sneaking into her room in the middle of the night on at least three occasions. The Oregon Project’s unlicensed sports psychologist routinely dismissed Cain’s concerns (“He’ll tell me not to be soft, tell me most kids would kill to be in my place”), even as her hair began falling out and she contemplated suicide. Capped by details of Salazar’s perma- nent ban from the sport in 2019 for doping violations and further accusa- tions of sexual misconduct, Cain’s memoir grippingly charts her path from glory to disillusionment to despair and back. It’s a powerful and haunting testimonial. Agent: Lauren Sharp, Aevitas Creative Management. (Apr.) Strange People on the Hill: How Extremism Tore Apart a Small American Town Michael Edison Hayden. Bold Type, $30 (320p) ISBN 978-1-64503-060-7 In February 2020, white nationalist group VDARE purchased a $1.4 million castle in the historic West Virginia town of Berkeley Springs, touching off a dramatic fracturing of the community’s social fabric that jour- nalist Hayden explores in his resonant and troubling debut investigation. The author first arrived in town as a reporter specializing in far-right hate groups for the Southern Poverty Law Center. Drawing on four years of on-the-ground reporting, he details the residents’ responses to VDARE. While some quietly embraced its pres- ence, others came to see it as an almost mythic antagonist. This divergence pitted neighbor against neighbor, culminating in the creation of an anonymous website, Berkeley Springs Castle Watchers, that maintains a list of “collaborators.” Hayden juxtaposes the rupture of Berkeley Springs with the deterioration of his own mental health, brought on by the stress of death threats and doxxing by the far right, as well as upheaval within the SPLC. He also shows how VDARE’s presence seemed to inflame issues it didn’t directly touch—such as the “fissure... that deepened over time” between two business-owning families over a Pride flag—and how easily
An animator works on the set of Wildwood , as seen in Ozzy Ingauano’s Laika: The Magic Behind a Stop-Motion Dream Factory (reviewed on page 102).
Illustration: A Concise History Andrew Hall. Thames & Husdon, $29.95 trade paper (360p) ISBN 978-0-500-29772-8 Hall ( Illustration ), a lecturer at the Central Saint Martins College in London, struggles in this uneven addition to the Thames & Hudson World of Art series to sum up the history of illustration over the past 250 years. He begins in 18th-century Europe, when the Enlightenment sparked a need for informational images in encyclopedias, scientific texts, and political tracts. Over time, illustration developed into an industry with its own specialized technologies, celebrity artists, trade schools, and museums. Unfortunately, Hall fails to do justice to what is admittedly a sprawling history. The feature appendices at the end of the book dive into specific fields like architectural design and children’s book art, provid- ing valuable detail not found in the main text. Other fields get short shrift; fashion illustration, for example, isn’t mentioned until the 1950s, and cultures outside of Europe and North America receive scattershot coverage.
Despite the wealth of fascinating illustrations—among them W.E.B. Du Bois’s proto-modernist charts, classical scientific illustrations by women, and a two-page spread of dueling WWII propaganda posters—the overall effect is both rushed and rambling. This will leave readers wanting. (May) This Is Not About Running: A Memoir Mary Cain. Mariner, $29.99 (336p) ISBN 978-0-06-344188-0 ★ ❘ Professional runner Cain debuts with a raw account of her harrowing experiences at the once-esteemed Nike Oregon Project. When Cain was a middle schooler in Bronxville, N.Y., in the 2000s, her generational talent for middle-distance running became clear. At 16, she was recruited to train with coach Alberto Salazar at the Nike Oregon Project, a Portland-area initiative to cultivate America’s best runners. Yet Cain’s excitement soon soured: she recalls coaches saddling her with extreme weight-loss expectations (“As their gazes drifted over my legs and torso and arms, it felt like they were calculating some value in their head”) and Salazar
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