10 New Books We Recommend This Week

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/07/books/review/10-new-books-we-recommend-this-week.html

Version 0 of 1.

Muhammad Ali, Julia Child and Leonardo da Vinci are three big names anchoring this week’s list of recommendations. The first full biography since Ali’s death last year tells the story of his epic life; “France Is a Feast” shows off Paul Child’s accomplished photos of Julia Child and postwar Paris; and Walter Isaacson’s latest best seller considers the awe-inspiring work of the Renaissance man. A diverse assortment of other subjects this week includes cleaning up surgery, survival in the jungle, food’s role in the British Empire and the life of an endangered animal.

John WilliamsDaily Books Editor and Staff Writer

THE BUTCHERING ART: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine, by Lindsey Fitzharris (Scientific American/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $27.) Fitzharris, a medical historian, looks back to when Lister revolutionized medicine through one deceptively simple notion: Cleanliness. The result is a “slim, atmospheric” book, our critic Jennifer Senior writes. “The story it tells is one of abiding fascination, in part because it involves a paradigm shift so basic, so seemingly obvious, that one can scarcely believe the paradigm needed shifting in the first place.”

ELMET, by Fiona Mozley. (Algonquin, $15.95.) Mozley’s debut, a dark, fable-like novel shortlisted for this year’s Man Booker Prize, derives a good deal of its power from the dichotomy between its primary character — a taciturn bare-knuckle brawler named John — and its narrator, John’s sensitive 14-year-old son, Daniel. “Elmet” is a beguiling patchwork of influences held together by Mozley’s distinct voice.

ALI: A Life, by Jonathan Eig. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $30.) The first full biography of Muhammad Ali since his death last year, Eig’s richly researched, sympathetic yet unsparing portrait of a controversial figure for whom the personal and the political dramatically fused could not come at a more appropriate time.

FRANCE IS A FEAST: The Photographic Journey of Paul and Julia Child, by Alex Prud’homme and Katie Pratt. (Thames & Hudson, $35.) Paul Child was an accomplished photographer, as this handsome selection of images from the Childs’ life in post-World War II France makes plain.

RUTHLESS RIVER: Love and Survival by Raft on the Amazon’s Relentless Madre de Dios, by Holly FitzGerald. (Vintage, paper, $16.) A riveting account of a “dream honeymoon” in South America gone very wrong, starting with a plane crash and ending with a near-death experience deep in the jungle. Stranded 26 days, the author and her husband somehow retain hope and affection.

THE TASTE OF EMPIRE: How Britain’s Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World, by Lizzie Collingham. (Basic Books, $32.) Through the clever re-creation of 20 meals, consumed over the centuries and in various locales, a social historian illuminates the influence of apparently mundane habits.

IMPROVEMENT, by Joan Silber. (Counterpoint, $26.) Disparate lives in disparate places intersect in this novel, which revolves around a single mother whose boyfriend enlists her in a scheme to smuggle cigarettes across state lines. With consummate skill, Silber reveals surprising connections between characters in contemporary New York and 1970s Turkey.

LEONARDO DA VINCI, by Walter Isaacson. (Simon & Schuster, $35.) Isaacson, the biographer of innovators and inventors, turns to the original genius, the Renaissance man whose artistic and mechanical talents still invoke awe, in a book tracing the connections between Leonardo’s art and his contemplation of nature.

AMERICAN WOLF: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West, by Nate Blakeslee. (Crown, $28.) The story of one wolf’s struggle to survive in the majestic Yellowstone National Park offers an ambitious look through the eyes of an endangered animal.

THE GIRL WHO SAVED CHRISTMAS, by Matt Haig. Illustrated by Chris Mould. (Knopf, $17.99. Ages 7 and up.) If Roald Dahl and Charles Dickens cooked up a Christmas tale, it might resemble this spry story of Victorian London (with cameos by Dickens himself).