Best books...chosen by Tim Gunn
Fashion consultant Tim Gunn stepped away from a long career in academia when
he became the co-host of Project Runway. On March 27, Gunn and Heidi Klum will
launch their new fashion competition series, Making the Cut, on Amazon Prime.The Book List ARTS 23
Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff (2010). I’ve been
interested in the history of the ancient world for
as long as I can remember, and I’ve devoured
dozens of books on the topic. Stacy Schiff’s
Pulitzer Prize winner is the most compelling and
eminently readable of those books, so much so
that I’m reading it, again, at this very moment.
Schiff weaves an electrifying story of one of his-
tory’s most remarkable individuals. You’ll feel as
though Cleopatra is sitting next to you.The Professor and the Madman by Simon
Winchester (1998). This is a story of unimagin-
ably ambitious sleuthing. I’m someone who
loves learning about words and their origins,
and I had no clue about how the Oxford English
Dictionary came to be. Apparently, truth really is
stranger than fiction. You’ll be spellbound.Adam’s Navel by Michael Sims (2003). This
book, which takes readers on a scientific and
cultural tour of the human body, is so rivet-
ing and provocative that I’ve bought copies for
dozens of friends and colleagues. So profound is
the content that my view of the world has been
permanently enhanced. And because the book isorganized by body part, you can ricochet from
chapter to chapter.The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963). Most peo-
ple’s go-to coming-of-age novel is The Catcher
in the Rye, but as a troubled teen, I found The
Bell Jar infinitely more readable and relatable.
Plath’s roman à clef is simultaneously beautiful
and tragic, uplifting and haunting. For me, it’s a
spiritual catharsis.I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron (2010).
This is a collection of essays that I return to
frequently, because I know it guarantees a good
belly laugh. From “The Six Stages of E-Mail”
to “My Life as a Meat Loaf,” Ephron’s wit
and insights are delightful, and her journalism
remains a wonderful antidote to the troubles of
the world.D.V. by Diana Vreeland (1984). If you choose to
read only one book about the fashion industry,
it has to be the autobiography of the great edi-
tor and style icon. Vreeland, who held court at
Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, was at once a rare
hothouse flower and a sphinx without a riddle.Also of interest...in the burdens of history
Emily St. John Mandel
Emily St. John Mandel has
a talent for imagining worst-
case scenarios, said Hillary
Kelly in NYMag.com. The
Canadian-born novelist
vaulted to literary stardom
with 2014’s Station Eleven,
which follows a touring group
of Shakespearean actors some
20 years after an illness wiped
out most of
the world’s
population.
It was short-
listed for the
National Book
Award, sold
more than
1.5 million
copies, and in recent weeks
has seen a surge in paperback
sales. “I don’t know who in
their right mind would want to
read Station Eleven during a
pandemic,” Mandel wrote on
Twitter. But she does under-
stand why readers expect her
to be an expert on Covid-19.
“It’s frightening, and we need
to keep an eye on it,” she says.
“I sound reassuring, right?”
She has, in the meantime,
written a new novel featur-
ing another precision-built
fictional catastrophe, said
Sue Carter in Quill &
Quire (Canada). The Glass
Hotel charts the unravel-
ing of a Bernie Madoff–like
multimillion- dollar fraud. The
disaster might seem to affect
only a rarefied group, typified
by the fraud’s perpetrator, a
financier who has been cush-
ioned from threats and con-
sequences all his life. “That’s
something I see and envy
among people who do have
a lot of money,” says Mandel.
“They’re from a different
planet.” But The Glass Hotel
also asks us to see how the
consequences of such people’s
carelessness ripple outward.
Part of the tragedy is that the
suffering and its cause are so
banal. As one character points
out, “There’s something
almost tedious about disaster.
At first, it’s all dramatic, ‘Oh
my God, the economy’s col-
lapsing’...but then that keeps
happening, week after week.”Author of the week
Sa
rah
Sc
ha
tz,^
AP
Fred Kaplan’s new history of nuclear
decision-making is “not a book for the
faint of heart,” said Paul Kennedy in
The Wall Street Journal. The Slate .com
writer pulls us inside strategy meet-
ings between Pentagon officials and
presidents, revealing just how close we’ve been to
doomsday. Often our presidents have dampened
the generals’ enthusiasm for deploying nukes;
these days, that dynamic is reversed, according to
unnamed witnesses Kaplan cites. Whatever the
truth, the game remains too dangerous.The Bomb
by Fred Kaplan (Simon & Schuster, $30)
“A thumbnail sketch inevitably makes
this novel sound overcrowded,” said
John Williams in The New York
Times. But Chris McCormick “keeps
things admirably nimble” as he tracks
two Armenian cousins and their sepa-
rate forays into 1970s or ’80s backgammon, U.S.
pro wrestling, and militant nationalism. Beneath
the games, violent schemes, and a love triangle,
McCor mick keeps larger themes simmering. “One
of those themes is the tides of history, and whether
one can ever really decide to avoid them.”The Gimmicks
by Chris McCormick (Harper, $28) If Rachel Vorona Cote is “too much,”
we all have problems, said Vanessa
Warne in the Winnipeg Free Press
(Canada). In her “frank, informed, and
at times poetic” first book, the young
cultural critic leaps easily between eras
as she argues that Victorian-era values continue
to constrain women from living intensely without
shame or apology. “Not every cultural commenta-
tor has the smarts to make a meaningful connec-
tion between the life of Britney Spears and the
gender politics of a Brontë novel.” This one does.Too M uc h
by Rachel Vorona Cote (Grand Central, $20)
It’s not that Abel Paisley did the right
thing by abandoning his family in
Jamaica and assuming a friend’s iden-
tity 35 years ago, said David Canfield
in Entertainment Weekly. But “the
seemingly unforgivable is hardly so
simple in Maisy Card’s lyrical, ambitious debut.”
Beginning as a confession by the elderly Abel, the
novel branches out into a family portrait and then
winds back into his island home’s colonial history.
All of it builds into “a centuries-spanning epic
about race, trauma, and the weight of a lie.”These Ghosts Are Family
by Maisy Card (Simon & Schuster, $26)