Connect with us

Lifestyle

Here are the nonfiction books NPR staffers have loved so far this year

Published

on

Here are the nonfiction books NPR staffers have loved so far this year

Alicia Zheng/NPR


hide caption

toggle caption

Advertisement

Alicia Zheng/NPR

We see you, hard-core NPR readers — just because it’s summer doesn’t mean it’s all fiction, all the time. So we asked around the newsroom to find our staffers’ favorite nonfiction from the first half of 2024. We’ve got biography and memoir, health and science, history, sports and more. (And, sure, if you only want to take fiction to the beach, we’ve got you: Click here.)

Burn Book: A Tech Love Story

Simon & Schuster

Advertisement


hide caption

toggle caption

Simon & Schuster

Advertisement

Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher
Kara Swisher pulls off a magic trick here, delivering several sharply written books in one. There’s her story of becoming media’s most influential tech analyst, chronicling the rise of Facebook, Amazon, Google and, of course, X/Twitter — psychoanalyzing all the driven, flawed (mostly) dudebros who turned them into world-shaking platforms. There’s also an affecting personal memoir, charting her journey as a gay woman, spouse, mother, entrepreneurial journalist and advocate. And there’s a passionate critique of toxic technology, slamming self-centered tech CEOs who pursue engagement through enragement, unleashing social division. It’s all knit together with nimble-yet-effective prose, outlining how Silicon Valley works, how journalism works and how society works in one neat package. — Eric Deggans, TV critic

Cloistered: My Years as a Nun

St. Martin’s Press


hide caption

Advertisement

toggle caption

St. Martin’s Press

Cloistered: My Years as a Nun by Catherine Coldstream
Nuns have captured our imaginations as characters in fiction and on film over the years, but it’s rare to hear from one firsthand. This compelling memoir provides a glimpse into the life of a cloistered nun as the author shares her journey into — and ultimately out of — an order of Carmelite nuns in England. Coldstream seamlessly weaves her own personal motivations for seeking a life of solitude, contemplation and service alongside an exploration of the challenges, reforms and purpose of such orders at the turn of the 21st century. This book will push you to reflect on faith, power and personal agency in your own communities as you consider Coldstream’s experience. — Tayla Burney, director, Network Programming & Production

Advertisement

Grief Is for People

Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley
I spent most of the last year mourning my mother and found few books that even got close to capturing my altered mental state. My brain kept rehashing the past and finding significance in the oddest things, and I so wanted to share that experience with the very person I was missing. In a slim 191 pages, Sloane Crosley nails it precisely as she details mourning her best friend, who died suddenly by suicide. While poignant and vulnerable, her memoir is also insightful and funny, especially as she recounts adventures with Russell and her attempts to track down and reclaim jewelry that was stolen from her apartment about a month before he died: a caper he would have enjoyed in the telling. I finished it feeling grateful for her friend’s life and even more appreciative of my mom’s. Melissa Gray, senior producer, Weekend Edition

Advertisement
Grown Woman Talk: Your Guide to Getting and Staying Healthy

Grown Woman Talk: Your Guide to Getting and Staying Healthy by Sharon Malone M.D.
If you want to be more proactive in managing your health, Dr. Sharon Malone can help. Grown Woman Talk is a playbook for navigating a fragmented and flawed health care system, written by a doctor who has spent more than 30 years practicing as an OB/GYN and is a certified menopause practitioner. She weaves in insights from her childhood in Mobile, Ala., when doctor visits were rare for her family. She recalls the first time she saw a doctor, entering the hospital through the “colored” door for an emergency tonsillectomy — and describes her mother as a “Jedi master” of managing injuries and illnesses with home remedies. Her deep sense of loss and anger at the death of her mom from cancer when she was 12 inspired her to be the kind of doctor and caretaker we need more of.Allison Aubrey, health correspondent

Here After: A Memoir

Here After: A Memoir by Amy Lin
In this memoir, the past and the present bleed together, as short wisps of chapters build the case for Kurtis and Amy as soul mates, while also telling the story of Kurtis’ sudden and unexplained death. Poetic, visceral and stark, this beautifully crafted book is a gift, pulling back the curtain on the intimate processes of love and grief. Steeped in the greatest of personal losses, Amy Lin allows us to witness her plod against the cascading losses that follow and behold the life raft that is memory. Beck Harlan, visuals editor, Life Kit

