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Trevor Noah: "Born a Crime"

This smash-hit book *does* have flaws. (1) Trevor Noah re-teams with his father, who has been more or less absent for many years. Noah--eager to give his father the benefit of the doubt--presents us with a rose-colored, humorous account of the reunion. But something is missing. Where the hell was the dad for years and years and years? Noah--eager to put a tidy bow on a story--doesn't tell us all we need to know, and he doesn't really confront a sense of anger, a feeling that must be within him, somewhere. (2) Noah has a great story about shoplifting with a friend. There's grainy mall-camera footage, and the footage clearly captures Noah's features. But--because the camera erases evidence of race--no security official is able to see that Noah is Noah. Everyone watches and says, That kid doesn't seem to be Noah's "color," so he can't be Noah. A fine allegory about human stupidity--but something is again missing here. Noah sells his friend dow...

For Book Lovers

What I Will Read while I Wait to Pick up the Baby: * "Devil's Knot." The Times has listed the fifty states and paired a true-crime book with each state. "Devil's Knot" is the story from Arkansas. This is a story similar to the saga of the Central Park Five (from what I gather). A crime occurs; the police find some teenagers; confessions are coerced; lives are ruined. The actual crime--in the case of "Devil's Knot"--remains unsolved. Squeamish about reading true crime? A writer recently observed that the pleasures of the genre are something like the pleasures of "Hansel and Gretel" (which is a crime story). We want to understand what happens underneath the surface: Is the smiling lady really a witch, and how do we prove it? We also want to look for human ingenuity in the face of evil. Scatter those bread crumbs: smart! Who knows if a true-crime book might help you to wiggle out of your own tight spot, eventually? * "Born ...