Cairo
by Ahdaf Soueif (Pantheon)
There’s is something incredibly sad in this reportorial yet personal book from Souief (“The Map of Love”). The Cairo native recounts with joy and anguish the revolution that toppled the Mubarak regime — the hope raised by a new generation demanding freedom (she had protested against the Sadat government in 1972) — and led to free elections. But there is the disappointment over Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi’s rule. And her book ends before the new, military-led government completely hijacked the revolution.
Thomas Jefferson: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Everything
by Maira Kalman (Nancy Paulsen Books)
One of Required Reading’s favorite artists has put her own colorful spin on the Founding Father who wrote the Declaration of Independence. But, she points out, there was so much more. He loved his garden, and his favorite vegetable was peas (“Fun to count”). He practiced his violin three hours a day! Kalman also includes the bad (his slaves) and the silly (he would repair a torn jacket with socks). And the eye-popping illustrations have a nice, folksy look.
Ping-Pong Diplomacy: The Secret History Behind the Game that Changed the World
by Nicholas Griffin (Scribner)
Griffin’s look at the spread of Ping-Pong around the world — and it’s eventual use in thawing Chinese-US relations — introduces us to a real character: Ivor Montagu, the son of an English baron and the man who first wrote down the rules for the game and founded the International Table Tennis Federation. He was also a communist and a Soviet spy, who thought Ping-Pong could help spread Marxism throughout the world.
The Exiles Return
by Elisabeth de Waal (Picador)
This autobiographical novel of the Ephrussi banking dynasty — who lost nearly everything in the Holocaust — was written by family descendant de Waal after World War II and found by her grandson Edmund de Waal while he was researching his family memoir “The Hare With Amber Eyes.” His grandmother’s book chronicles the elder de Waal’s experiences getting her parents out of Vienna just ahead of the war and her return to postwar Vienna find out what had happened to the rest of her family. It appears in print 23 years after her death.
The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI
by Betty Medsger(Knopf)
If nothing else, former Washington Post reporter Medsger’s book shows us that there is nothing new about the US government spying on American citizens. The burglary of the title — a 1971 break-in at the FBI’s office in Media, Pa. — was little noticed at the time. But the fallout was big. The self-proclaimed Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI released the contents of the files they found to the press, revealing that Hoover’s FBI had been harassing and keeping tabs on leftists, civil rights activists and many other Americans since the 1940s. Medsger tracked down the burglars who finally broker their silence.