Bringing Mulligan Home
The Other Side of the Good War
by Dale Maharidge (Public Affairs)
They’ve been dubbed the Greatest Generation. But many of them would also be a silent generation. Pulitzer-winning writer Maharidge’s WWII-veteran father had a simmering rage and was clearly affected by his experiences on Okinawa. But he rarely spoke of the war. The only memento: a photo of young Sgt. Maharidge and a Marine buddy, Herman Mulligan, who was killed in battle, tacked to a basement wall. On his father’s death, the writer set out to find out what really happened to Mulligan. The result: a scrupulous and heartfelt analysis of what it was like to be “a cog in the biggest battle in the Pacific.”
World Rat Day
Poems About Real Holidays You’ve Never Heard Of
by J. Patrick Lewis, illustrated by Anna Raff (Candlewick)
With its fun, puns, whimsical animal watercolors and general goofiness, this hilarious work recalls Shel Silverstein. Any kid — or parent — should get a kick out of, say, “Bulldogs Are Beautiful Day.” “A Bulldog is . . . a sieve for slobber/a soloist (grunts)/the sumo of canines/the semi of runts . . .” Or “Pink Flamingo Day,” complete with a tux-clad pink bird.
Between Man and Beast
An Unlikely Explorer, the Evolution Debates, and the African Adventure that Took the Victorian World by Storm
by Monte Reel (Knopf)
You’d half expect a Bela Lugosi mad scientist or a Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan to pop up in this Victorian-era drama, which travels from the London of Darwin and Dickens to unexplored Africa to Civil War-ravaged America. But it’s a true story. It centers on African explorer Paul Du Chaillu and his expedition to find African gorillas. He emerged a celebrity but was caught in the debate over evolution and eventually forced to defend his own credibility and honor.
Here I Am
The Story of Tim Hetherington, War Photographer
by Alan Huffman (Grove/Atlantic)
Photographer Tim Hetherington (1970-2011) lived in Brooklyn, but he spent most of his time in places like Afghanistan, Darfur, Liberia and Libya. Journalist Huffman looks at what it means to be a war reporter in the 21st century through the lens of the iconic Hetherington’s life, looking at his early work — prize-winning photographs of Liberian children — to his Oscar-nominated documentary “Restrepo” (co-directed with Sebastian Junger, whose doc on Hetherington, a companion to this book, airs next month on HBO) to the mortar blast in Libya that cut his life short.
The Blue Book
by A.L. Kennedy (New Harvest)
It’s hard to escape your past, especially if it’s on a boat with you in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. In the British author’s latest novel, Beth takes a cruise from England to America with her fiance, Derek, only to find her ex-boyfriend Arthur is on the same boat. Beth and Arthur shared not only romance, but a shady scheme as psychics who scammed clients into believing that dead loved ones were contacting them.