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hiring. To address this, Johnson urges
organizations to focus on helping
employees feel that they belong—the
power of this feeling, she argues, is uni-
versal, and key to success. She also helps
readers learn how to break their own biases,
starting with a shift from unconscious to
conscious thinking, and how to develop
and build solid teams. These efforts need
to be incorporated into every single day,
she says, and from this conviction comes
the term “inclusifying,” a “continuous,
sustained effort toward helping diverse
teams feel engaged, empowered, accepted,
and valued.” (Why this familiar idea
requires a neologism worthy of Michael
Scott is not explained.) Johnson’s well-
intentioned offering doesn’t provide
much new to employers wondering why
their supposedly merit-based team is,
once again, all white men. Agent: Michael
Palgon, Palgon Co. (June)
The Inner Coast: Essays
Donovan Hohn. Norton, $16.95 trade paper
(256p) ISBN 978-0-393-43981-6
In this penetrating collection, Hohn
(Moby-Duck), a former editor at GQ and
Harper’s, offers keen insight on subjects
ranging from ice canoeing in Quebec City
to the Flint, Mich., water crisis. Taking a
New Journalism approach, Hohn’s essays
fuse the personal, historical, and cultural.
In “A Romance of Rust,” he accompanies
his tool-collecting uncle to a series of
auctions across Michigan, while rumi-
nating on the evolution of tools and their
symbolic association with manliness. In
“Watermarks,” Hohn considers writings
about water, including both Genesis and
Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck,”
and incorporates snapshots from his own
life—droughts during his 1970s California
childhood, a more recent scuba diving
expedition in Lake Michigan. The strongest
piece is “Falling,” about his mother, who
suffered periods of mental instability
during his youth. His memories of her vary
wildly—at one point she’s rising early to
organize a complicated scavenger hunt for
his birthday party, at another abandoning
her husband and young children to live in
a hotel for nine months. This essay is tender
and poetic, and a genuine feat of empathy.
With his close sense of connection to nature
and knack for quietly moving prose, Hohn
reveals himself to be a valuable new name
in narrative nonfiction. (June)Keep Sharp:
Build a Better Brain at Any Age
Sanjay Gupta. Simon & Schuster, $28 (336p)
ISBN 978-1-5011-6673-0
Gupta (Chasing Life), a neurosurgeon
and chief medical correspondent for CNN,
offers hopeful advice on how to maintain
a healthy brain in this bracing study. With
many references to medical studies, he
thoroughly debunks common myths about
the brain, such as that languages become
harder to learn as one ages, and explains the
processes of various neurological functions,
such as creating memories. Those looking
for simplistic strategies for improving
brain function and memory should look
elsewhere, as Gupta subscribes to the
notion that what is “good for the heart is
good for the brain.” His holistic approach
includes exercise, getting enough sleep,
and a healthy diet, alongside maintaining
a social life and trying new things. Gupta
is particularly effective in chapters that
address those coping with an Alzheimer’s
diagnosis and their caregivers; especially
useful is his list of logistics for those
diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and resources
for patients and their caregivers. While
Gupta’s approach to better brain health
doesn’t break new ground, his optimism
and the wealth of scientific information
he corrals will embolden and comfort
readers. (June)Owls of the Eastern Ice:
A Quest to Find and Save the
World’s Largest Owl
Jonathan C. Slaght. Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
$27 (368p) ISBN 978-0-374-90384-8
Biologist Slaght provides a detailed and
thrilling account of efforts to conserve an
endangered species, the Blakiston’s fish
owl, in the wilds of eastern Russia. As a
University of Minnesota doctoral student,
Slaght spent part of each year from 2006
until 2010 in the hardscrabble, sparsely
inhabited region of Primorye doing
research into the enormous yet elusive
creatures. To develop a plan for protecting
the species from the incursions of logging
companies and poachers, Slaght and his
Russian colleagues entered the winter
forest, contending with frozen rivers and
extreme weather (as well as tigers and
bemused locals) while trying to collect dataon fish owls.
After some ini-
tial failures, they
managed to
catch several
specimens and
equipped them
with radio trans-
mitters before
releasing them,
a method then
adopted by
Japanese scientists to protect their own
fish owl population. Conscientious about
crediting his Russian collaborators, Slaght
also evinces humor, tirelessness, and
dedication in relating the hard and crucial
work of conservation. Readers will be
drawn to this exciting chronicle of science
and adventure, “a demonstration that
wilderness can still be found.” (June)Poulenc: The Life in the Songs
Graham Johnson. Liveright, $49.95 (608p)
ISBN 978-1-63149-523-6
Pianist Johnson (Franz Schubert) delivers
a lively if unconventional biography of
the French pianist and composer Francis
Poulenc (1899–1963). Each of the six
chapters focus on a decade of Poulenc’s
compositions and opens with a chronolog-
ical timeline of events in the composer’s
life (e.g., on June 21, 1943, a 44-year-old
Poulenc first performed, with violinist
Ginette Neveu, his “Sonata for violin and
piano” in Paris’s Salle Gaveau). Johnson
then lays out a grid that includes the
number and title of each piece written in
the era, the date of composition, the literary
source (if there is one), the key, the time
signature, the tempo, the lyrics, and a
description of each song. Along the way,
he incorporates biographical sketches of
poets and writers with whom Poulenc
collaborated (Guillaume Apollinaire, Jean
Cocteau, and Paul Éluard) and explores
Poulenc’s closeted homosexuality and his
ability to keep it secret by compartmen-
talizing his domestic life with his wife
and daughter and his gay life. Poulenc
emerges in this exhilarating and exhaustive
study as a prolific composer attuned to the
cultural and personal eddies of modern
society. This astute biography will be a
boon to Poulenc fans and classical music
buffs alike. (June)