Escape from the Nazis
Francoise Frenkel, trans. from the French by
Stephanie Smee. Atria, $28 (288p) ISBN 978-
1-5011-9984-4
In this riveting memoir, rediscovered
nearly 60 years after its original publica-
tion, Jewish bookseller Frenkel documents
her harrowing experience escaping Nazi
persecution in WWII France. Born in
Poland in 1889, Frenkel fulfilled her
dream of opening a French-language
bookstore called Le Maison du Livre in
Berlin in 1921. She fled to Paris after
Kristallnacht on Nov. 10, 1938, and