Jan Morris: A Life by Sara Wheeler (Harper/HarperCollins, April 14): I admire no writer more than Jan Morris, and this fine biography captures her extraordinary life—from bringing word from Mt. Everest about the climb of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay to her historic transition and writing about so many of the world’s great cities with art and vigor.
London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth by Patrick Radden Keefe (Doubleday, April 7): The plunge into death in the Thames by 19-year-old Zac Brettler leads to a dramatic reveal of his secret life and, in a sense, the double life of a great city, too.
The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan (Library of America, 1959): We will carry this book when our family is in Normandy this June. Many fine histories of the D-Day invasion have been written, but the Irish-born journalist practically invented popular history with this book, interviewing soldiers on all sides just a decade after they risked their lives.
Scott Simon’s most recent book is Ulysses S. Cat and Other Animals I Have Known (Norton, May 5).
