The best modernism books

1930s Shanghai could give Chicago a run for its money. In the years before the Japanese invaded, the city was a haven for outlaws from all over the world: a place where pasts could be forgotten, fascism and communism outrun, names invented, fortunes made – and lost. ‘Lucky’ Jack Riley was the most notorious of those outlaws. An ex-Navy boxing champion, he escaped from prison in the States, spotted a craze for gambling, and rose to become the Slot King of Shanghai. Ruler of the clubs in that day was ‘Dapper’ Joe Farren – a Jewish boy who fled Vienna’s ghetto with a dream of dance halls. His chorus lines rivaled Ziegfeld’s and his name was in lights above the city’s biggest casino.

In 1940 they bestrode the Shanghai Badlands like kings, while all around the Solitary Island was poverty, starvation, and genocide. They thought they ruled Shanghai; but the city had other ideas. This is the story of their rise to power, their downfall, and the trail of destruction they left in their wake.

Girl Archaeologist recounts Alice Kehoe’s life, begun in an era very different from the twenty-first century in which she retired as an honored elder archaeologist. She persisted against entrenched patriarchy:  her Harvard professors refused to allow her to write a dissertation in archaeology. A senior professor tried to rape her. Universities paid her less than her male counterparts. Her husband refused to do housework or childcare. Working in archaeology and in the histories of the American First Nations, Kehoe published groundbreaking books and articles. Although she was denied a conventional career, she gained a wide circle of collaborators and colleagues through her unconventional breadth of research and empathy with First Nations people. CHOICE, the university librarians' organization, chose Girl Archaeologist as a 2022  Outstanding Academic Title.

In this first examination of Lenin's genealogical and political connections to East European Jews, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern reveals the broad cultural meanings of indisputable evidence that Lenin's maternal grandfather was a Jew. He examines why and how Lenin's Jewish relatives converted to Christianity, explains how Lenin's vision of Russian Marxism shaped his identity, and explores Lenin's treatment of party colleagues of Jewish origin and the Jewish Question in Europe.

Petrovsky-Shtern also uncovers the continuous efforts of the Soviet communists to suppress Lenin's Jewishness and the no less persistent attempts of Russian extremists to portray Lenin as a Jew. In this fascinating book, Petrovsky-Shtern expands our understanding not only of Lenin, but also of Russian and Soviet handling of the Jewish Question.

This story is set in the colonial city of Charleston and brings together two of my interests: architecture and urbanism. Beginning in the 1980s, a motley crew of builders—a lover of Byzantine architecture, an Air Force pilot, a fledgling architect, and a bluegrass mandolin player—undertake a variety of unusual projects: a domed Orthodox church, a fanciful medieval castle, a restored freedman’s cottage, a miniature Palladian villa, and a new street based on Porgy and Bess. And in the process of remaking an old city, they invent a new one.

The life of the writer Norman Douglas presents an impossible paradox: how could a man who was well known during his own lifetime for his sexual obsession with children have been so beloved by famous authors like D. H. Lawrence, Graham Greene, and Nancy Cunard, as well as by countless readers on both sides of the Atlantic? Answering that question puts the biographer (me) in an impossible situation, as I trace the social history of pederasty and discover that attitudes towards sex between men and children were far more accommodating in the first half of the twentieth century than they are now. Unspeakable is not just a sexual biography of a man who would now be considered a monster, it’s a reflection on how historians of sexuality can write about practices that are more taboo today than they were in the past.

This book examines the extraordinary life of Frank “Toronto” Prewett and the history of trauma, literary expression, and the power of self-representation after WWI. Joy Porter sheds new light on how the First World War affected the Canadian poet, and how war-induced trauma or “shell-shock” caused him to pretend to be an Indigenous North American. It investigates his influence upon, and acceptance by, some of the most significant literary figures of the time, including Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden, Wilfred Owen, and Robert Graves.

In doing so, it skilfully connects a number of historiographies that usually exist in isolation and rarely meet. By bringing together a history of the WWI era, early twentieth-century history, Indigenous history, the history of literature, and the history of class, it crafts an exceptional and fresh contribution to the field.

On the outskirts of a sweltering Texan town among willows, pumpjacks, and peeling wood dwellings, a fifteen-year-old under-achiever becomes the prime suspect for a high school shooting. Vernon Little’s coming-of-age suddenly meets the media, the madness of crowds, and his mother’s unfortunate psychology, as he desperately plots to run to Mexico. This extremely black comedy is an explosion of triggers from early 21st-century culture spun into an adventure that asks: what the hell is really going on?

So, what’s up with American cities? Everyone knows we sprawl more than anyone else in the world and we drive more than anyone else in the world. In my book, I argue that the reason we live this way because we have adopted local laws that mandate this lifestyle. Other developed societies (I reviewed the UK, Germany, France, Russia, Japan, and Australia) don’t have the same laws. We borrowed the laws from the Europeans a hundred years ago but then we changed them beyond recognition. So how about changing the laws?

The Things We Thought Were Beautiful includes poems about our changing feelings and connection to nature and the world around us, the beauty and strangeness of travel, and the places we look for meaning. There are also poems that explore the difficulty of living without love, as well as the redemption of home and family.

"Cena with Tata" - Ancient Rome: An iron-willed matron tells of her once-great family’s fall, and her campaign to regain its former glory. "Hunger and Thirst" -Sadness, anxiety, dread has infected the whole world.  Discovering the cause, an altruist strikes blows to save it. "The Worst Day of My Life" - The bishop’s head torturer has all a man could desire—until his scatterbrained daughter presents him with a problem. "Misericord" - Hospitalized with anaphylaxis, a man learns his life is not as blessed as he thought, and neither his loved ones nor his doctor have his best interests at heart. "Found in a Cave" - A California woman writes about how she and her family have survived the collapse of society only to end up awaiting an uncertain fate high in the mountains.