Review_NONFICTIONWWW.PUBLISHERSWEEKLY.COM 93Charles Dort, seen in the above photo preparing a linoleum block for printing a design onto linen, is
one of the artisans profiled by Melanie Falick in Making a Life (reviewed on p. 99).★ The Selected Letters of
Ralph Ellison
Edited by John F. Callahan and Marc C.
Conner. Random House, $50 (1,056p)
ISBN 978-0-8129-9852-8
Callahan, Ralph Ellison’s literary exec-
utor, and Conner (The Poetry of James Joyce
Reconsidered, editor), offer a generous edi-
tion of the Invisible Man author’s previ-
ously unpublished letters from 1933 to
- Arranged by decades, the book
traces Ellison’s path from college student
to budding writer, renowned author, and
elder statesman, with Callahan providing
compact but informative introductions to
each segment. The letters’ recipients are
diverse: Some are family—notably,
Ellison’s mother, Ida —while others are
old friends from his birthplace, Oklahoma
City, and college friends from his alma
mater, Tuskegee Institute, with whom he
remained in touch even as his circle grew
to encompass such well-known writers as
Langston Hughes and Saul Bellow.
Ellison’s many letters to Richard Wright
and Albert Murray are the most intimate,
about matters personal, professional, and
political. He candidly discusses with
Wright, in August 1945, his break with
the Communist Party, and in June 1951,
updates Murray on the progress of Invisible
Man, writing: “I cut out 200 pages myself
and got it down to 606.” The collection
also touches on Ellison’s second, never-
finished novel, and on the devastating
1967 fire which destroyed much of it. A
splendid, indeed exemplary, collection,
this is a remarkable historic document
crafted with great scholarly acumen.
Agent: Jacqueline Ko, Wylie Agency. (Dec.)
Hop, Skip, Go:
How the Mobility Revolution Is
Transforming Our Lives
John Rossant and Stephen Baker.
HarperBusiness, $29.99 (272p) ISBN 978-0-
06-288306-3
Rossant, founder of the nonprofit
NewCities Foundation, and Baker, a
former technology journalist, take a
fascinating survey of the many disruptions
coming for the transportation industry.
During “the next stage of human
mobility,” they predict, innovators will
seek to address traffic, waste, and envi-
ronmental issues, not to mention the
countless hours commuters spend in
transit. The authors focus on the major
cities, such as Los Angeles, Dubai, and
Shanghai, where the need for saner traffic is
most urgently felt. In addition to famous
tech founders and their pet projects—
Elon Musk’s Boring Company tunneling
startup and Jeff Bezos’s Amazon delivery
drones—Rossant and Baker check in on
3D-printed cars in the L.A. suburb of
Torrance, bikes crafted out of repur-
posed industrial machinery in
Vancouver, and navigation AIs in
Shanghai. They also speak to Sonja
Heikkilä, who developed the transporta-
tion app MaaS (mobility as a service) in
an attempt to solve Helsinki’s pressing
transit problems. Looking ahead to a
future in which owning a car might be
as anachronistic as playing music on a
CD player, Rossant and Baker’s study
convincingly forecasts how new tech-
nologies might “change our cities, our
economies, and the fabric of our lives.”
Agent: James Levine, Levine Greenberg
Rostan. (Nov.)★ The History of Philosophy
A.C. Grayling. Penguin Press, $35 (704p)
ISBN 978-1-9848-7874-8
Grayling (The God Argument), founder ofLondon’s New College of the Humanities,
presents an impressive, comprehensive
catalogue of great thought and thinkers in
this sweeping work. Focusing on Western
philosophy (a concluding section sketches
Indian, Chinese, African, and Arabic- and
Persian-language philosophical traditions),
the volume chronologically surveys signif-
icant thinkers—including Plato,
Aristotle, and Kant, who emerge as the
foremost figures—and enlivens discus-
sions of their schooling, influences, and
arguments with judiciously applied anec-
dote, such as how Thomas Aquinas’s
brothers smuggled a prostitute into his
room in a (futile) attempt to stem his
religious fervor. Overviews on related
schools of thought are equally enlightening,
clearly distinguishing, for instance,
between Stoic and Epicurean philosophies
of early Rome, 19th-century movements
like positivism and pragmatism, and the
20th century’s diverging analytic and
Continental schools. Perhaps Grayling’s
greatest strength lies in his ability to
categorize, contrast, and clarify complex
ideas, such as Plato’s theory of forms and
Kant’s categorical imperative. Elegant,
clear, and precise, Grayling’s sweep through
“the principal areas of enquiry” distills
philosophy to its main concerns: discerning
the nature of reality, the principles of
sound society, and how to live a good life.Nonfiction
© rinnieallen