Mark Athitakis
Special to USA TODAY
When Philip Roth began his literary career in the 1950s, he started at the University of Chicago, where he said his ambitions were simple: “bibliography by day, women by night.” That’s something of a blunt organizing principle for Blake Bailey’s hotly anticipated biography, Philip Roth (Norton, 912 pp., ★★★ out of four). It’s a well-researched and engrossing book, but at times a frustratingly narrow one, despite its heft.
The arc of Roth’s life is American literary folklore now. Born in Newark, New Jersey, he scandalized the Jewish-American community he grew up in with his 1959 story collection “Goodbye, Columbus.” With his sexually irreverent 1969 novel “Portnoy’s Complaint,” he scandalized everybody else.
Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, has seen his fair share of ugly things. His alcohol and drug addiction sent him spiraling for years and led him to cook his own crack cocaine. But he s seen a lot of beautiful things, too – namely the love he shares with his father and brother Beau Biden, who died of glioblastoma in 2015.
Biden wrote about all of it in in his new memoir, Beautiful Things (Gallery Books, 255 pp.), out April 6. His candid chronicle of his drug- and alcohol-fueled binges and relationship with Beau s widow, Hallie Biden, are sure to shock – but don t let all the tabloid fodder fool you. Biden has found love again with new wife Melissa, whom he credits for getting him back on the winding path to sobriety.
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When Nadia Owusu was 4 years old, her Armenian American mother disappeared from her life. When she was 13, her Ghanaian father died. Owusu reflects the losses and her biracial identity in her memoir.