Unbelievable My front-row seat to the craziest campaign in American history

UNBELIEVABLE: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History, by Katy Tur. (Dey St./William Morrow, $16.99.) During the 2016 presidential campaign, Tur, an NBC news correspondent, was a favorite target of Donald J. Trump. Her book was published almost a year after the election; now, updated with a new introduction, it's a useful testament as Trump's attacks on the press continue unabated. IMPROVEMENT, by Joan Silber. (Counterpoint, $16.95.) This novel of interconnected story lines centers on Reyna, a single mother drawn into a cigarettesmuggling scheme by her boyfriend, imprisoned at Rikers. The book expands to encompass 1970s Turkey, Reyna's aunt and antiquities smugglers. Our reviewer, Kamila Shamsie, called the novel one "of richness and wisdom and huge pleasure." GHOSTS OF THE INNOCENT MAN: A True Story of Trial and Redemption, by Benjamin Rachlin. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $17.99.) In 1980s North Carolina, Willie Grimes, an African-American man, was found guilty of rape, despite a thin case against him. Rachlin's profile of Grimes and his 25-year struggle to convince people of his innocence gives resonance and depth to an all-too-common problem. A LIFE OF ADVENTURE AND DELIGHT: Stories, by Akhil Sharma. (Norton, $15.95.) In tales that leap from Delhi to New York, men behave callously (or worse); marriages dissolve unhappily; and immigrants adapt to new societal expectations. At times, Sharma's "cultural detail feels like an airing of secrets," our reviewer, Adrian Tomine, wrote. "It's a testament to the author's sensitive eye for human foibles that these characters are not only palatable but relatable, and this feat of empathy makes the implicit critique sting even more." MODERNITY AND ITS DISCONTENTS: Making and Unmaking the Bourgeois From Machiavelli to Bellow, by Steven B. Smith. (Yale, $30.) What does it mean to be modern? This intellectual survey considers the question through the work of writers like Spinoza, Hegel and Nietzsche. Smith, a professor at Yale, arrives at some dour conclusions, but is skilled at bringing abstract concepts to light. A BOY IN WINTER, by Rachel Seiffert. (Vintage, $16.) It's 1941 and Hitler's armies are sweeping across a Ukrainian town. Two Jewish brothers, Yankei and Momik, are hiding out against their father's wishes. Seiffert draws on real wartime accounts in her novel; the story unfolds over three days as the town's residents - including a German engineer and a Ukrainian girl who hides the children - confront wrenching moral choices.

NBC reporter Tur was the road warrior who followed Donald's Trump campaign from beginning to end. Those who watched her reports know that little Katy was sometimes called out by Trump at rallies, where she was penned in with the rest of thepress corps and insulted by the crowd. In her introduction, Tur says about the Trump phenomenon, I won't try to explain. I will just tell you what I saw. And this becomes frustratingly true, as the book goes on. This is a travelogue through Trump '16, and it only covers what Tur covered herself. There's very little about policy issues, Hillary Clinton, even behind-the-scenes campaign backstabbing. What the book does well, however, is capture the blur of a campaign and the buffeting of journalists' personal lives (though, as Tur, who broke up with her boyfriend and left London for the chance to follow the Trump train, understands, a campaign can be a career maker). Tucked within the well-trod territory is the book's strongest element: the disturbing on-site reports of how deep the hatred ran at the rallies. Tur communicates how shocking it was to see ordinary people become unleashed in crowds, calling Clinton the c-word, or even screaming assassinate the bitch. She writes about what it feels like to need private security and to have a Trump supporter spit in her face, and that resonates powerfully. A thin but very personal first draft of history.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2017 Booklist

NBC News political journalist Katy Tur offers an entertaining personal account of the nearly two years she spent covering Donald Trump's rise to the presidency, "the most unlikely, exciting, ugly, trying, and all-around bizarre campaign in American history." Trump's presidential run was a surreal experience for many Americans, but for Tur it was also life-changing: she was a relatively unknown London-based foreign correspondent enjoying quiet weekends in Paris and a self-described "political novice" when she got the call to go on the road with Trump in the spring of 2015. "Six weeks, tops," her bosses told her. Overnight, Tur's life became a blur of planes, cars, buses, hotel rooms, dry shampoo, bad food, rowdy and often disturbing campaign rallies, and headline-grabbing tweet storms. Some 500 grueling days later, Trump was president-and Tur had emerged as a battle-tested fixture of the NBC News political team. She was a frequent target of Trump's, who famously nicknamed her "Little Katy" and whipped his crowds into such an antimedia frenzy that she occasionally required a security detail. While Tur recalls many of the campaign's unusual moments (Trump defending his penis size in a presidential debate; his hawking of steaks and bottled water at a press conference; the Access Hollywood tape) Tur's narrative is light on political analysis, and it mostly avoids the central question pundits will be exploring for years to come: how did Trump actually win? But Tur's brisk behind-the-scenes account humanizes the press corps, illuminates life on the campaign trail, and delivers on its promise: "I won't pretend to explain it," Tur writes, but "I will tell you what I saw." (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.