Advertisement

Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies into Reality

PublicAffairs


hide caption

toggle caption

Advertisement

PublicAffairs

Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality by Renée DiResta
At a time when our screens are clogged with viral lies and conspiracy theories, Invisible Rulers takes a long view toward explaining media manipulation and how we got to this moment. The book skillfully weaves together history and technology to explain the changing iterations of political propaganda over the past century. Renée DiResta, a disinformation researcher at Stanford University, shares her own experiences on the front lines of the struggle to define objective reality, including entering the field after confronting anti-vaccine sentiment when she became a parent. In the years since, DiResta has found herself a focal point for conspiracy theories, as powerful politicians have sought to discredit her work and that of other researchers in the field. Brett Neely, supervising editor, Disinformation Reporting

Advertisement
Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House

Simon & Schuster


hide caption

toggle caption

Simon & Schuster

Advertisement

Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House by Jared Cohen
The American presidency is viewed as the most powerful position in the world. What happens when the job ends? History is often surprising. Not everyone found the role to be the most fulfilling one they ever had. Jared Cohen looks at some fascinating case studies that back that up. John Quincy Adams and William Howard Taft found greater joy in other branches of government: Congress and the Supreme Court. George Bush enjoys his private life and art studio. Life after power CAN be much more rewarding.Edith Chapin, senior vice president and editor in chief

The Mango Tree: A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony

Little, Brown and Company

Advertisement


hide caption

toggle caption

Little, Brown and Company

Advertisement

The Mango Tree: A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony by Annabelle Tometich
This family memoir begins with a courtroom scene like no other. After a night in jail, Annabelle Tometich’s mom is charged with firing at a man who, she says, was stealing mangoes from the tree in her front yard. Tometich then hits rewind, taking readers back through her Fort Myers, Fla., childhood — with her Filipino American mom and white dad, a couple whose personality differences do not make them stronger together. The writing is both jewel-like and effortless, and Tometich’s memories — some mundane, some extraordinary — are mesmerizing. Shannon Rhoades, senior editor, Weekend Edition

Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet

Little, Brown Spark


hide caption

Advertisement

toggle caption

Little, Brown Spark

Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet by Hannah Ritchie
Not the End of the World sifts through the evidence on pollution, extinction threats and deforestation. Once the numbers are clinically separated from emotion, a surprising guidebook to an eco-friendly life emerges. Food miles: not likely to affect climate change much. Meatless Mondays: helpful, especially if eschewing beef. Not everyone will interpret the world’s chances of staying within 2 degrees Celsius of warming with the same cautious optimism as Hannah Ritchie (“I’m confident we can keep moving closer”). But Ritchie’s data-first perspective makes this book an invaluable chaser to climate doomscrolling.Darian Woods, co-host, The Indicator from Planet Money

Advertisement

Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood

St. Martin’s Press


hide caption

Advertisement

toggle caption

St. Martin’s Press

Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood by Gretchen Sisson
Gretchen Sisson’s research and careful retelling of first/birth mothers’ experiences sheds light on the people who are too often ignored, dehumanized and erased within the institution of adoption. This book deepened my understanding of how adoption, while typically viewed as a noble, feel-good form of family building, actually hinges on the trauma of family separation. Relinquished reveals the structural forces behind this loss, commonly blamed on the individual failures of a mother or birth parents. These are interviews that broadened my understanding of reproductive justice and myself as an adopted person. It’s essential reading in this era of reproductive rights under threat, for anyone who has thought of adoption as “a simple alternative” to abortion, and anyone considering adoption as a family plan.Schuyler Swenson, content development producer

Advertisement

Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout

Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport
If you’re the typical knowledge worker, your life is overwhelmed by a dizzying flurry of emails and Slack messages breaking your focus every few minutes. You breathlessly ricochet from task to task yet never get enough real work done. Stop. Take a deep breath. Then read Slow Productivity, which expounds on productivity expert Cal Newport’s tripartite philosophy of 1) do fewer things 2) work at a natural pace and 3) obsess over quality. He provides practical hacks to implement these principles into your life, while weaving in examples of how deep thinkers such as Jane Austen embodied slow productivity. Newport writes, “The way we’re working no longer works.” But if enough knowledge workers embrace slow productivity, we can revolutionize the world of work. — Preeti Aroon, copy editor, NPR.org

Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Advertisement


hide caption

toggle caption

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Advertisement

Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories by Amitav Ghosh
This is a gripping tale of how the British became history’s first narco state, curiously, to help pay for the tea its people so loved to drink. Amitav Ghosh narrates how the British forced opium into China, creating a market by creating addicts. But opium did so much more. Ghosh investigates how it created many of the modern merchant families of India and the United States, including the fortunes of the Delanos (Roosevelt’s maternal grandfather) and the Forbeses. But perhaps the most important part of this book is how Ghosh looks at the history of opium through the prism of what we know now about opioid addiction, and the relatively newfound sympathy we have toward addicts — white addicts. Diaa Hadid, international correspondent

