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      Book Review: ‘The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt,’ by Edward F. O’Keefe

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      In “The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt,” Edward F. O’Keefe explores the informal kitchen cabinet that helped Roosevelt, the 26th president, speak softly and carry a big stick.THE LOVES OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT: The Women Who Created a President, by Edward F. O’KeefeWe in the United States have yet to be officially led by a woman in the presidency. But in subtle ways, we have come closer than we might think. In certain presidencies, first ladies played vital roles behind the scenes, guiding their husbands with both emotional support and shrewd political advice. Dolley Madison springs to mind; so does Edith Wilson, who wielded near-presidential powers as she restricted access to her husband, Woodrow, after a series of strokes that weakened his body and mind.Surprisingly, a president who was almost cartoonishly masculine can now be added to the list of leaders who depended on their better halves; Theodore Roosevelt was surrounded by female advisers throughout his life. As Edward F. O’Keefe explains in his new book, “The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt,” the coterie of Teddy-whisperers included his mother (called Mittie), two wives (Alice and Edith), two talented sisters (known as Bamie and Conie) and his daughter Alice.All were strong individuals, albeit very different. Two left the story early — on Valentine’s Day in 1884, when Roosevelt lost his wife and his mother on the same day. His sisters were there to help him pick up the pieces, and his second wife, Edith, became the perfect political partner: gracious, shrewd and strong (as she needed to be, to restrain his occasional errors in judgment). Collectively, Edith, Bamie and Conie formed a kitchen cabinet of sorts, and O’Keefe presents Roosevelt’s presidency as something of a feminist achievement.At first blush, this is counterintuitive, for T.R., as he was widely known, was an Alpha president for an Alpha age. As the United States began to flex its muscles on the world stage, he was everywhere — building up the Navy, charging up San Juan Hill and generally doing the kinds of things men liked to do. He compared himself to a Bull Moose, talked of big sticks and celebrated masculine achievement whenever he could. Famously, he lionized “the man in the arena,” his face “marred by dust and sweat and blood.” For T.R., life was a public bromance.But he was not, actually, alone in the arena. As O’Keefe shows, with meticulous research, Roosevelt’s wife and sisters were always there, in the background, cleaning up messes and helping him to make good decisions. The title is slightly misleading; this is not a potboiler about romantic escapades, but rather a careful study of a president whose career was shaped from the outset by exceptional advisers.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Book Review: ‘The Devil’s Best Trick,’ by Randall Sullivan

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      “The Devil’s Best Trick,” Randall Sullivan’s in-depth occult investigation, is not for the easily frightened.THE DEVIL’S BEST TRICK: How the Face of Evil Disappeared, by Randall SullivanWhen I was 12 years old, my family went on vacation and, at my request, left me behind. My mother told me that I could sleep in her and my stepdad’s bedroom — normally strictly off limits to kids — and watch their TV. The first night they were away, I made a horrifying mistake: “The Exorcist” was debuting on Canadian television. It came on around sunset. I turned on the TV and climbed into my parents’ bed. You know what happened next.I wanted to go turn off the TV, but I didn’t dare for fear of what might be waiting in the darkness. I tried hiding under the covers but that only made it worse. I don’t know when I fell asleep, but I do know that every time I closed my eyes I could see the ravaged, green, grinning face of Linda Blair. As Randall Sullivan would say, the face of evil.The Devil’s greatest trick, as the saying goes (attributed sometimes to Baudelaire and other times to “The Usual Suspects”), was to convince the world he doesn’t exist. Sullivan, an investigative journalist, goes out looking for him in our modern world. And “The Devil’s Best Trick” is a master class in the difficult art of first-person, narrative nonfiction.At the start of his journey, Sullivan’s not sure if he believes in the Devil; by the end he is certain that Satan is real. Sullivan is never showy, and doesn’t insert himself into the story more than necessary, but we always feel he is there with us — which is often comforting and necessary, given his sinister subject.The prose has wonderful momentum even when he’s writing about arcane debates in the early Christian church. Each chapter is a turn, a surprise. The writing is never clichéd, nor is the thinking. Sullivan knows a great lede, and he’s just as good with cliffhangers.He tells us that he cut quite a bit of the murder and torture material, but parents should still skip Chapters 9 and 10. When he says, of the serial murderer Westley Allan Dodd, “I’m not going to describe the things Dodd did next; they’re too horrible,” we are grateful; what he has included is very difficult to read.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Read Like the Wind: Bill Cunningham’s Photos and Gwendolyn Brooks’s Life

