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E4 The Mix | | SUNDAY, MAY 12, 2019 2 R (Penguin, $17). Should you be in need of a last-minute Mother’s Day gift for a book-lov- ingmom, you can’t domuch better than Ng’s beautifully composed best-seller — a haunt- Ishiguro, and particularly his classic ‘The Remains of the Day,’ from1989, whichMa has cited as an influence.” “ Little Fires Everywhere ” by Celeste Ng BOOKS BEST -SELLERS As reported by Publishers Weekly Hardcover fiction 1. The 18thAbduction, James Patterson andMaxine Paetro 2.Where the Crawdads Sing, DeliaOwens 3. Redemption, David Baldacci 4. Neon Prey, John Sandford 5. Collusion, Newt Gingrich and Pete Earley 6. Lost Roses, MarthaHall Kelly 7. Someone Knows, Lisa Scottoline 8. Fire&Blood, George R.R.Martin 9. The Silent Patient, AlexMichaelides 10. AWoman Is NoMan, Etaf Rum Hardcover nonfiction 1. Becoming, Michelle Obama 2. Girl, StopApologizing, Rachel Hollis 3. TheMoment of Lift: HowEmpowering Women Changes theWorld, Melinda Gates 4. The SecondMountain: TheQuest for a Moral Life, David Brooks 5. KetoFast, JosephMercola 6. Backstage Pass, Paul Stanley 7. TrillionDollar Coach, Eric Schmidt 8. The PathMade Clear, OprahWinfrey 9. Dare to Lead, Brené Brown 10. It’s Not Supposed toBe ThisWay, Lysa TerKeurst TribuneMedia Services LOCAL SCENE Current best-sellers from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Hardcover fiction 1.Where the Crawdads Sing, DeliaOwens 2. Circe, MadelineMiller 3. Normal People, Sally Rooney 4. There There, Tommy Orange 5. The AmericanAgent, JacquelineWinspear Hardcover nonfiction 1. Educated, TaraWestover 2. The SecondMountain: TheQuest for a Moral Life, David Brooks 3. Becoming, Michelle Obama 4. TheMoment of Lift: HowEmpowering Women Changes theWorld, Melinda Gates 5. Horizon, Barry Lopez ing, layered story of mothers and daughters, and how they attract and repel each other. Named a best book of 2018 by multiple out- lets, it’s soon to be a Hulu limited series, starring ReeseWitherspoon and KerryWash- ington. “ We Begin Our Ascent ” by Joe Mungo Reed (Simon & Schuster, $16). “Like a racer, Reed carefully husbands his resources in this ruthless little sports novel,” wrote Dwight Garner in The New York Times of Reed’s debut novel, a tale of a professional cyclist riding in the Tour de France. “It’s one of the indices of Reed’s talent that you hotly flip this book’s pages even when there’s not a lot going on, when it’s just another hilly day on the tour.” “ The Death of Mrs. Westaway ” by Ruth Ware (Gallery/Scout Press, $16.99). British suspense novelist Ware (“TheWoman in Cabin 10,” “The Lying Game”) has a knack for old-haunted-house novels, and this one kept me flipping pages late on a summer’s night last year. A young woman, grieving a loss, is notified that a mysterious legacy is due to her, and off she goes to a gloomy old house in the country, occupied by a very strange family. Ware uncannily conveys the chill that pervades both the region and the house, in its frigid rooms and in the eyes that gaze at our heroine. (If you like this sort of thing— I do—Ware has a new novel out later this summer as well, “The Turn of the Key.”) Moira Macdonald: mmacdonald@seattletimes.com; on Twitter: @moiraverse PAPERBACK PICKS ByMOIRA MACDONALD Seattle Times arts critic Six new paperbacks for spring, including one perfect Mother’s Day pick ... “ There There ” by Tommy Orange (Vin- tage, $16). Orange’s debut novel, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award and numerous other honors, follows 12 characters from Native communities on their way to the Big Oak Powwow. The author’s perspective, wrote Seattle Times reviewer Jeff Baker, is “funny and profane and conscious of the violence that runs like a scar through Ameri- can culture.” “ The Art of theWasted Day ,” by Patricia Hampl (Penguin RandomHouse, $17). “By wasting some of your time with Hampl, you’ll understandmore of what makes life worth living,” wrote NPR book reviewer Maureen Corrigan, describing Hampl’s nonfiction book as “sharp and unconventional — a swirl of memoir, travelogue and biography of some of history’s champion day-dreamers.” I just bought this one myself, as a gift for a friend’s retirement. “ Severance ” by LingMa (Picador, $17). This imaginative debut novel, winner of the 2018 Kirkus Prize, takes place during a New York apocalypse, as a first-generation Ameri- can working in the publishing industry con- templates starting society anew. Jiayang Fan, in The New Yorker, wrote “Ma’s prose is, for the most part, understated and re- strained, somewhat in the manner of Kazuo A perfect Mother’s Day book and other delightful reads BOOK REVIEW ByNICK LICATA Special to The Seattle Times Urban planners are often praised or criti- cized for how they design our cities. Planner Samuel Stein’s “ Capital City: Gentrification and theReal Estate State ” falls into the sec- ond camp, arguing that planners are unwit- ting advocates for capitalism. Even though planners see themselves as protectors of the common good, Stein says, they hurtmost people by “turning everyone’s space into someone’s profit.” According to Stein, government planning is tied to private real-estate interests; we are at a point in historywhen the bulk of private capi- tal flows from investing inmanufacturing to land. The result is a “Real Estate State,”where, Stein explains, real estate now“makes up 60 percent of theworld’s assets, and the vast majority of that wealth—roughly 75 percent — is in housing.” This didn’t happen overnight. Stein places the blamewith former President Franklin Roosevelt’s NewDeal legislation, which estab- lished the Federal HousingAdministration (FHA) in order to standardize, regulate and insure homemortgages. Although intended to be progressive, the FHAadopted real