Thank You Please Come Again: How Gas Stations Feed & Fuel the American South

The Bitter Southerner


hide caption

Advertisement

toggle caption

The Bitter Southerner

Thank You Please Come Again: How Gas Stations Feed & Fuel the American South by Kate Medley
As someone who travels Southern backroads reporting for NPR, I’ve long noticed how gas stations tend to serve as hubs in rural communities. And I have certainly sampled my share of convenience store fried chicken and sweet tea. Now, photojournalist Kate Medley, a native of Mississippi, takes us on a picturesque road trip across 11 states to document the food cultures you find at service stations. It’s a lovely coffee table book that puts a fascinating lens on a changing American South. There’s a little bit of everything — live bait and ammunition, hot tamales, catfish plates, Cajun banh mi, boiled peanuts, chicken tikka masala and hand-cut steaks. Writer Kiese Laymon’s forward sets the table with a story from his Mississippi youth as he recalls “my favorite restaurant served gas.” Debbie Elliott, national correspondent

Advertisement

There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension

Random House


hide caption

Advertisement

toggle caption

Random House

There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib
I don’t even watch basketball all that much. And yet, there’s something alluring about Hanif Abdurraqib’s meditation on the sport. Because, sure, it’s about hoops and LeBron James and Cleveland and the funny way time works when you’re watching a Game 7. But it’s also about losing loved ones. Fans of Abdurraqib’s work will recognize his rhythms and stylistic flairs that hardly ever fail to draw a reader in, and his talent at making you see the beauty in the things he finds beautiful. Andrew Limbong, correspondent, Culture Desk, and host, NPR’s Book of the Day

Advertisement

The Showman

William Morrow


hide caption

toggle caption

Advertisement

William Morrow

The Showman: Inside the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky by Simon Shuster
In this cinematic page-turner, Time correspondent Simon Shuster paints a vivid portrait of the Ukrainian president, who honed his powerful communication skills during decades as one of Ukraine’s most popular comedians. Shuster charts the rise from naïve political novice to steely — and unforgiving — wartime president. Deeply reported and deftly written, this book is a feat not only because it sheds light on one of today’s most consequential political figures, but also the history that shaped him and the tectonic shift in geopolitics that he’s now forced to navigate. Joanna Kakissis, Ukraine correspondent

Advertisement
The Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism

The Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism by Marjorie N. Feld
The world is a very confusing place right now — at least, that’s how it feels to me — so I’m always looking for books that can help me better understand where we are as a society and how we got here. The Threshold of Dissent is one of those books. In clear, careful language, the author illustrates some of the major moments over the past century that have shaped Jewish beliefs about Zionism, anti-Zionism and non-Zionism. It’s a history told with both rigor and compassion — two qualities that seem especially essential when embarking in conversation on such a fraught and contentious subject. Leah Donnella, senior editor, Code Switch

A Very Private School: A Memoir

Gallery Books


hide caption

Advertisement

toggle caption

Gallery Books

A Very Private School: A Memoir by Charles Spencer
Charles Spencer — younger brother of Diana, Princess of Wales — turns his considerable talents as a writer and historian on his own childhood. A Very Private School details what, he says, happened to him and his classmates — physical, sexual, emotional abuse — at one of Britain’s most elite boarding schools. Undergirding all is a culture of privilege, yes, but also silence and tradition rooted in the British Empire, sending 8-year-olds away from home as “the done thing.” Spencer’s quote from author Hilary Mantel in the book’s epigraph is telling, “I am writing in order to take charge of my childhood.” Shannon Rhoades, senior editor, Weekend Edition

Advertisement

Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice

Little, Brown and Company


hide caption

Advertisement

toggle caption

Little, Brown and Company

Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice by David S. Tatel
David Tatel has written the book that his friends and admirers always hoped he would write, but expected he would not. One that deals candidly with his “vision” — his blindness, and his years of treating it as an asterisk, all while becoming one of the most prominent and thoughtful judges in the country. This book is both novelistic and introspective in its treatment of his lack of sight — from his love affair with his wife and children, to his “cane lessons,” to his later-in-life affection for his guide dog, Vixen. Along the way, it is also a book about the law, the art of judging and today’s Supreme Court. And it’s fascinating. — Nina Totenberg, legal affairs correspondent

Advertisement

Who's Afraid of Gender?