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      A Gwendolyn Brooks biography; a Bill Cunningham photo collection.AlamyDear readers,My first experience with writing a fan letter didn’t go well. It was to the children’s writer and illustrator Tasha Tudor, known as much for her total commitment to living an 1830s lifestyle as for her watercolors of corgis and children. I tried to fashion a quill pen from a feather I’d found in the park (I had to switch to ballpoint) and donned the pair of pantaloons I favored for moments of maximum picturesqueness. “Dear Tasha Tudor” (I wrote), “I think we have a lot in common.” I detailed my near-worship of “A Time to Keep,” my attempts to replicate the Pumpkin House of “The Dolls’ Christmas,” the wonky maypole I had rigged up in the yard.A classmate, over for a playdate, found the letter and mocked it, but I was undeterred. I applied sealing wax and dropped it in a mailbox. Maybe it was the fact that I sent it to “Tasha Tudor, Marlboro, VT,” but I never heard back.I should have learned my lesson, but my misadventures did result in the following recommendations.—Sadie“Gwendolyn Brooks: Poetry and the Heroic Voice,” by D.H. MelhemNonfiction, 1987We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Book Review: ‘The Silence of the Choir,’ by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

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      “The Silence of the Choir,” a novel by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, follows 72 African refugees who have arrived in a Sicilian village.THE SILENCE OF THE CHOIR, by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr. Translated by Alison Anderson.At some point in recent history, the merits of reading literary fiction became inextricably entwined with the genre’s potential to instill empathy, particularly for characters whose lives are radically different from our own. In this context, literature has tangible (and perhaps commercial) value in no small part because of our hope that what is true on the page might be true in reality. If we encounter unknown, unfamiliar or even unlikable characters in a novel, and still find room in our hearts to care for them, then perhaps we will be more likely to do so when such figures wash up on our own shores.Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s second novel, “The Silence of the Choir,” opens with the arrival of 72 migrants in a fictional Sicilian village called Altino, an ideal narrative framework to test a novel’s empathetic capacity. The migrants, who come from a range of African countries, including Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana and Mali, are referred to collectively as the ragazzi, Italian for “the guys.” They represent one side of an equation that brings two dramatically different ways of being into contact. On the other side lie Altino’s residents: the aid workers, poets, priests, butchers, doctors and politicians who live in the shadow of Mount Etna and contend with the ragazzi’s arrival.The migrants may be the newcomers, but Sarr is too interesting and thoughtful a writer to simply answer the inevitable question: Will the good people of Altino learn to care about these men? His interest, rather, is in finding what kind of narrative form, if any, is best suited to such a task. In the process, Sarr employs almost every literary form available, including monologues, historical interludes and somewhat didactic dialogues about the malicious plans of a far-right politician.The novel’s more conventional emotional heart resides in the journal entries of Jogoy, who arrived in Sicily from Senegal years before the rest of the migrants and now works as a translator for a resettlement agency. The intimacy and lyrical grace of his accounts stand in stark contrast to the voice of the far-right politician, as well as the haunted, guilt-ridden voice of Fousseyni Traoré, a Malian refugee. Traoré’s story is so hard to tell that Sarr interrupts the narration halfway through and turns it into a play.More frequently, though, Sarr uses a range of third-person perspectives that vary in scope and style. Alison Anderson’s deft translation is all the more impressive for the ease with which she manages these shifts. Characters aren’t revealed so much as they are refracted through different narrative lenses, allowing us to consider how a story’s form, perhaps more than the story itself, can determine how we understand a person.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Book Review Quiz: Books Adapted as Animated Films

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      Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about books and stories that have gone on to find new life in the form of movies, television shows, theatrical productions and other formats. This week’s quiz highlights animated films that draw inspiration and source material from beloved literature.Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their screen adaptations. More

