Short Take |
Books by Friends: Craig Unger, Lara Galloway, Sally Koslow
By
Published: Sep 14, 2022
Sally Koslow: “The Real Mrs. Tobias”
In the delivery room, the obstetrician delivered good news to my mother: “It’s another boy.” My mother’s immediate reaction: “Damn! Another daughter-in-law!” Some of my marital history suggests my mother was wise. Sally Koslow and I are friends and I was an enthusiast for The Widow Waltz, but it was with caution that I approached “The Real Mrs. Tobias.” There are two daughters-in-law in this family, and there are not one but two psychotherapists, who fulfill the commonly accepted truth that therapists may be brilliant for their patients, but they’re often astonishingly dense about their own neuroses. The year is 2015, the setting is New York City, and the conversation is just as clever and intimate as outsiders imagine. But this is not NYC Plot 101. The son does something stupid in his car and drives away, and no amount of cajoling by his family can get him to do the right thing. Distressed, his wife flees to her family’s home in the Midwest, where she finds comfort and — no surprise — a boyfriend. This ratchets the tension in New York. A stressed family makes for drama and larger questions. Sally Koslow handles them masterfully. My mother could have benefited from this book. [To read an excerpt, click here. To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
Laura Galloway: “Dálvi: Six Years in the Arctic Tundra”
When I met Laura Galloway, she was a communications specialist, which was exactly when the infant HeadButler.com needed. Like many who knew her in New York, I was surprised when she took an ancestry test, discovered she shared DNA with the Sámi people, and left the city for the Norwegian Arctic. Trading a solid career for a town of 3,000, where the most stable employment is herding reindeer? And when a romance craters there, stays for six years? Doesn’t compute. “Dálvi: Six Years in the Arctic Tundra” explains why. She found her mother dead in bed when she was three, was emotionally rejected by her stepmother, her husband had divorce papers served in a delivery of roses — she was a bundle of issues. In the isolation of her new home, she comes to terms, she learns to love and be loved — this is a book that is as much about healing as it is about a great adventure. [To read an excerpt, click here. To buy the paperback on Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
Craig Unger:”American Kompromat: How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump, and Related Tales of Sex, Greed, Power, and Treachery”
I’m pleased that Craig Unger and I are friends, and sad that is why I can’t ethically review his book. I was a source, I’m briefly quoted, and I’m thanked. So all I can say is that “American Kompromat: How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump, and Related Tales of Sex, Greed, Power, and Treachery” is the follow-up to his 2018 bestseller, “House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia.” As the title of the new book suggests — “Kompromat” is Russian for “compromising information”— Trump is nothing less than a Russian “asset.” Not officially, of course. But from the beginning of his real estate career, he eagerly did business with the Russians, most of them shady and connected to the KGB. This relationship started small, with television sets for the Hyatt Hotel. An American immigration reform allowed hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews to immigrate to the United States. Lo and behold, 1,300 Trump condos were sold in “secretive, all-cash transactions that enabled buyers to avoid legal scrutiny by shielding their finances and identities.” And then, because Trump needed money and liked sex, we meet a grotty bunch, including, of course, Jeffrey Epstein. I knew a lot of this story, and it wasn’t hard to figure out why Trump was so fond of Putin, but it’s still mind-blowing to read how the President put his needs above his country’s. [To buy the book of “American Kompromat” from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