Farrar, Straus and Giroux


hide caption

toggle caption

Advertisement

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Who’s Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler
Judith Butler’s groundbreaking 1990 book Gender Trouble revolutionized gender studies by arguing that gender is socially constructed, almost mythlike, but that myth can create reality. In this book, Butler leans into the titular question: Why has gender become such a “phantasm” in American life, and what does it tell us about how we’re approaching some of the biggest problems facing us, like climate change and far-right extremism? Butler has a clear perspective — and spells out the dangers of an ascendant “anti-gender ideology.” But it’s also an invitation to consider how we think about gender — and what that might tell us about who we are. — Tinbete Ermyas, editor, All Things Considered

Advertisement
You Are Here

Milkweed Editions


hide caption

toggle caption

Milkweed Editions

Advertisement

You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World by Ada Limón
This anthology of 50 never-before-published poems about nature was edited by the 24th poet laureate of the United States, Ada Limón. The collection is both achingly beautiful and terrifyingly urgent. From a humorous take on getting drenched in a rainstorm to a beloved tree on its last day of existence to a woman processing the bleak reality of the world her grandchildren will inherit, these poems encouraged a heightened noticing in me and (bonus!) introduced me to the work of many new-to-me poets I’m eager to explore. Beck Harlan, visuals editor, Life Kit

Lifestyle

Travel to Italy and Algeria in these two brilliant, translated mysteries

Published

on

Travel to Italy and Algeria in these two brilliant, translated mysteries

I’ve always loved mystery novels that take me inside different cultures. While lots of English language crime writers are good at evoking other lands — think of Philip Kerr’s Nazi Berlin or Cara Black’s Paris — the richest portraits come to us in translations of books by homegrown writers. These have the revelatory tang you get when novelists know their culture from the inside.

As it happens, two terrific novels of this kind have just come out from Bitter Lemon Press, a small London publisher that specializes in translated mysteries. These new books could hardly be less alike, except for one thing: Each is, in its unconventional way, quite brilliant.

The End of the Sahara is a kaleidoscopic murder mystery by the Algerian writer Saïd Khatibi, a rising star who just won the International Prize for Arabic Fiction. Superbly translated by Alexander E. Elinson, the book’s set in a provincial city on the edge of the Sahara in 1988 Algeria, a troubled time when the ruling socialist government has clearly failed. But you don’t need to know Algerian history to get sucked in by the plot, which centers on the murder of Zakia Zaghouani, a nightclub singer at a local hotel called The Sahara.

Burning with urgency, the story is told by a big cast of characters who all speak to us in first person. There’s Ibrahim, a college grad who’s been reduced to dealing in illegal videos. There’s the hotel owner, Maimoun, a shifty wheeler-dealer who fancied Zakia. There’s Zakia’s fiancee, Bachir, a decent guy found with blood on his shirt. He’s the top suspect of Inspector Hamid, a corrupt, womanizing cop who also fancied Zakia. Bachir’s represented by his cousin Noura, a good-hearted lawyer who’s constantly derided for reaching the age of 30 without a husband.

Advertisement

As we move from suspect to suspect, Khatibi not only makes us feel the textures of these characters’ everyday lives — the looks and smells, the food shortages and emerging Islamist militancy — but he deftly unveils how they are all are trapped together in a spiderweb of lies and betrayal that began in the past.

Using 1988 Algeria as a mirror for present-day Algeria, Khatibi gives us an X-ray of an entire social structure. Even as we learn who killed Zakia, we realize that no one escapes the bone-deep misogyny that underlies her murder and the repressive, post-colonial politics that leave Algerians spinning in circles. As one character thinks bitterly, “It was as if this country’s history just repeats itself rather than moving forward…”

An Enigma By the Sea, by Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini

Not surprisingly, life is far cushier along the prosperous Tuscan coast. That’s the setting for An Enigma by the Sea, a new edition of the 1991 novel by the legendary Italian team of Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini. Witty, erudite and socially astute, they play with the mystery genre as they explore the many sides of Italianness.

The place is the Gualdana, a pine-protected seaside enclave where the well-off have holiday villas. “A certain air of secrecy hangs over it,” the opening tells us enticingly.