estate- industry practices thatmade segregation and suburbanization the de factoU.S. housing policy. Over time, says Stein, “Black, immi- grant and raciallymixed neighborhoodswere shut out of the finance system.” Stein argues that property investments shadowed two federal programs: redlining and urban renewal. “Municipal investment followed real estate investment” as it went froma secondary source of urban capital accumulation to a primary one. As a result, the government encouraged gentrification as much as developers did, despite attempts to wring concessions fromthem. Programs marketed as neighborhood revitalization often resulted in physical displacement and social disruption for the urbanworking class. And by not challenging land’s status as a commodity, planners promoted public improvements but delivered disruptive private investment opportunities. Reflecting conservative critiques of gov- ernment interference in themarket econo- my, Stein relentlessly dismisses government incentives to promote affordable housing — like offering privately owned public spac- es or higher buildings, or requiring a per- centage of affordable housing in newdevel- opments—as ineffective. But he identifies the culprit as the capitalist economy, not misguided liberal bureaucrats, because urban planners assume that developers must receive a profit as part of planning. As rental costs for all properties near subsidized private development increase, gentrification ensues. Although he devotes a couple of pages to studies arguing that gentrification does not have negative consequences for poor people or causemuch displacement, Stein does not dispute their findings. Instead, hemoves on to mock the “hand-wringingwing” of developers who are unsure of how to deal with gentrifica- tion and still promote growth. Stein also provides twowell-researched chapters explaining thatmanufacturing is not the leading force in urban politics: “Inmost cities and towns, real estate rules.” Another chapter details NewYorkCity’s struggle to provide affordable housing, and another argues that urban luxury developer Donald Trump’s presidency “is a product and embodi- ment of real estate capital’s global ascendan- cy.” An urban planner investigates what an ‘anti-capitalist’ city looks like BOOK REVIEW By ANNA BLACK Special to The Seattle Times Tess Gallagher’s 13th book, “ Is, Is Not ,” arrives amid a hail of celebration for both the writer and her publisher. Graywolf Press has its 45th anniversary this year, and Gallagher’s 1976 book, “Instructions to the Dou- ble,” was the publisher’s first full-length release. This newest book is Gallagher’s 11th with Graywolf. As inmuch of her work, Gal- lagher’s imagery is exceptional in “Is, Is Not.” In “Oliver,” a poemwritten for a gifted Irish neighbor who attends her when she is in the country, she writes, “the brain like wild stags,/ hares terror-thrilled by/ hounds. We are each other’s/ as surely as song stitches breath.” Gallagher puts her dedication at the end of the poem rather than the begin- ning, inviting readers in— and preventing us from stepping back as we might if we felt, up front, that the poem isn’t for us. Gallagher’s deftness reveals the beauty of each of the people and animals she builds into the book. She uplifts her subjects, elevating what makes them lovely. She asks each of these people to stand tall in their self- ness, holding a mirror to their passions — “the deer, in its shuttlecock moment,” she writes, “to let us watch ourselves” — and reminds them they each bear deepmean- ing. “We are carrying the memories and the important elements of all of those people that we love,” she explains tome in a sunny roomof her Port Angeles Sky House, a roombuilt with the intention of framing the waters of Puget Sound. “That’s why, when a person dies, you know, it’s not just that person dying. It’s all the people they love. So I’m trying to give the signs of these people inmy poems because that’s a way of extending thempast me. I’mgoing to give out at some point, so to honor those people and to say who they were and give them another life in your work, is important.” Often, Gallagher is associ- ated with Raymond Carver, her husband until his death in 1988. And we see Ray, as she calls him, referenced throughout this book. Mo- ments, memories, even pre-Ray and post-Ray eras marking Gallagher’s life. In “Reaching,” about the 53 years she’s known Seattle artist Alfredo Arreguín, Gallagher refers to “art and lives, with and without Ray.” But “Is, Is Not” is far from a memorial. There is no space for nostalgic dithering here, and not really grief or heartache, either, but in- stead ongoing love — and there is the transforma- tion that poetry brings to every subject, as well as its writer. But the book isn’t all soft and sweet, Irish ballads and Pacific Northwest deer. Gallagher is a heavy hitter who tackles topics like abor- tion rights in Ireland and the “[c]ivilized, remorseless” bureaucracy that killed Savita Halappanavar. Gal- lagher holds the tension and demands we do, too. Gallagher is at her most agile in seeing deeply and exposing the nectar of this world. “I never put myself on the downhill side of anything, really. I think that we’re often given contradictory things to hold, and that is the job of the poet,” she says, “to hold things in contradiction and yet to come away with some elucidation.” ____ “Is, Is Not” by Tess Gallagher, Graywolf Press, 160 pp., $16 Port Angeles writer’s poetry collection reveals the beauty in all of us APPEARANCE Tess Gallagher The author will read at 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 14, at BookTree, 609 Market St., Kirkland, 425-202-7791, booktreekirkland.com; and 7 p.m. Thursday, May 16, at Elliott Bay Book Co., 1521 10th Ave., Seattle, free, 206-624- 6600, elliottbaybook.com