Books on the burdens of the modern world

True Crime

The Death of Trotsky: The True Story of the Plot to Kill Stalin’s Greatest Enemy

Josh Ireland
Dutton, 384 pages

This book recounts the long pursuit and eventual assassination of Leon Trotsky, the most famous enemy of Joseph Stalin. Rather than focusing on the killing itself, Ireland traces the process that made Trotsky’s survival impossible by following the diverging paths of the two revolutionaries after the Russian Revolution. Trotsky appears brilliant. He is ­eloquent and convinced of the power of ideas, yet treats people transactionally. Stalin, his archnemesis, emerges as patient, ruthless, and utterly relentless. He understood power as leverage. He was prepared to kill whenever necessary, without hesitation. The story moves beyond these two figures to the agents and intermediaries who carried out Stalin’s orders. Through letters, intelligence files, and police records, Ireland shows how surveillance spread. He demonstrates how loyalties shifted, and the possibility of escape quietly disappeared. Despair came swiftly, as the shadow of force settled in. Ireland keeps the prose controlled and unsentimental, letting the facts do the work. The author presents assassination not as a shock, but as the final step in a system that had already decided the outcome. Trotsky’s death may have appeared sudden, but it had long been scheduled and was, in many ways, inevitable. —John Mac Ghlionn

Read WORLD’s full review of this book here.

Memoir

Patriot: A Memoir

Alexei Navalny
Vintage, 496 pages

Russian dissident Alexei Navalny wrote the first part of his brilliant memoir while recovering from the 2020 poisoning that nearly killed him. He relates his youth under communism and his journey to lead Russia’s opposition and invoke the ire of Vladimir Putin. Later chapters are compiled from his prison journal, trial statements, and dictated Instagram posts. Altogether it reads like a conversation with an old friend that you’ve just met, and it’s clear why his supporters loved him and why Putin feared him. By turns funny, biting, poignant, and inspiring, the book is a reminder why democracy matters and is worth protecting. As much a love letter to his wife Yulia as to his “beautiful Russia of the future,” it’s also a primer on civic engagement, hope, and why convictions mean sacrifice. Navalny understood that Putin controls by fear, and he refused to be afraid, even if it cost him. Toward the end, he knows his future is bleak and commends faith to supporters: “Being a believer makes it easier to live your life and, to an even greater extent, engage in opposition politics. Faith makes life simpler.” Patriot was just released in paperback to mark the second anniversary of Navalny’s murder by Russian authorities. —Jenny Lind Schmitt

Christian history

Chosen Land: How Christianity Made America and Americans Remade Christianity

Matthew Avery Sutton
Basic Books, 656 pages

This book looks at the 500-year-long aspiration to make America into a fitting “prelude to God’s millennial kingdom,” with Christianity operating as “the dominant engine of American political and cultural life” from its colonial stirrings onward. Sutton holds together a cohesive narrative that doesn’t neglect its proposed thesis until he arrives in the 21st century. Then the scholarly gloves come off in favor of an attack on Trumpism and the current Supreme Court. Regardless, one can learn much that’s fascinating and important in Sutton’s recounting of the colorful history of American Christianity. As Sutton correctly reminds us, the American constitutional order “entrust[s] power not to presidents or preachers, not to judges or generals, but to the people.” We Christians in the United States would be wise to make the most of our political inheritance for the sake of our neighbors and the further proclamation of a gospel not made by human hands, American or otherwise. It’s the least we can do after getting this far. —Flynn Evans

Read WORLD’s full review of this book here.

