64 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ JANUARY 27, 2020
Review_NONFICTION
coached at Tennessee’s Belmont University
for 33 years, but of whom Feinstein recalls,
“I wanted to talk basketball, he wanted
to talk golf.” It’s all net for Feinstein’s
passionate basketball history. (Mar.)Charles Darwin’s Barnacle
and David Bowie’s Spider:
How Scientific Names
Celebrate Adventurers, Heroes,
and Even a Few Scoundrels
Stephen B. Heard. Yale Univ., $28 (256p)
ISBN 978-0-300-23828-0
In this enlightening volume, biology
professor Heard (The Scientist’s Guide to
Writing) discusses how scientific names
are chosen. He begins with Carl Linnaeus,
the 18th-century Swedish botanist
whose binomial system, intended to aid
classification, allowed species names to
be more than simply descriptive. In
choosing names for organisms, scientists
could reveal elements of their own per-
sonalities: their sense of humor, for
example, or their biases. Chapters on two
eponymous species, Strigiphilus garylar-
soni and Neopalpa donaldtrumpi, prove
particularly amusing. The former, a louse,
honors Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson,
whose wildly absurd scenarios—slugs
having dinner parties, porcupines with
punk hairdos—belied an “insightful
understanding of how nature works,”
which won him a following among scien-
tists. The latter, a moth whose “remark-
able shock of large, blond, comb-over
scales” reminded scientist Vazrick Nazari
of the 45th president, allows Heard to
examine the phenomenon of insult
naming. It’s one that goes all the way
back to Linnaeus, who, stung by another
scientist’s criticism of his writing on
flowers’ sex lives as “lewd,” named a weed
with notably tiny flowers after his prudish
colleague. Entertaining and accessible,
Heard’s discussion will appeal to both
scientific and general audiences. With 25
b&w illus. (Mar.)Creating a New Civility
Joy Marsella. Univ. of Akron, $24.95 trade
paper (174p) ISBN 978-1-62922-123-6
Marsella, a University of Hawaii
English professor, debuts with a simplistic
five-step program for developing civility,
defined here as “a combination of belief
and behavior that allows a community...to thrive.” She goes on to explain that her
vision of civility is based on the concepts
of full humanity, interdependence, and
common cause. The aim of the five “pro-
cesses” (interrogating identity, practicing
mindfulness, listening anew, developing
empathy, and reasoning well) is to move
the reader through exercises in self-
reflection to a point where the processes
become “a new paradigm” for living. She
also provides a helpful graphic illustrating
the relationship between her five steps,
the actions each step is meant to guide the
reader toward, and the end goal. Each
chapter focuses on a step, starting with
“Interrogating Identity,” in which
Marsella asks the reader to write their
own identity story and provides examples
from herself and the work of Ta-Nehisi
Coates. While Marsella’s aim is laudable,
she never provides an adequate response
to critics she mentions who have asked
her what more her work will provide
than a call to “being nice.” Any reader
who has engaged with the source material
she uses—for example, Coates or Jon
Kabat-Zinn—has probably moved
beyond the need for the very elementary
process of self-reflection Marsella
describes here. (Mar.)Disunited Nations: The Scramble
for Power in an Ungoverned World
Peter Zeihan. Harper Business, $35 (464p)
ISBN 978-0-06-291368-5
The coming end of American hegemony
will be good for America, but disastrous
for much of the world, according to this
sweeping treatise on international relations.
Zeihan (The Accidental Superpower), a geo-
political strategy consultant, predicts that
a United States weary of foreign entangle-
ments will stop enforcing the post-WWII
global “order” in which it guaranteed the
military security of allies, kept sea lanes
open, and wel-
comed exports
from developing
countries. What
follows, he con-
tends, will be
pervasive dis-
order, in which
some nations
flourish—
including a
rich, isolatedUnited States—as others face political
chaos, economic regression, war, and
famine caused by the breakdown of global
supply chains and international coopera-
tion. Zeihan pegs his arguments to in-
depth discussions of the geography and
agricultural, economic, and demographic
trends of major countries and their impact
on regional rivalries. Some of his prognos-
tications are convincing (China’s vulnera-
bility to trade blockades means it will
never be a global military power as many
fear, he reasons), while others, including a
prediction that Turkey will conquer
Greece’s Aegean islands, feel iffy. Zeihan
integrates a wealth of information and
data into lucid analyses written in acces-
sible, boisterous prose (“Canada is just so
snarky. All. The. Goddamn. Time”).
The result is a stimulating look into the
geopolitical crystal ball. Agent: Jud Laghi,
the Jud Laghi Agency. (Mar.)★ Gone at Midnight:
The Mysterious Death of Elisa Lam
Jake Anderson. Citadel, $26 (352p) ISBN 978-
0-8065-4005-4
Investigative journalist Anderson looks
into the case of 21-year-old Elisa Lam, a
student diagnosed as bipolar who vanished
from L.A.’s seedy Cecil Hotel one day in
2013, in this outstanding debut. As days
went by, residents of the hotel began to
complain about the water quality and
pressure. Finally, a maintenance worker
went to the roof to check the hotel’s cis-
terns, only to find Lam’s naked, dead body
floating in one of them. The coroner ruled
her death an accident by drowning with
bipolar disorder a contributing factor. But
Anderson found too many inconsistencies
in the case, and the internet went wild with
conspiracy theories. Lam was no stranger to
the blogging world, having a Tumblr
account where she documented her mental
health problems and where her scheduled
updates appeared for months after her
death. That Anderson’s obsession with the
case led him to examine his own mental
health issues adds depth. He ponders
whether it was suicide or a psychotic
breakdown—or something more sinister
that killed Lam. Anderson also vividly
details the dark delusions he suffered
while making a documentary at the Cecil
Hotel. What really happened to Lam may
never be known, but true crime buffs