2 Books Like Desi Arnaz

Will Eisner is recognized as one of the most influential and respected artists in comics. (The medium’s most prestigious award is named after him.) Eisner essentially gave graphic novels their name and 20th-century respectability, demonstrating how atmospheric art and design could bring close-to-the-bone storytelling to life. Appropriately, this biography is itself a graphic novel showing Eisner’s life and career, from the dynamic 1940 Sunday newspaper strip “The Spirit” leading into the 1978 groundbreaking tenement tales of A Contract with God. In the hands of the authors, Eisner becomes the character star in his own medium.
(Podrazik/Castleman)

Jill Lepore, a professor of both history and law at Harvard, a regular contributor to the New Yorker and the author of fifteen books, is both prolific and proficient. She pulls off the difficult task of writing in-depth sweeping histories that are both impressively researched while also eminently lively and approachable.

Her latest publication traces the history of the U.S. constitution. Its real focus, though, is on how the document was designed to be amended, the myriad ways it has been amended and the many failed efforts along the way to amend it even more. The end result is a solid rebuff of the theory of “originalism” that tends to interpret the constitution as something basically locked into place in 1789.

Lepore never fails to view topics from unexpected angles. Even if at first you balk at her thrust, her documentary back-up and her lively writing style will, at least,… show more.