Review_NONFICTION
boldly critiquing the legal reasoning
behind the majority opinions. This well-
sourced and accessible account makes a
convincing case that America’s highest
court played a key role in stalling black
progress for a century. (May)
The Socrates Express:
In Search of Life Lessons
from Dead Philosophers
Eric Weiner. Avid Reader, $27 (352p)
ISBN 978-1-5011-2901-8
Journalist Weiner (The Geography of
Bliss) makes a convincing and winningly
presented case for the practical applications
of philosophy to everyday existence in the
21st century. With humor and thoughtful-
ness, he distills the wisdom of thinkers
from throughout history—from Confucius,
to Socrates, to Rousseau, to Gandhi, to de
Beauvoir—into ways to slow down, ask
questions, and pay attention. In his cogent
exploration of “How to Listen like
Schopenhauer,” he relates the German
philosopher’s idea of the dark force of an
insatiable “Will” in all living things to
the addictive appeal of the internet, and
recognizes that today, especially, “we con-
fuse data with information, information
with knowledge, and knowledge with
wisdom.” Meanwhile, in Epicurus, Weiner
finds a guide to achieving pleasure in the
age of online retail, where “so many tanta-
lizing options lie only a click away,” but,
as Epicurus himself advised, “not what we
have, but what we enjoy constitutes our
abundance.” Weiner travels physically as
well as intellectually around the world,
exploring the slower, more reflective
transportation methods of traveling by
train and walking. His book offers an
appealing way to cope with the din of
modern life and look at the world with
attentive eyes and ears. (May)
Under the Red, White and Blue:
Patriotism, Disenchantment
and the Stubborn Myth of
‘The Great Gatsby’
Greil Marcus. Yale Univ., $26 (176p) ISBN 978-
0-300-22890-8
In an idiosyncratic book that occasionally
soars, critic Marcus (Real Life Rock) traces
The Great Gatsby’s impact on America’s
popular imagination. Marcus spends much
of his time on various works based on or
inspired by the novel: stage plays,
Hollywood films, live readings, Saturday
Night Live skits, and even a billboard in
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birthplace of St. Paul,
Minn. He also discusses responses to
Fitzgerald’s work from other writers, such
as Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald;
Fitzgerald’s mostly ill-starred Hollywood
writing career; and parallels between Gatsby
and Moby-Dick. In one of the strongest
sections, Marcus discusses The 7 Lively
Arts by Fitzgerald’s friend Gilbert Seldes,
a 1924 analysis of the popular culture of
the Roaring Twenties era, which the novel
now epitomizes. In another strong entry,
Marcus incisively critiques the botched
1949 Gatsby film starring Alan Ladd,
“one of the most enervating movies ever
made.” However, the amount of space he
grants to summaries of performances or
movies, though invariably well-written,
sometimes overwhelms the book’s critical
component. If the many facts and ideas
gathered by Marcus sometimes feel like
too daunting a pile of glittering cultural
detritus, taken in small amounts they do
result in an entertaining meander for
Fitzgerald fans. (May)Wandering in Strange Lands:
A Daughter of the Great
Migration Reclaims Her Roots
Morgan Jerkins. Harper, $27.99 (304p)
ISBN 978-0-06-287304-0
Essayist Jerkins (This Will Be My
Undoing) sets her family history against
the backdrop of the Great Migration—the
period from 1910 to 1970 when six million
blacks left the South for other parts of the
country—in this forthright and informa-
tive account. Contrasting her father’s
frequent visits to his childhood home in
Fayetteville, N.C., with her mother’s lack of
knowledge about her family roots, Jerkins
sets out to fill in the “blank spaces and
missing pieces” of her identity. Visiting
Georgia and
South Carolina,
she documents
the systematic
erasure of Gullah
Geechee culture
and reveals her
maternal great-
grandfather’s
escape from two
different lynch
mobs. HerTHE BOOK READERS ARE CALLING
“life changing,”
“practical,”
“heart stirring,”
“impressive,” AND
“empowering”
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800-733-2607 | Kregel.com978-0-8254-4506-4“As real world practical and eff ective
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Social Justice for All truly lives up
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—Midwest Book Review“I’m so grateful for Lisa Van Engen’s
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