The time is winter, when only a few residents are around. They’re an assortment of Italian types that includes a rich, disaffected Roman couple; a philandering count who’s arrived with his latest conquest, a fame-hungry model; an old woman addicted to reading Tarot cards; and a smug politician stewing in paranoia. You get a whiff of Upstairs, Downstairs in the relation between these moneyed folks and the locals who service their many needs — the security guards, the wry police commander and the village handyman, who is also, everyone knows, the village cuckold.

Advertisement

Deliciously translated by Gregory Dowling, An Enigma by the Sea starts off like a gently acerbic comedy of manners, as these self-absorbed characters go about killing time — chatting, flirting, bickering, having tea. Then suddenly the story shifts. Three residents inexplicably disappear. Could they have been murdered? Here? The question unleashes the sleuthing instincts of their neighbor, Signor Monforti, a pessimistic depressive who’s a born detective: He spends his life scrutinizing every single thing for clues to impending disaster.

Masters of the light fantastic, Fruttero and Lucentini roll out their mystery with the slyest of touches, weaving discussions of the Greek cynics and the nature of depression into their droll evocation of a gray, chilly off-season resort with its wind storms and dire pizzerias. If Khatibi shows us characters caught in the tragic flames of history, Fruttero and Lucentini look at human folly with a cool, almost ancient amusement at what strange, funny creatures we all are.

Advertisement

Continue Reading

Lifestyle

How Challenger Brands Are Seizing the Jewellery Opportunity

Published

on

How Challenger Brands Are Seizing the Jewellery Opportunity
As jewellery continues to outperform the wider luxury market, a wave of independent labels is muscling in on territory traditionally dominated by the biggest players, building brand authority through art fairs, flagship stores and high jewellery offerings.
Continue Reading

Lifestyle

Why the French Open is named after Roland Garros, who didn’t play tennis

Published

on

Why the French Open is named after Roland Garros, who didn’t play tennis

French aviator Roland Garros pictured in the cockpit of an aircraft in 1911.

Branger/Getty Images/Hulton Archive


hide caption

toggle caption

Advertisement

Branger/Getty Images/Hulton Archive

The second tennis Grand Slam tournament of the year is underway in Paris: the French Open, as many English-speakers call it.

But the official name of the tournament — and the complex where it takes place — is Roland Garros. Many tennis tournaments are named after famous players, like the Davis Cup and the Billie Jean King Cup.

Roland Garros, however, was an aviation pioneer and World War I fighter pilot with no known connection to the racquet sport.

Advertisement

“He’s an important figure in early aviation, both as a record-setter before the war and as a wartime pilot,” says Christopher Moore, the curator for World War I aircraft at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. “He’s considered the first person to shoot down another aircraft with a gun firing forward between the propeller.”

So how did Garros become synonymous with tennis?

The short answer: In 1928, a decade after Garros was killed in action, Paris’ new tennis stadium needed a name. Emile Lesueur, president of the Stade Français rugby club, suggested Garros — his former business school classmate.

“I guess he was a national hero, and that kind of tells you how people thought about him,” Moore says.

Here’s the (slightly) longer version.

Advertisement
Roland Garros is both the name of the tennis tournament and the Paris facility where it is held.

Roland Garros is both the name of the tennis tournament and the Paris facility where it is held.

Dan Istitene/Getty Images


hide caption

toggle caption

Dan Istitene/Getty Images

Advertisement

Garros’ high-flying career set records 

Garros was born in 1888 on Réunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean. The island’s main international airport now bears his name, too.

He grew up playing soccer, rugby and cycling — but “was not an avid tennis player,” as the tennis tournament’s website explains. Garros was not originally drawn to aviation either: He graduated from business school and founded a car dealership.

But everything changed when Garros, then in his early 20s, attended the first major international air show in the Champagne region of France, in August 1909.

“He decides that he wants to be a pilot, so he basically goes out and buys his own plane, teaches himself to fly … he earns his pilot’s license,” says Moore.

Advertisement
Roland Garros, in the dark suit, poses near the plane he flew across the Mediterranean in Tunisia in September 1913.

Roland Garros, in the dark suit, poses near the plane he flew across the Mediterranean in Tunisia in September 1913.

STAFF/AFP via Getty Images/AFP via Getty Images


hide caption

toggle caption

STAFF/AFP via Getty Images/AFP via Getty Images

Advertisement

In September 1911, Garros broke an altitude record, soaring to nearly 13,000 feet (without the extra oxygen that modern planes have above 10,000 feet, Moore points out). He then set another record, breaking 19,000 feet in 1912.

At this time, Moore says, aviation was considered a daredevil sport, and successful pilots, especially in France, became celebrities. Garros’ dazzling performances in air shows and races earned him awards and notoriety.

