Review_NONFICTION
58 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ AUGUST 5, 2019
Review_NONFICTION
Portrait of an
Ex-Black Man”
leads up to
Williams’s
decision to
follow in artist
Adrian Piper’s
footsteps by
“retiring” from
race. Claiming
the uniqueness
of the black
experience, he argues, is still buying into
the racist idea that race is a centrally
important facet of identity. The solution,
he posits, is to live in “the humanizing
specificity” of people as people, not as
vessels for historicized prejudice.
Regardless of whether readers agree with
his conclusions, these essays are intellec-
tually rigorous, written in fluid prose,
and frequently exhilarating. (Oct.)To Feel the Music:
A Songwriter’s Mission
to Save High-Quality Audio
Neil Young and Phil Baker. BenBella, $24.95
(242p) ISBN 978-1-948836-38-8
Musician Young (Waging Heavy Peace)
and consumer electronics developer Baker
passionately tell of their quest for premium
sound in this narrowly focused memoir.
The quest involved creating the
PonoPlayer in 2012, a portable device
that played uncompressed audio files, as
an alternative to MP3s, which Young felt
had poor sound quality. Young, an audio
evangelist, argues that digital music is too
compressed and muddy, whereas “if the
highest-quality music audio were available
at a reasonable price... everybody would
hear and feel better music.” He and Baker
write about their attempt to build Pono,
which included haggling with music
industry types (“Most companies... had to
put up millions of dollars for those rights.
I was able to get the three major record
companies to do it without paying those
huge fees”) and launching a multimillion-
dollar Kickstarter campaign in 2014.
However, Pono was discontinued only three
years later, when Omnifone, the music
service company that hosted Pono’s store,
stopped operating. There’s a great story in
here about Pono and the debate over sound
quality standards in the music industry,
but the authors are too close to the subjectan ailing rescue donkey. Neglected by an
animal hoarder near McDougall’s farm in
Pennsylvania’s Amish country, Sherman
is nursed back to health by Tanya, a local
veterinary technician: “You need to give
this animal a purpose. You need to find
him a job,” Tanya tells McDougall. So
McDougall, an accomplished runner,
sets his sights on the annual World
Championship Leadville Burro Race in
Colorado, an eight-decade-long tradition
that includes an uphill run half the height
of Mt. Everest. McDougall is a charming,
enthusiastic storyteller as he describes how,
with less than a year to train, he enlists
Tanya; his wife, Mika; and Zeke, a troubled
Penn State student who draws strength
and purpose from training Sherman. The
team, which also includes donkeys Flower
and Matilda, wends its way through
wooded mazes, creeks, and other obstacles
in preparation for the high-altitude race.
As the event draws closer, several setbacks
challenge the team, including Tanya’s
horse-training accident, Zeke’s broken foot,
and McDougall’s shattered finger. Despite
these setbacks, they arrive in Leadville in
2016 ready to race, and complete the
15-mile “short course,” with Sherman
finishing 29th out of 52. Runners and
animal lovers alike can find inspiration in
this story of the ways in which humans
and animals connect. (Oct.)★ Self-Portrait in Black and White:
Unlearning Race
Thomas Chatterton Williams. Norton, $25.95
(192p) ISBN 978-0-393-60886-1
Williams (Losing My Cool) follows in
the footsteps of James Baldwin and
Ta-Nehisi Coates to craft a provocative
philosophical argument about the role of
race in human identity. He acknowledges
during this trio of essays that he has had
some highly unusual experiences. “The
View From Near and Far” deals with his
youth as the light-skinned son of a black
father and a white mother; his first trip to
France, where many people thought he
was of Middle Eastern descent; and his
realization that identity is heavily influ-
enced by the way others see a person.
“Marrying Out” explores his marriage to
a white French woman and how his father
conveyed to him that black American life
is “conditioned by local historical circum-
stance... [but] not beholden to it.” “Self-moved back to the neighborhood and there
were no reprisals. These players occupied
relatively niche roles in organized crime, so
the level of drama is frequently low, and
Kraus doesn’t look deeply into their
Judaism, Chicago Jewish culture, or other
Jews’ reactions to their dealings. There
just isn’t much excitement here. (Oct.)Return to the Reich:
A Holocaust Refugee’s Secret
Mission to Defeat the Nazis
Eric Lichtblau. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $28
(304p) ISBN 978-1-328-52853-7
The title is a giveaway in this gripping
WWII tale by Pulitzer Prize–winner
Lichtblau (The Nazis Next Door) about
Freddy Mayer, a Jewish refugee who fled
Hitler’s Germany only to return as an
American spy. In chilling detail and skillful
prose, this deeply researched narrative
recounts Mayer’s family fleeing Freiburg
for Brooklyn in 1933. Although the U.S.
Army initially rejected Freddy as an enemy
alien, after Pearl Harbor “officials came to
realize that they would need every able-
bodied man,” and he was recruited into a
unit of the espionage-focused Office of
Strategic Services composed mainly of
Jewish refugees, including Dutch-born
Morse code expert Hans Wynberg. Their
assignment was to go behind enemy lines
with a “Mission Impossible mandate... to
harass the enemy.” Along with Franz
Weber, an Austrian POW they convinced
to defect, in February 1945 Mayer and
Wynburg were dropped into the heart of
Nazi territory. Things, unsurprisingly,
got hairy: Gestapo officers demanded to
see their papers, and Weber was recognized
by a teenage girl. But before long, everyone
at HQ was impressed with the intelligence
the trio sent back. Despite his best
efforts, the Nazis arrested Mayer, and he
was summoned to meet with “the most
powerful Nazi in Tyrol,” regional party
leader Franz Hofer. No spoilers on the
rest—readers will devour Lichtblau’s fresh
and masterfully told WWII story. (Oct.)Running with Sherman: The
Donkey with the Heart of a Hero
Christopher McDougall. Knopf, $26.95
(334p) ISBN 978-1-5247-3236-3
In this tenderhearted memoir,
McDougall (Born to Run) tells of his
adoption and rehabilitation of Sherman,