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      Kevin Kwan, Author of ‘Crazy Rich Asians,’ Talks About His New Novel

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      A reader of Kevin Kwan’s books could be forgiven for expecting him to make a grand entrance at lunch in Beverly Hills — in a Lamborghini, perhaps, or wearing a slick pair of shades.Instead, on an unseasonably brisk Tuesday in April, Kwan walked into the private dining at Crustacean with a tentative tilt to his head, as if clearing a low roof. He wore tortoiseshell glasses, a blue cardigan and hair cut for maximum pensive tucking behind ears. Picture David Foster Wallace minus the bandanna.Kwan immediately moved a vase of white roses from one table to another — “Do you mind? So we can see each other?” — then hugged Crustacean’s chef, “the great Helene An,” whose garlic noodles make a cameo in his new book, “Lies and Weddings,” coming out on May 21.To understand Kwan’s reputation for fabulousness, consider his oeuvre. His debut novel, “Crazy Rich Asians,” published in 2013, has sold more than 5 million copies worldwide and been translated into over 40 languages. A Broadway musical is in development. The movie version was the first since “The Joy Luck Club” to feature a majority Asian cast.Kwan’s next three novels covered similar territory: wealthy people behaving decadently and questionably, but usually with heart and always with panache. They were best sellers too. At one point, the “Crazy Rich Asians” trilogy occupied the top three spots on the paperback list, landing Kwan in an elite clique of authors including Colleen Hoover.The Times’s film critic described “Crazy Rich Asians” as “a busy, fizzy movie winnowed from Kevin Kwan’s sprawling, dishy novel.”Sanja Bucko/Warner Bros.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How I Met My Father

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      “What took you so long?” he said.Fathers don’t fare well in my fiction. They are white supremacist killers and domestic abusers. They trick their wives into becoming pregnant. They have affairs. They abandon their families.My biological father, Albert Coleman Bryan Jr., was 22 when I was born. He was a dashing air force pilot who flew off into the wide blue yonder, leaving my mother and me grounded.He had red curly hair and freckles and a charming grin. It’s a face I don’t remember, if indeed I ever saw it. My parents split up around the time I was born.I grew up tasting the bitterness of my father’s absence, especially at Christmas, when he sent me expensive presents. My mother would hand them to me without a word, and I would know to go into my closet to open them.By then, she had remarried. In addition to a stepdad, I had a brother and sister. Our stockings were filled with bananas and oranges, little else.In my closet, I would open the presents from my father, with cards signed by his secretary or someone in a store. Among the many gifts over the years, he sent me a pearl necklace, a portable typewriter and a birthstone ring. I’d know to tuck them away in my closet and never to mention them to my brother and sister.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Defeat Is Agonizing. In These 2 Books, It’s Also Thrilling.

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      If you love stories about beautiful losers, consider Brian Moore’s novel about an alcoholic virgin or Benjamin Anastas’s tale of an inferior twin.Patrick Smith/Getty ImagesDear readers,I am not an ideal viewer of major sporting events for many reasons, but one in particular is how terrible I inevitably feel, beyond all reason and actual personal investment, for the losing team. While confetti and Gatorade rain down on the champions of whatever Super Bowl/World Series/Grand Prix, my eyes always go to the runners-up.Objectively, I know that the defeated ones are in almost every other regard already winners: fit gods with ropy quads, admired, adored and no doubt absurdly well compensated. And yet here they sit with slumped shoulders and wet eyes, like small boys left at a bus stop. Oh, cruel world!Fiction, though, is another story. Give me your losers and laggards, your pokey puppies who limbo right under rock-bottom expectations and then have to go home and lie down. For a few hours at least, novels with protagonists like these allow me, one of so many busy bees in New York City’s go-go honeycomb, to flail vicariously, a smug literary tourist among the lonely-hearts and lost souls.To be clear, that is in no way a synonym for storytelling that is inert or hopeless or dull. The main characters in this week’s selections may lead lives of quiet desperation or mere beige mediocrity, but their tales are told with sharpness and verve, real flair in the failure.—LeahWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More