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Hot Springs, Ark., was a hell of a town. J. Edgar Hoover said that “Chicago in its Capone era didn’t have a thing on Hot Springs.” David Hill’s entertaining account of its 20th-century heyday, “The Vapors,” tracks many of the colorful characters who wandered through the infamous Vapors casino and the city’s other night spots—including Owney Madden, a gangster who had owned the Cotton Club in Harlem before heading south. In 1950, Virginia Blythe moved to the hothouse environment of Hot Springs with her young son—soon to be known as Bill Clinton. His stepfather’s family owned the local Buick dealership, and his mother loved the Vapors vibe. But as a teenager her son was not as enthused. During his one reported visit to the casino, he asked to leave early. Read the review —C.C. |
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Q: | What book would you recommend that memorably captures the spirit of a unique American town or place? Email books@wsj.com |
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| Bernard Gotfryd/Getty Images |
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Paranoid Style: At the apogee of his career, Richard Hofstadter was the embodiment of postwar liberalism. The author of “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” did not believe, as he put it, that “American history can be satisfactorily reduced to a running battle between the eggheads and the fatheads.” But he did think that the U.S., throughout its history, had been an inhospitable place for intellectuals. Yet the early 1960s was an odd time to be making this claim, since intellectuals across the board enjoyed unprecedented influence. Later historians and journalists, such as Neil Sheehan and David Halberstam, would argue that “the best and the brightest” had enjoyed too much respect and influence, not too little. Richard Aldous on the Library of America’s selection of Richard Hofstadter’s writing, edited by Sean Wilentz. Read the review |
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| | | Life of a Klansman By Edward Ball Investigating his Southern forebears, Edward Ball reconstructs the life of his great-great-grandfather Polycarp Constant Lecorgne, a white French Creole whose family owned slaves. He moved down New Orleans’s social ladder, then joined the Confederate forces—and eventually a white-supremacist paramilitary organization. Read the review |
| Carville’s Cure By Pam Fessler The Louisiana Leper Home started out in 1894 as a local enterprise and became the U.S. Public Health Service’s “national leprosarium” following an act of Congress in 1917. Those diagnosed with leprosy were mandatorily quarantined for life at this ramshackle, swampy former plantation, regularly struck by outbreaks of malaria. Read the review |
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| | | The Butterfly Effect By Edward D. Melillo Great cultural achievements have been built on the crushed bodies of insects. The cochineal’s red carmine formed pigments for the paintings of Caravaggio and van Gogh. Thousands of lac bugs were needed to make shellac gramophone records. It takes up to 2,000 silkworm cocoons to make a silk dress. Read the review |
| The Way of Imagination By Scott Russell Sanders “In seeking to defend the wild Earth against human abuse,” says Scott Russell Sanders in this essay collection, “have I taken too sanguine a view of wildness? Can I still celebrate a power that produces not only monarch butterflies, humpback whales, and sycamore trees, but also hurricanes, plagues, and cancer?” Read the review |
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“What Happens at Night”: Peter Cameron’s ability to flicker between the eerie and the grubbily banal defines his revisionist version of the Victorian ghost story. Read the review |
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| | | Nathalie Sarraute By Ann Jefferson Like other exponents of the nouveau roman, Nathalie Sarraute disavowed traditional plots and the conventions of realism. Ann Jefferson’s biography shows how her literary innovations issued from her own boundary-defying life. Read the review |
| Grown Ups By Emma Jane Unsworth In Emma Jane Unsworth’s novel, self-inflating targets such as mindfulness and “the new man” are exquisitely punctured through the wind-tunnel consciousness of a smartphone-obsessed protagonist who writes a column for a feminist website. Read the review |
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“The Cabinets of Barnaby Mayne”: Elsa Hart’s suspenseful historical mystery, set in the 18th century, concerns a collector of rarities murdered amid his treasured objects. Read the review |
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| From Your Bookshelves . . . |
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Young Nation: We asked for favorite books on American history. Betsy McKenny recommends “Caleb’s Crossing” (2011), a novel about the daughter of a Puritan minister and the son of a Wampanoag chieftain. |
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But she adds: “A special mention to the ‘We Were There’ series of children’s books, which inspired my interest in American history when I was a child. I have an especially vivid memory of ‘We Were There at the Battle of Lexington and Concord.’ I don’t know if they’re still in print, but if they’re not, they should be.” |
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| Five Best: Francesca Marciano |
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The author, most recently, of the story collection “Animal Spirit.” Read the article |
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Grief Is the Thing With Feathers By Max Porter (2015) The Final Confession of Mabel Stark By Robert Hough (2001) The Friend By Sigrid Nunez (2018) Birds of a Lesser Paradise By Megan Mayhew Bergman (2012) Bear By Marian Engel (1976) |
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