Review_NONFICTION
76 PUBLISHERS WEEKLY ■ JULY 29, 2019
ownership and the booming economics of
the pet goods industry, Horowitz offers a
treatise certain to appeal to dog lovers
everywhere. With b&w illus. Agent:
Kristine Dahl, ICM Partners. (Sept.)Plaintiff In Chief: A Portrait of
Donald Trump in 3,500 Lawsuits
James D. Zirin. All Points, $28.99 (288p)
ISBN 978-1-250-20162-1
Zirin (Supremely Partisan), a former
assistant U.S. attorney in the southern
district of New York, examines in critical
detail a host of President Donald Trump’s
entanglements in the civil justice system.
Zirin begins with a 1973 case brought by
the federal government against Trump
and his father for housing discrimination,
during which Trump began his relationship
with the infamous attorney Roy Cohn,
from whom, Zirin contends, Trump learned
his slash-and-burn legal tactics. Other cases
include his being sued by undocumented
people who had worked on a project for
him, in which he denied knowledge of
their legal status in order to avoid payments
to pension funds (the judge deemed his
claims “unworthy of belief”); threats of
litigation to intimidate Rolling Stone and
the Onion; a class action brought by those
enrolled in his Trump University; and a
defamation suit Trump brought against a
New York Times journalist, during which
he lied 30 times in one deposition and lost.
Most of the critiques Zirin raises have been
previously reported, and the effect of
putting together all of these lawsuits can
be both overwhelming and repetitive. This
may not be a fun reading experience, but
it’s a well-constructed documentation of
Trump’s legal misdeeds. (Sept.)A Polar Affair: Antarctica’s
Forgotten Hero and the Secret
Love Lives of Penguins
Lloyd Spencer Davis. Pegasus, $29.95 (368p)
ISBN 978-1-64313-125-2
Biologist Davis (Professor Penguin)
combines history and science seamlessly
in this enthralling look at pioneering
scientist George Murray Levick (1876–
1956) and his discoveries about the
diversity of animal sexuality. Davis, who
had—he thought—discovered male
homosexuality among penguins in 1996,
realized 15 years later that his observation
was not new. In 1914, Levick, a survivorchoosing to have a pair of glasses fixed
rather than going directly to work in Tower
Two, or going back to a hotel room for a
different shirt before a meeting. As the
crises unfold, Graff balances the reports of
rescues and deaths from New York and the
Pentagon with reactions aboard Air Force
One; in Shanksville, Penn., where Flight
93 crashed; and in other relevant locations.
Graff doesn’t shy away from describing
casualties, such as those who jumped
from the towers, but keeps those passages
brief. By the end of the day, there are some
tearful reunions, but the hospitals,
braced to receive hundreds of casualties,
are eerily empty. The bewilderment, fear,
and courage exhibited on that day are
palpable in these recollections. This vivid,
moving work is painful to read but
honors both those who died and those
who survived that awful day. (Sept.)Our Dogs, Ourselves:
The Story of a Singular Bond
Alexandra Horowitz. Scribner, $28 (336p)
ISBN 978-1-5011-7500-8
In this entertaining and accessible
volume, Horowitz (Being a Dog), head of
Barnard’s Dog Cognition Lab, examines
the unique relationship that “scientists,
ever unromantic, call... the ‘dog-human
bond.’ ” She devotes different chapters to
various aspects of this relationship, with
one particularly intriguing section sharing
the results of Horowitz’s informal Twitter
survey on the reasons behind dogs’ names.
One respondent, a literature PhD married
to a man named Hyde, named her dog
Jekyll, thus making for Doctor, Jekyll, and
Mr. Hyde—an elaborate joke that also
serves as an example of how modern pet
owners tend to see themselves and their
animals as members of the same family.
(On a more somber but similarly mean-
ingful note, other respondents reported
giving dogs names once earmarked for the
children they never had.) On New York
City sidewalks, Horowitz eavesdropped on
dog walkers, hearing how owners modeled
parenting style with their pets (some were
critical, others cheerleaders), used their
animals as excuses to introduce themselves
to strangers, and encoded passive-
aggressive messages meant for their
acquaintances in addresses to their dogs.
Rounding out her analysis by discussing
the philosophical ramifications of dog★ The Number of the Heavens: A
History of the Multiverse and the
Quest to Understand the Cosmos
Tom Siegfried. Harvard Univ., $29.95 (320p)
ISBN 978-0-674-97588-0
While many might think of the idea of
the multiverse as something new, science
writer Siegfried (A Beautiful Math)
describes how this seemingly fanciful
concept—that this universe is one of
many—has been accepted by thinkers and
philosophers for millennia. Siegfried opens
his detailed history with the ancient
Greeks, when “atomist” philosophers
imagined “innumerable worlds” created
by the motion of spinning atomic whirl-
pools. The multiverse lost ground when
Plato insisted on a perfect singular cosmos,
fueling his student Aristotle’s claims that
there could only be one universe. These
dominated the scientific consensus until
1277, when the Bishop of Paris, Étienne
Tempier, announced that God was fully
capable of creating more universes, and
that anyone saying otherwise would face
excommunication. Siegfried profiles fasci-
nating figures over the centuries, such as
medieval polymath Roger Bacon, natural
philosopher William of Ockham, and
astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. The
author also explains groundbreaking
ideas such as Albert Einstein’s infamously
difficult cosmological constant, quantum
mechanics, and the big bang. This clear
and thoughtful work of popular science
serves as a fascinating history of one of the
most provocative concepts in modern
physics, while also tracing its roots in
ancient ideas and exploring its implications
for this universe and others. (Sept.)★ The Only Plane in the Sky:
An Oral History of 9/11
Garrett M. Graff. Avid Reader, $30 (416)
ISBN 978-1-5011-8220-4
Journalist Graff (Raven Rock) organizes
first-person accounts of 9/11 from
numerous sources and adds contextualizing
facts and maps to produce a harrowing
and powerful narrative of that day. He
follows airline personnel, passengers, and
their spouses; first responders; those sur-
rounding President Bush and the rest of
the nation’s leadership; media figures;
and others. Graff sets the stage with
seemingly mundane decisions whose
significance readers will suspect, such as