Kathryn Schulz’s Top 5:
Zadie Smith, NW
Are there any truly great British novels that aren’t about class? Maybe so, but I’m hard-pressed to think of them just now. Either way, Smith’s new novel takes up the national theme, following the intertwined lives of four characters who grew up in a council estate (that’s public housing, to New Yorkers) in the titular northwest quadrant of London. In White Teeth and On Beauty, Smith used class, race, geography, and gender the way Buckminster Fuller used triangles, borrowing their rigid forms and stress-distributing properties to build beautiful structures. Here’s hoping NW achieves the same. Penguin Press, Sept. 4.
Chinua Achebe, There Was a Country
Chinua Achebe is best known as the author of Things Fall Apart, the most influential English-language African novel, but he is also a poet, essayist, short-story writer, and critic. Yet his writings remain largely mute on the Biafran War, the civil war that raged in Nigeria during the prime of his own life. This new book—part history, part memoir, part poetry collection—finally breaks that silence. Penguin Press, Oct. 11.
“And We’re Also Anticipating”:
A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald, by Errol Morris
Because the documentarian Morris is accusing canonical MacDonald chroniclers (like Janet Malcolm) of malpractice. Penguin, Sept. 4.
Governing the World: The History of an Idea, by Mark Mazower
Because a major work of history can also be a story of major tragedy, especially if it describes the dream of world peace under a rule of law. Penguin, Sept. 13.
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—But Some Don’t,by Nate Silver
Because, while we’re not prognosticators, we are willing to bet Silver will once again call this presidential race. Here, he explains why he’s so good at it. Penguin Press, Sept. 27.
What’s a Dog For?: The Surprising History, Science, Philosophy, and Politics of Man’s Best Friend, by John Homans
John Homans explains how we came to live alongside, and actually love, all those mutt wolves. Nov. 8.