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thousands of other fans, watches tennis legend Andre Agassi play with the top female pickleball player. She discovers pickleball’s reach has even spread to prisons, including the Donovan Correctional Facility in California, where the Menendez brothers play. The book’s best insights explain why so many have turned to the sport: unlike golf or tennis, Frank notes, nobody has been playing pickleball since the age of five, creating a democratic environment where almost anyone can dominate. But such analyses are compressed into brief observations, as Frank focuses primarily on her personal journey. The result is best suited for pickleball devotees seeking affirmation of their shared passion. (Apr.) American Men Jordan Ritter Conn. Grand Central, $30 (336p) ISBN 978-1-5387-0909-2 This immersive account from Ringer senior staff writer Conn ( The Road from Raqqa ) profiles four American men whose lives uniquely tangle with an “inherited masculine ideal”: Ryan, a gay man from Akwesasne Mohawk territory who struggles to accept his sexuality; Gideon, an “ex-jock” and West Point graduate whose wife cheats on him with his commander; Nate, a Black trans man “wrestling his own body and... fighting for its right to exist”; and Joseph, a law student who experiences sudden flashbacks to repressed childhood sexual abuse. Conn follows his subjects as they wrestle with identity, family conflicts, substance abuse, and mental health challenges, sensitively conveying their “rawest moments,” including Joseph witnessing “intrusive images” of his abuser’s genitalia when having sex with his wife and Ryan getting in brutal, bloody bar fights as an adult after being ruthlessly bullied as a child. Amid this pain are moments of joy and relief, like Ryan reaching cathartic release via ama- teur MMA fighting, or Nate’s tearful euphoria after top surgery. Conn stops short of making “grand theories” about American men other than citing numerous ways they “lag... behind their female peers” (“more likely to drop out
of high school... more likely to die by suicide... more likely to abuse drugs”). Instead, he focuses, to great success, on compassionate storytelling. It’s hard to look away from. (Apr.) To See Beyond: Essays Anna Badkhen . Bellevue Literary, $17.99 trade paper (192p) ISBN 978-1-954276-54-3 ★ ❘ Journalist Badkhen ( Bright Unbearable Reality ) asks in these soul-stirring essays whether language can capture the enormity of grief and offer hope amid catastrophe. Through her travels across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, she explores how humans attempt to make sense of war and ecological destruction. Visits to ancient Lycia (now Turkey) and Auschwitz, two sites of mass death, prompt Badkhen to think about humanity’s tendency to mythologize past natural and man-made disasters through statistics and storytelling. But present-day violence evades meaning: “I cannot, for example, come up with any story that rationalizes the genocide in Palestine.” When Badkhen travels to see an old friend in Mali, where a militia has massacred ethnic Fulani herders, she asks about the violence, and the friend goes silent. Badkhen speculates that there are no words for such bloodshed, that “maybe it is immoral to have the words for it.” Reflecting on nature writer Barry Lopez’s Arctic Dreams , she is reminded of literature’s ability to inspire awe and concludes that the role of the writer is not to help people be less afraid but to remind them “that, somehow, we have remembered to keep going.” Grounded in plain prose, Badkhen’s narrative achieves the difficult task of emanating authority and moral force without lecturing. Readers will find this a quietly moving tribute to survivors of global upheaval. (Apr.) Dark Screens: Hackers and Heroes in the Shadowy World of Ransomware Anja Shortland. PublicAffairs, $30 (320p) ISBN 978-1-5417-0575-3 Ransomware attacks are a surreal hybrid of criminal endeavor and
legitimate business pursuit, according to this intricate exposé. Economist Shortland ( Kidnap ) traces the rise of such virtual heists, wherein hackers remotely take over computers, encrypt their data, and demand a ransom for a decryption key to unlock the system (or, sometimes, to refrain from publishing sensitive information gleaned from the computer files). Shortland explores the clever ways hackers have innovated their work, such as automating the attacks on a massive scale or franchising them to hundreds of “affiliates,” as well as the odd challenges they face: the hackers often have to teach their victims how to use cryptocurrency to pay the ran- som; guide them through decrypting and rebooting their own systems; and, ironically, build up a reputation for honesty and integrity, so that busi- nesses believe their ransoms will buy decryption keys that actually restore their computers. Shortland also profiles the cottage industry of “crisis responders” that has grown up to negotiate these agreements, not all of whom are white knights. Some com- panies, she notes, promise to decrypt computers without paying ransom, then pay the ransom out of their fee— and get a discount from the criminals. Throughout, Shortland teases out these convoluted developments— part cops vs. robbers arms race, part host-parasite symbiosis—in lucid, entertaining prose. It’s an eye-opening look at a shadowy underworld. (Apr.) Just a Busy Season: Essays on Motherhood, an Unexpected Comedy Taylor Wolfe . HarperOne, $28.99 (240p) ISBN 978-0-06-342237-7 Wolfe ( Birdie & Harlow ), a comedian and mother of two, sheds light on the absurdities and indignities of modern parenting in this irreverent and insightful essay collection. She opens with a detailed recollection of letting her toddler, who needed to pee but refused to use the toilet, urinate in her toilet-paper-covered hands during a road trip. Also explored is the weight of being a lifelong “overthinker/ anxious worrier”; after “giving up” anxiety as a New Year’s resolution, she
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