Review_NONFICTION
56 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ MARCH 9, 2020
Review_NONFICTION
“learned helplessness” and made them
more susceptible to manipulation.
Discussing how to manage one’s exposure
to digital media and to meaningfully
evaluate information, she uses photos from
the Great Depression, WWI and WWII,
and other historical events as examples of
times when communities had to pull
together, as she believes everyone must do
now in the face of technological change.
There is practical, technical help in these
pages about online privacy, with details
on how to create strong passwords and
interact with others safely online, as well
as tools to help readers fact-check infor-
mation encountered online and understand
what kinds of intellectual authority
professional qualifications do and don’t
confer. This should be required reading
for both admitted luddites and longtime
digital denizens. (May)★ Like Crazy: Life with My
Mother and Her Invisible Friends
Dan Mathews. Atria, $26 (244p) ISBN 978-1-
5011-9998-1
Mathews (Committed), a PETA executive,
lovingly and hilariously recounts sharing
his Portsmouth, Va., Victorian house with
Perry, his ailing 79-year-old mother. In
2008, the 46-year-old party- and travel-
loving Mathews moves his manic depres-
sive mother in, despite being hesitant
about their relationship and his romantic
future (“Who’ll want a frantic vegan with
a bad back, a deaf mother who hears voices,
and a nineteenth-century money pit with
an underwater mortgage?”). But the
arrangement is a joyful one for a couple
years: Mathews still dates—except now
it’s not party boys, but “men who love
Home Depot”—and meets Jack, who’s
just coming out after years of marriage
and eventually joins the household. Then
Perry experiences a psychotic breakdown
and is treated
for previously
undetected
schizophrenia.
She eventually
tells Mathews
and Jack that “I
have to go.... I
just wish I could
keep going
awhile longer
now.” Perry,well-articulated account is a must-read
for policy makers and criminal-justice
advocates. (May)Gods of War:
History’s Greatest Military Rivals
James Lacey and Williamson Murray. Bantam,
$32 (416p) ISBN 978-0-345-54755-2
Military historians Lacey and Murray
follow Moment of Battle: The Twenty Clashes
That Changed the World with a stylish and
intriguing survey of showdowns between
“military geniuses” from the Second Punic
War in 218 BCE to the Battle of the Bulge
in 1944. The authors’ six case studies feature
Hannibal vs. Scipio; Julius Caesar vs.
Pompey; Richard I vs. Saladin; Napoleon
Bonaparte vs. the Duke of Wellington;
Ulysses S. Grant vs. Robert E. Lee; and
George S. Patton and Bernard Montgomery
vs. Edwin Rommel. In addition to exam-
ining the personalities and tactics of each
commander, Lacey and Murray trace the
historical evolution of combat, arguing
that after the Industrial Revolution, wars
could no longer be won with a single
decisive battle, but became “a matter of
assembling the greatest amount of
resources and putting together an effective
alliance system to overwhelm one’s oppo-
nents.” Their brisk recaps of the Battle of
Arsuf in the Third Crusade, the Battle of
Austerlitz in 1805, and Grant’s Overland
Campaign in the Civil War, among other
clashes, include colorful details and
memorable quotations from the outsize
personalities involved. The general vs.
general structure has been used before,
but Lacey and Murray deliver a fresh take
on the formula. Military history buffs will
be enthralled. (May)Keep Calm and Log On:
Your Handbook for Surviving
the Digital Revolution
Gillian “Gus” Andrews. MIT, $24.95 (408p)
ISBN 978-0-262-53876-3
Though presented as a how-to manual
on safe computer and smartphone use
targeted to older, tech-phobic users, this
essential crash course also has useful
guidance on media literacy and critical
thinking. Andrews, producer of the
YouTube series The Media Show, believes
that technological advances, combined
with distrust in information and authori-
ties, have overwhelmed users into aanother begins” in symbiotic relationships.
Elsewhere, he explains how fungi were
essential for the original colonization of
land by plants, as they effectively served
as roots for the first rootless arrivals.
Meanwhile, anthropologists have postu-
lated that, via the fermentation process,
fungi may have sparked one of humankind’s
key transitions: “from hunter-gatherers to
agriculturalists.” Looking to the future,
Sheldrake discusses developing uses of
fungi in shipping, construction, and
environmental remediation materials. In
bringing all these diverse threads together,
Sheldrake delivers a thoroughly enjoyable
paean to a wholly different kingdom of
life. Agent: Jessica Woollard, David Higham
Assoc. (May)Gideon’s Promise:
A Public Defender Movement
to Transform Criminal Justice
Jonathan Rapping. Beacon, $27.95 (256p)
ISBN 978-0-8070-6462-7
Rapping, a MacArthur “genius grant”
recipient and former public defender,
describes in this impressive debut the
history and philosophy of Gideon’s
Promise, his criminal justice reform orga-
nization. Named for Gideon v. Wainwright,
the 1963 Supreme Court case establishing
the constitutional right to counsel,
Gideon’s Promise seeks to build a com-
munity of public defenders committed to
“procedural justice,” “client-centered
lawyering,” and the idea that people are
more than “the sum total of their worst
acts.” Rapping paints a bleak picture of the
modern “conveyor belt” criminal justice
system that creates impossible caseloads
for public defenders, devalues the accused
(80% of whom can’t afford to hire a lawyer),
leans on plea bargaining under threat of
unaffordable bail, and prioritizes lawyers’
relationships with judges over clients. To
counteract these imbalances, Rapping
trains lawyers to resist streamlining pro-
cedures that leave no time to collect
information beyond police reports, adopt a
narrative approach to “shape the universe
of facts” at every step of the process, and
commit to seeing their clients as people.
He makes a convincing case that well-
supported, values-based public defenders
who prioritize incremental improvements
in the face of systematic injustice can be
effective change agents. This optimistic,