“Aviation was made up of … people who liked to push the limits in sports and other ways, so they were using exhibitions, doing acrobatics, death-defying feats and races … and breaking records,” Moore explains.

Garros’ profile increased exponentially in 1913, when he became the first person to fly across the Mediterranean Sea.

Advertisement

He flew south from the French Riviera to Tunisia, landing after nearly eight hours with less than two gallons of gas left in his tank, according to a September 1913 edition of Foreign Aviation News.

“So confident was Garros in his Morane-Saulnier machine … that he did not deem it necessary to accept the Government’s offer to be consorted by a cruiser, but the French naval authorities nevertheless took the precaution to have a number of torpedo boats cruising along the line of flight,” the publication wrote.

Garros revolutionized aerial combat in multiple ways 

When World War I broke out in 1914, Garros enlisted in the French army with an obvious skill set.

There were no independent air forces at the time, but pilots could join a designated air branch of the army. Even so, Moore says, the military viewed airplanes merely “as a way of being higher to look at things.”

Pilots were there for observation, not offense — at least at first.

Advertisement

“They would be flying over and they would see airplanes from the other side, doing their thing, and sometimes they’d wave at each other early on,” Moore says. “But as tends to happen, they decided that maybe they should try and stop the other guys from doing the same thing they’re doing, and so they started firing at each other.”

That was easier said than done, as early planes couldn’t accommodate anything larger than a pistol or a rifle. There was also the problem of propeller blades in front, obstructing a clear shot at German enemy aircraft.

Another Frenchman, engineer Raymond Saulnier, had recently patented a mechanism that would allow a machine gun to shoot between the spinning blades. Moore says it wasn’t adopted during the war because of significant flaws.

But Garros went to Saulnier — seemingly of his own accord — to inquire about using the technology in his own planes. Moore says there are varying claims about whether he tried it, but ultimately the two ended up with an alternative: screwing wedges onto Garros’ propeller blades to deflect bullets.

“And it works,” Moore says. “Garros shoots down his first German airplane on the first of April 1915 … within the next two-plus weeks he shoots down two more.”

Advertisement

Before the end of the month, however, Garros’ plane crashed — he said due to engine trouble — and he was taken captive by German forces. He spent three years in a prisoner-of-war camp, with his health and eyesight deteriorating.

Meanwhile, the Germans studied his wedge-workaround and developed what Moore describes as “a synchronizer that will allow a machine gun to shoot between the propeller blades, and that sort of changes aerial warfare from then on.”

Garros and another soldier eventually managed to escape, disguised as German officers. While the French government urged him to stay home as an advisor, he told The New York Times in March 1918 that he intended to get back to the front lines as soon as possible.

He said he was looking forward to confronting more enemy forces: “Remember, I have a big score against them to pay for the last three years.”

Garros’ legacy of persistence lives on 

Crowds watch the action on Court Philippe-Chatrier at the Roland-Garros Complex in Paris over the weekend.

Crowds watch the action on Court Philippe-Chatrier at the Roland-Garros Complex in Paris over the weekend. Chatrier was a French tennis player and former president of the International Tennis Federation.

Julien De Rosa/AFP via Getty Images

Advertisement


hide caption

toggle caption

Julien De Rosa/AFP via Getty Images

Advertisement

Garros was killed in action in October 1918, the day before his 30th birthday and a month before the war ended.

By that point, he had shot down a fourth German aircraft, so he was not technically a flying “ace,” which is defined as a pilot who shoots down five enemy aircraft or more. But the word, which caught on in French newspaper accounts of WWI, has come to have a much broader meaning.

Incidentally, “ace” is also used in tennis to describe a serve so good it goes untouched by its receiver.

While Garros didn’t have a direct connection to tennis, Moore says aviation was considered a sport — and he was one of its biggest faces at the time. That, plus historical context, may explain why his legacy is so closely tied to the clay-court tournament nearly a century later.

“WWI was very traumatic for the French. It was mostly on their soil that it was fought and a lot of Frenchmen died,” he says. “I think that in the postwar memory he was considered a national hero, for the fact that he had died for France, plus his pre-war fame.”

Advertisement

The tournament’s website sees a fitting connection too, in a quote attributed to Napoleon I that Garros inscribed on his planes’ propellers: “Victory belongs to the most persevering.”

That phrase, it says, “could also be applied to the winners of the Roland Garros tournament.” It runs through June 7.

Continue Reading
Advertisement

Trending