Review_NONFICTION Review_NONFICTION54 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ SEPTEMBER 9, 2019
In 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, Patricia Schultz shares bucket-list destinations, such as
Cappadocia in Turkey, pictured here (reviewed on p. 61).Citizen Reporters:
S.S. McClure, Ida Tarbell, and the
Magazine that Rewrote America
Stephanie Gorton. Ecco, $27.99 (384p)
ISBN 978-0-06-279664-6
Socially conscious journalism and col-
orful personalities stimulate each other in
this meandering portrait of a Progressive
Era magazine. Journalist Gorton recounts
the heyday of McClure’s (roughly 1893 to
1906), which gained a then-massive cir-
culation exceeding 400,000 for its fiction
by legends including Willa Cather and
Robert Louis Stevenson and its investigative
reporting on strikes, business monopolies,
racial lynchings, municipal corruption, and
other controversies. President Theodore
Roosevelt celebrated the magazine’s
reformist zeal, then denounced its “muck-
raking” after the magazine’s reporting
made trouble for him. Gorton’s narrative
revolves around biographies of Ida Tarbell,
a pioneering female journalist whose
sensational exposé of Standard Oil sparked
antitrust action, and founder Samuel Sidney
McClure, a brilliant manic-depressive with
a gift for spotting great writers and sowing
chaos with grandiose schemes. (McClure’s
was crippled when a plan to start a second
publication—and perhaps an insurance
company, bank, mail-order university, and
company town to boot—provoked mass
resignations.) Gorton wants to capture an
evanescent group alchemy of journalism
at McClure’s, with McClure inspiring and
supporting Tarbell’s investigations and
Tarbell stabilizing the erratic McClure, but
her case for a unique McClure’s culture that
wouldn’t flourish under steadier manage-
ment is unconvincing. The result is a
miscellany of profiles and anecdotes, some
more revealing than others, without a
unifying theme. (Feb.)Friendship: The Evolution,
Biology, and Extraordinary
Power of Life’s Fundamental Bond
Lydia Denworth. Norton, $26.95 (320p)
ISBN 978-0-393-65154-6
Science writer Denworth takes a broad
look at the origins and functions of friend-
ship in her intriguing debut. Her focus
ranges from animal behavior to neurobi-
ology and from sociology to psychology andphysiology. After speaking with many
leading researchers, Denworth draws
several striking conclusions—notably that,
having been found in an extensive variety
of species, friendship has deep evolutionary
roots. This helps explain the large panoply
of positive health benefits associated with
friendship and, inversely, the dire medical
consequences she reports as sometimes
arising from loneliness. Denworth also
examines the impact of virtual relationships
and the increased use of technology by dif-
ferent generations, concluding that research
demonstrates no net benefit or harm from
social media use: “Friendship, real friend-
ship, hasn’t changed much. It is alive and
well, even thriving.” Her reporting is
peppered with personal asides about how
she and her family members have navigated
various relationships. While this enlivens
her work’s more technical facets, it does
potentially give the impression of putting
anecdotal experiences on a par with evi-
dence-based studies, thus undercutting the
importance of the latter. Science enthusiasts
may find Denworth’s survey wider than it
is deep, but it does provide an effective
introduction to its subject. (Feb.)All the F*cking Mistakes:
A Guide to Sex, Love, and Life
Gigi Engle. Griffin, $19.99 (384p) ISBN 978-1-
250-62033-0
In this explicit sex 101 manual and
feminist treatise aimed at 20- and 30-some-thing women, sex coach Engle encourages
women to have more sex, and to not be
afraid to discuss it. “This book is a guide to
taking your power back,” Engle writes. “It’s
for women who love sex and want that
sex to be a source of strength.” In casual,
colloquial prose (“I was fifteen years old
when I first had P-in-the-V intercourse”),
Engle shares tales of her sexual experiences
while covering subjects including sexually
transmitted illnesses; masturbation tech-
niques; where to buy sex toys and how to
clean them; and the art of writing sexts (the
trick is not to freak out the recipient). Engle
convincingly speaks to the importance of
female self empowerment: “Our bodies are
relegated, given value, and consumed by
men,” she writes. “When we take back sex,
the patriarchal power we bow down to
cannot make us bend.” In a world where
pornography often takes the place of sex
education, Engle writes, it’s critical that
women retain agency over their bodies and
prioritize their needs. This bold, sex-
positive book delivers on its promise to
instruct and encourage women who want
more from their sex lives. (Jan.)Hill Women:
Finding Family and a Way Forward
in the Appalachian Mountains
Cassie Chambers. Ballantine, $27 (304p)
ISBN 978-1-984818-91-1
Women in Kentucky’s Appalachian
community come into focus in lawyerNonfiction
photographbynatapongpaopijit/gettyimages