WWW.PUBLISHERSWEEKLY.COM 49Review_NONFICTION
to kill” the
company. Using
lessons he
learned during
his successful
turnaround of
the then-ailing
electronics
retailer, Joly
posits that most
businesses focus
on profits at
the cost of all else (a fault he admits he
had while a McKinsey consultant in the
1980s). Instead, he demonstrates how he
learned that engaging people in a shared
mission was a more powerful way to lead.
He proves that investing in dreams and
empowering great customer service pays
off in what Joly calls “human magic,”
and to accomplish that, he exhorts
leaders to follow five “be” rules: be pur-
poseful, be clear about whom they serve,
be conscious of what their true role is,
be driven by values, and be authentic.
Thoughtful questions conclude each
chapter, encouraging leaders to examine
their own beliefs, and there’s no shortage
of heartfelt, personal anecdotes. This
smart, practical guide is a perfect resource
for any business leader. Agent: Raphael
Sagalyn, ICM/Sagalyn. (May)
I Am Here: The Journey from
Fear to Freedom
Ashley LeMieux. Harper One, $21.99 (240p)
ISBN 978-0-06-302780-0
In this spirited guide, LeMieux (Born to
Shine), founder of the Shine Project, a
women’s empowerment organization,
provides readers tools to help with diffi-
cult personal situations or times when one
feels directionless. After a long court
battle, the young children LeMieux and
her husband had adopted and had been
raising for four years were returned to
their biological family, plummeting
LeMieux into deep despair. Determined
to lift herself out of depression, LeMieux
developed a process for reframing
thoughts she dubbed “clarity mapping,”
which she outlines here and offers ways to
redefine one’s thoughts, such as thinking
of anger as passion or failure as growth,
and suggests five questions to guide one’s
daily routine: What is my intention?
Why am I worthy? Who can I serve?
What can I set down? Who is the truest
version of myself? She wraps up by encour-
aging readers to cultivate inner strength
by working through seven affirmations
(such as “I am a fighter” or “I am free”)
and learning to hope and trust. Readers
who appreciate the work and perspective
of Brené Brown will enjoy these confi-
dence-building practices. (May)Our Pets and Us:
The Evolution of a Relationship
T.E. Creus. Contrarium, $7.99 trade paper
(170p) ISBN 978-1-77727-750-5
Despite centuries of scientific discov-
eries, animals “are still a mystery,” writes
Contrarium editor Creus in his wide-
ranging ramble on the animal-human
bond. Creus draws on history, art, and
literature to explore how humans and
animals have evolved to understand one
another: early cave paintings, he writes,
were attempts by homo sapiens to capture
animal behavior for their personal gain, as“they believed that by painting them, they
could somehow capture their essence so as
to become quick as leopards, strong as
bears.” The author retells touching stories
of loyal canines, such as the famed
Hachiko, who waited nine years at a Tokyo
train station for the return of his deceased
owner, and surveys the archaeological
record going back 30,000 years to look for
proof of canine domestication. One chapter
dedicated to writers and their pets dis-
cusses Hemingway and his six-toed felines,
and philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer,
who had a series of poodles all named Atma
(a Sanskrit word meaning “universal soul”).
Little of the information is ground-
breaking, but Creus makes it sing with his
contagious curiosity: “I don’t know if the
type of animal chosen could be in any way
related to the type of writing. Do poets
prefer cats, and novel writers dogs?”
Animal lovers will appreciate this quirky,
episodic investigation. (Self-published)★ The Holly: Five Bullets, One Gun,
and the Struggle to Save an
American Neighborhood
Julian Rubinstein. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $28 (284p)
ISBN 978-0-374-16891-9J
ournalist Rubinstein follows Ballad of the Whiskey
Robber with an engrossing investigation into why
Terrance Roberts, a gangbanger turned community
activist in northeast Denver, shot someone at his own
peace rally in 2013. To answer the question, Rubinstein
chronicles 50 years of civil rights activism, racialized pov-
erty, drug crime, gang conflict, and urban redevelopment
in the Holly, a Denver neighborhood that takes its name from a local shopping
center where the police shooting of an unarmed teenager in 1968 touched off waves
of racial unrest. After joining the Park Hill Bloods as a teenager, Roberts spent
several years in and out of jail before a religious conversion inspired him to become
a gang prevention advocate and a leader in efforts to redevelop the shopping
center, which had become an open-air drug market in the 1980s and was burned
down by Crips in 2008. Rubinstein contends that undercover law-enforcement
activities, including the overuse of still-active gang members as informants,
stoked intra-gang violence and helped create the combative circumstances that
led Roberts to shoot a Bloods enforcer in self-defense. Though Rubinstein is
clearly on Roberts’s side, he bolsters the book’s veracity with expert sociological
and historical context. This vivid story of redemption and loss offers profound
insights into the forces that plague America’s inner cities. Agent: Zoë Pagnamenta,
the Zoë Pagnamenta Agency. (May)