The New York Times Book Review - USA (2020-11-15)

BFB1

ABE David S. Reynolds looks at Lincoln

in the context of his era

MALCOLM XMichael P. Jeffries reviews

a new biography

PLUSNicole Krauss’s short stories;

Lenny Kravitz’s reading life

THE WAVES COME AT US.We are now

being hit with the third wave of case

numbers in the Covid-19 tsunami and

the first wave of books about it. There

will be more, much more, of both.

The story changes daily and so do the

prognostications about where this pan-

demic is going, how it will end (insofar

as it ever does end), what toll it will take

and whether it will serve as a critical in-

flection point, or not, for how we hu-

mans live on this planet. Will it deliver a

deeply absorbed lesson, not just on dis-

ease preparedness but also on climate

change and vanishing biological diver-

sity, the three greatest problems we are

facing and causing? Or will it drain

away and be forgotten, as the 1918 influ-

enza pandemic largely drained away, its

lessons ignored and its grim particulars

seemingly blocked from public memory

By David Quammen

CONTINUED ON PAGE 20

APOLLO’S ARROW

The Profound and Enduring

Impact of Coronavirus on

the Way We Live

By Nicholas A. Christakis

368 pp. Little, Brown Spark.

$29.

NOVEMBER 15, 2020

EDDIE GUY