Movie history

The Last Kings of Hollywood

Paul Fischer
Celadon Books, 480 pages

Before Star Wars, George Lucas was a film school graduate on the set of Finian’s Rainbow, a schlocky musical starring Fred Astaire directed by up-and-coming Francis Ford Coppola. Both men disdained Hollywood and wanted to make personal films. They founded American Zoetrope, a filmmaking commune that nearly bankrupted the visionary directors. Lucas encouraged Coppola to swallow his pride and direct an adaptation of a trashy novel called The Godfather. In turn, Coppola told Lucas to “make a movie that’s about real people,” adding, “Don’t do anything with robots in it.” Around the same time, young Steven Spielberg left television to pursue feature films. He and Lucas eventually became quite close. Within the same decade, the three men worked within Hollywood to make some of the highest grossing films of all time: The Godfather, Jaws, and Star Wars. The success of these movies prompted studios to prioritize “tent-pole assets,” aka blockbusters. Fischer pairs extensive research with snappy writing to tell a fascinating story about filmmakers in pursuit of glory. Film junkies will appreciate bits of trivia throughout the book. But it’s depressing to witness the egos of Lucas and Coppola inflate. Fair warning: Drugs and adultery feature prominently. Fischer sometimes uses explicit language and doesn’t censor vulgar quotes or details. A description of a deleted scene from Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull will make many readers profoundly uncomfortable. —Bekah Bernhardt

Art history/military history

Matisse at War: Art and Resistance in Nazi Occupied France

Christopher C. Gorham
Citadel, 320 pages

What does a great artist do as the world burns around him? Gorham’s book is an engaging look at the life, work, and family of Henri Matisse during World War II. Most of the book takes place during the Nazi occupation of France, but military conflict is only part of the Matisse family story. In the 1930s, Matisse hired a Russian girl named Lydia Delectorskaya to ­manage his studio. Matisse came to view Lydia, 40 years his junior, as indispensable, creating a rift in the family. When the war arrived, Matisse and Lydia attempted to avoid Nazi scrutiny in southern France. Matisse continued to work, and Gorham ­suggests the aging Fauvist channeled anti-­fascist views into his art. Other members of the Matisse clan helped rescue Jews and worked with the French Resistance to overthrow the Vichy regime. This book offers more than an investigation of 20th-century art. It uses Matisse as a lens through which we can better understand the war’s effect on Europe’s noncombat­ants. —Collin Garbarino

Biography

The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne

Chris Sweeney
Avid Reader Press, 320 pages

According to Roxie Laybourne, “All feathers are beautiful, even starlings. You just have to look closely at them.” This compelling biography of the small, but spunky, Laybourne tells the story of a woman who carved her own niche by becoming the world’s first forensic ornithologist. Working in the male, Ph.D.-dominated Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, her scientific expertise in bird feathers made her a sought-after professional witness in court. For more than 45 years, her ­testimony swayed murder, poaching, and FAA and Air Force bird-strike cases. Author Chris Sweeney maps Laybourne’s long life onto the backdrop of America’s history. Through feathers, readers explore little-­known subjects, like the beginnings of the Smithsonian, the commercial airline industry, and the FAA, as well as the growth in influence of the Fish and Wildlife Commission, civil rights, and women’s equality. Despite two nods to evolution, Laybourne’s detective work reflects God’s awesome design in each bird species’ distinct feather print. With skillful journalistic style, Sweeney entices the reader to follow the dedicated work of this persistent bird scientist to find and preserve truth. —Nina Oetting

Fiction

Mule Boy

Andrew Krivak
Bellevue Literary Press, 192 pages

The burden of solely surviving a tragedy tends to invite a quiet agony of continuing to exist. Ondro Prach, the protagonist of Krivak’s fifth novel, Mule Boy, must reckon with that singular kind of alienation after becoming the only survivor of a Pennsylvania coal mine disaster. Prach spends his remaining days in a solitary cabin, and families who lost loved ones come to him to hear their last words. Written in a stream-of-­consciousness style, Krivak uses Prach’s remembrance of things long past and their connection to the present to explore the burden of trauma and the essence of what it means to be human. Strewn throughout are theological and philosophical references tinged with the presence of Catholicism. It’s ultimately a story about how long it can take to be made whole again, often through unforeseen hardships that eventually prove to be blessings. The mining-related jargon can be a bit jarring at first, but Krivak manages to weave together flashbacks and chronological jumps forward seamlessly. It makes for an engrossing journey that takes readers into the fictional recesses of Prach’s soul. Readers will walk away with a deeper impression about the uncertain places existence can take us and how redemption can still be found through it all. —F.E.