Review_NONFICTION
56 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ MARCH 2, 2020
Review_NONFICTION
the relationship of accent to class. The
result is a heartfelt tribute to, and
insightful inquiry into, everyday speech
in New York. (May)Me & Patsy Kickin’ Up Dust:
My Friendship with Patsy Cline
Loretta Lynn. Grand Central, $28 (256p)
ISBN 978-1-5387-0166-9
A cracking good storyteller, Grammy
Award–winning songwriter and singer
Lynn reminisces on her friendship with
country music legend Patsy Cline (1932–
1963) in this humorous and loving
memoir. Holding nothing back, Lynn
(Loretta Lynn: Coal Miner’s Daughter) shares
stories of Cline’s generosity—she sewed
curtains for Lynn’s first house—and her
fierce way of speaking her mind. By the
time the two met in 1961, Cline was
already a star, while Lynn’s career was just
beginning. When Lynn signed with
Decca Records that year, she felt like just
one of many
singers trying
to make it in
country music,
and it never
crossed her
mind that she
could become
famous. After
she learned that
Cline was nearly
killed in a car
accident, Lynn performed at the Grand
Ole Opry and sang a song Cline had just
released titled “I Fall to Pieces.” When
Cline heard Lynn on the radio, she sent for
Lynn, and they soon discovered how much
they had in common: they were the same
age, they both grew up poor, and both had
to grow up too fast. Over the course of
their friendship, Cline taught Lynn how
to handle grabby men like bluegrass
musician Bill Monroe, as well as how to
take control of her own business affairs,
how to drive, and, ultimately, how to
stand up for herself. Recalling Cline’s
death in a 1963 plane crash, Lynn writes,
“Reliving all the times Patsy and I had
together for this book has been good, but
it’s also reopened that feeling of empty
sadness.” As in her songwriting, Lynn
imbues her tribute with honesty and
tenderness. (Apr.)University, debuts with an enjoyable
work of popular linguistics. The book
traces New York City’s phonetic history,
including such trivia as how the
“upgliding diphthong” that leads to
“thirty” being pronounced as “toidy”
was, at the beginning of the 20th century,
a marker of upper-class speech (there are
sound recordings of Teddy Roosevelt
using that pronunciation), or how East
Coast elites of a later period, such as that
other famous Roosevelt, FDR, favored
the nonrhotic, or “r-less,” pronunciation
style originating in Southern England.
Other chapters dig into different lin-
guistic and cultural influences on city
place names, and how it came to be that
Midwestern speech replaced “New York
English” as the “standard” American
accent—White notes the oddity of a major
cultural and financial center comparable
to London, Paris, or Rome not defining
standard speech for the rest of the country.
White also covers gangster slang, the
language of popular music, code switching
between different language variants, andpaternal great-grandfather’s roots in
Louisiana Creole country send Jerkins to
Natchitoches Parish, where she wrestles
with her preconceptions about skin color
and relates the story of the Metoyer
family, once the “wealthiest free people of
color” in America. In Oklahoma, she
investigates links between African-
Americans and Native Americans; in
L.A., she juxtaposes the myth of California
in the black community with the reality
of white flight and gang violence.
Jerkins’s careful research and revelatory
conversations with historians, activists,
and genealogists result in a disturbing yet
ultimately empowering chronicle of the
African-American experience. Readers
will be moved by this brave and inquisitive
book. Agent: Monica Odom, Liza Dawson
Assoc. (May)You Talkin’ to Me?: The Unruly
History of New York English
E.J. White. Oxford Univ., $19.95 (288p)
ISBN 978-0-19-065721-5
White, who teaches at Stony BrookDark Mirror: Edward Snowden and
the American Surveillance State
Barton Gellman. Penguin Press, $30 (448p) ISBN 978-1-59420-601-6P
ulitzer Prize–winner Gellman (Angler: The Cheney
Vice Presidency) delivers an eloquent behind-the-
scenes account of his reporting on NSA contractor
Edward Snowden’s leak of top-secret U.S. intelli-
gence documents in 2013. Introduced to Snowden (at
that point known only by the code name Verax) by
documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, Gellman first
had to convince Snowden of the value of working with
a “card-carrying member of the mainstream media,”
then keep a massive cache of classified documents from
falling into the hands of foreign intelligence agents
while publishing excerpts and analysis in the Washington Post. By revealing that
the NSA was engaged in “mass domestic surveillance,” Snowden did “substantially
more good than harm,” Gellman writes, though he gives space in the book to
dissenting opinions from an array of national security officials. Gellman also
describes some of his personal cybersecurity measures, hints at the secrets he
withheld from publication, explores the ramifications of Snowden’s leaks in the
Trump era, and settles scores with Glenn Greenwald, who broke the first story on
the matter. Enriching the high-level technical and legal analysis with a sharp sense
of humor, Gellman presents an exhaustive study of intelligence gathering in the
digital age. Even readers who have followed the Snowden story closely will learn
something new. Agent: Andrew Wylie, the Wylie Agency (May).