Reviews of notable new fiction and nonfiction. Chip War, by Chris Miller (Scribner). This history traces the development of silicon chips, from their invention, in America, in the nineteen-fifties, to the establishment of a global supply chain concentrated in East Asia. Miller mounts a convincing argument that shifting control of the industry could dramatically reshape the world’s economic and political orders. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Botticelli’s Secret, by Joseph Luzzi (Norton). In 1882, an Austro-Hungarian art collector purchased a set of drawings by Sandro Botticelli that had been languishing in private collections in France and England for centuries. In this wide-ranging history, Luzzi considers why the drawings, which illustrated eighty-eight cantos of Dante’s Divine Comedy, had fallen into oblivion, and charts both Dante’s and Botticelli’s reputations across the ages. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. Best of Friends, by Kamila Shamsie (Riverhead). This novel begins in Karachi, in the nineteen-eighties, as the optimism of two privileged teen-age girls is punctured when they are abducted by a friend’s driver, an event that forces them to confront their powerlessness in a world dominated by men. Their friendship persists, in diminished form, as the novel leaps into present-day London, where the two work on opposite sides of Britain’s political divide. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. A Shiver in the Leaves, by Luther Hughes (BOA Editions). Brutality and tenderness intertwine in this collection, which illuminates the inner life of a young gay Black man navigating desire, depression, family, and faith. Although the poems are haunted by historical and contemporary violence, they are also often rapturous, revelling in the pleasures of nature and of the body. Buy now on Amazon or Bookshop. What are you reading this week? Reply to let us know. 📖 |
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