WWW.PUBLISHERSWEEKLY.COM 45Review_NONFICTION
penalty injustices. This is a cogent and
harrowing primer on what’s wrong with
capital punishment. (May)
Electric City: The Lost History of
Ford and Edison’s American Utopia
Thomas Hager. Abrams, $28 (336p) ISBN 978-
1-4197-4796-0
Hager (Ten Drugs) delivers a diligent
history of the “Detroit of the South”: a
plan by Henry Ford and Thomas Edison
to build a 75-mile urban corridor along
the banks of the Tennessee River in the
Muscle Shoals region of Alabama. In 1918,
the U.S. government started construction
on a hydroelectric dam and two nitrate
plants in the area to ensure that the
national supply of nitrate (a critical ingre-
dient in fertilizer and munitions) would
not be disrupted during WWI. But the
war ended before the dam could be com-
pleted, and government funding for the
project dried up. In 1921, Ford and Edison
offered to lease the dam and use it to power
a sprawling, futuristic city that would be
run entirely on electricity and bring mil-
lions of jobs to the area. Hager recounts
breathless media excitement for the pro-
posal, but Nebraska senator George Norris
blocked it in Congress, arguing that it was
an attempt by wealthy elites to profit from
a public resource. Ultimately, the com-
pleted dam helped power the Tennessee
Valley Authority’s rural electrification
program in the 1930s. With incisive char-
acter sketches and insights into the tension
between private and public interests, this
is an illuminating portrait of a little-
known chapter in American history. (May)
★ The Murders That Made Us: How
Vigilantes, Hoodlums, Mob Bosses,
Serial Killers, and Cult Leaders Built
the San Francisco Bay Area
Bob Calhoun. ECW, $19.95 trade paper
(320p) ISBN 978-1-77041-549-2
This compulsively readable account
from Calhoun (Beer, Blood & Cornmeal)
brings to life the famous and infamous
murders in the San Francisco Bay Area
from the mid-19th century to the
present. The author admits his interest
in this macabre history was piqued by his
mother’s involvement as a suspect in a
1959 murder and his connection to the
underground San Francisco music scene
in the late 1990s. His main focus is on
You write that when Molly Ringwald
wanted you as her romantic lead in
Pretty in Pink, producer John Hughes
said, “WHAT? That wimpy guy?”
Were you as surprised as he was when
you became a heartthrob?
Completely. That part was written for
a jocky, square-jawed quarterback
type, and I did not fit that mold. I was
shocked by how things took off.Your movies from the 1980s feel very
different from today’s coming-of-age
movies, which all have teens battling
evil empires in postapoca-
lyptic hellscapes. Why did
they catch on?
I think my movies gave
young people credit for
having rich emotional lives
that were worthy of respect
and exploration, trying to
navigate relationships and
proms and growing up.
That’s perfect for movies. I
have an 18-year-old son and,
my God, his emotional life is so intense.You sometimes seemed to have more
inner turmoil and awkwardness than
your characters, especially at a casting
meeting that almost lost you the part
in St. Elmo’s Fire. Were you sabotaging
yourself?
That’s the nub of the book: all of us
have fears and doubts that can sabo-
tage us, that paradox of wanting
something yet also wanting to retreat.
At that meeting they were just trying
to get me to say something, anything,
but when I would get fearful I would
withdraw. I’ve never been good atselling myself, because it feels so
transparent and false and I didn’t
think one should have to. They drove
me to the meeting in a stretch limou-
sine, but I did so badly that they drove
me back in a little Volkswagen.How did your alcoholism affect your
work?
Drinking usurped it for a time. I
loved going to work, but if you’re
hung over you’re not going to be as
good, whether you’re bagging groceries
or acting. Alcohol’s a cunning foe that
sneaks up on people:
drinking caused me anx-
iety and the remedy for
that is to drink, and round
and round you go. I don’t
think my acting success
caused my alcoholism;
without that I would have
just drunk cheaper vodka.You were lumped in with
Emilio Estevez, Judd
Nelson, and the rest in the Brat Pack.
Blessing or curse?
Like much in movies, the Brat Pack had
little to do with reality. I haven’t seen
either of them since the day we finished
St. Elmo’s Fire; we did a job for eight
weeks together, then we’re linked
together forever in cinematic lore. That
name gave us a profile that was both
limiting and expansive. It was origi-
nally leveled in a pejorative, nasty way,
but it’s become a nostalgic term for
that generation’s ultimate in-group.
It’s something I wrestled with for years,
but ultimately I decided, “Yeah, sure,
why not?” —Will Boisvert[Q&A]
PW Talks with Andrew McCarthy
Behind the Scenes
In Brat: An ’80s Story (Grand Central, May; reviewed on p. 42), the
star of Pretty in Pink, St. Elmo’s Fire, and other seminal 1980s movies
reveals the psychological conflicts that plagued him.©^
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