Like Dreamers The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation by Yossi Klein Halevi (Harper)
Israel captured East Jerusalem — the Old City — from Jordan during the Six-Day War in 1967. Halevi looks at Israel over the ensuing decades through the lives of seven members of the paratrooper brigade that reunited the city. One became a noted Hebrew poet/songwriter, another created an anti-Zionist terror group in Damascus and spent 12 years in an Israeli prison. Others were leaders of the settlement movement, artists and peace activists. A fascinating study of modern Israel.
Ian Fleming by Andrew Lycett (St. Martin’s Press)
Among the many gems we get in Londoner Lycett’s very thorough bio is the origin of the specific James Bond martini. Fleming, he writes, believed stirring drinks harmed the flavor — thus the famed “shaken, not stirred.” Other anecdotes include the onetime journalist and WWII intelligence officer meetings John F. Kennedy, then a presidential candidate, at a Washington dinner, where they discussed ways to get rid of Castro. And Fleming began writing “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” while in the hospital recovering from a heart attack.
One Summer America, 1927 by Bill Bryson (Doubleday)
A lot of those “year” books have been coming out from the 1960s, but here expat Bryson goes back a ways. In the year he’s chosen, the boldface names included Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, Charles Lindbergh, Sacco and Vanzetti (executed in ’27), Al Capone and Al Jolson. Thankfully, he doesn’t forget the likes of Alvin “Shipwreck” Kelly. Who’s he? He sat atop a Newark, NJ, flagpole for 12 straight days.
The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert (Viking)
Eat, pray, write a novel? Author Gilbert’s best-selling memoir of personal transformation — “Eat, Pray, Love” — became a cultural meme and Julia Roberts movie. Now, the writer tackles the metamorphosis of the 19th century through the fictional Alma Whittaker. Born in 1800 into a family of Philadelphia pharmaceutical magnates, Alma breaks new boundaries for women and science as she studies evolution, falls in love with a painter and travels the globe. For Gilbert, the book marks a return to fiction after 13 years (her other novel, “Stern Men,” came out in 2000).
The Spymistress by Jennifer Chiaverini (Dutton)
Author Chiaverini has a knack for finding fascinating, if unheralded, women in history — she favors the Civil War era — and shining a light on them with readable historical novels. Her follow-up to “Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker” deals with Elizabeth Van Lew, a wealthy Virginia woman who becomes a Union spy. She helps Yankee prisoners, bringing them food, smuggling out messages, and even helping them to escape. Not very easy for a woman in Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy.