“The Gatekeepers”

Chris Whipple

Crown, $28

If there’s a new book on politics that should be read at the Trump White House — but probably won’t be — it’s this one, “The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency,” by the veteran TV journalist and producer Chris Whipple.

Because the most dramatic exception yet to the thesis of Mr. Whipple’s new book may well be the Trump White House — former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus in particular. After all, what point to a gatekeeper who controls the flow of memos, reports, and briefing books to a president who evidently prefers Fox News to paper, even if kept to a page or two to suit his widely reported short attention span?

What point to a gatekeeper who controls the outflow of presidential speeches, remarks, and official statements when the president insists on defining his policy preferences and himself in predawn blasts on Twitter, or long talks with The Times?

What point to a gatekeeper limiting access of special interests and special pleaders to a chief executive who mixes regularly with the wealthy and powerful at his pricey weekend retreats? And who’s accessible 24/7 to warring counselors and kin, some involved in ousting Mr. Priebus himself for Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, a retired general with limited experience in the entrails of D.C. and G.O.P. politicking or policy?

Still, starting with interviews he did for a 2013 cable TV series, Mr. Whipple has provided an engaging, informative close-up of 17 men closest to the presidents they served, detailing the extraordinary power — and pressure — they experienced, and the tense times of their service: Watergate, Iran-Contra, 9/11, Iraq, financial meltdown, global terror, health-care battles, Syria, North Korea.

But the book also contains ample evidence that its thesis is a bit overstated.

The presidents here, often as not, seem to define themselves precisely by the chiefs they choose, who by their relative competence and confidence (or overconfidence) then become key to whether the man in the Oval Office becomes the presi­dent he wants to be. “Every president reveals himself by the presidential portraits he hangs [and] the person he picks as his chief of staff,” the historian Richard Norton Smith has said.

Mr. Whipple begins with Richard Nixon’s chief of staff, brush-cut H.R. Haldeman, previously the manager of two losing Nixon campaigns, but who says he was the “pluperfect SOB” the new president wanted (at the suggestion of his own former boss, Dwight Eisenhower).

And Haldeman did become notorious for saying no, even at times to the president himself when he thought it necessary, though at other times, Mr. Whipple reminds us, H.R. simply ignored R.N. orders he thought unwise.

Of course when it came to Watergate, at least the cover-up, Haldeman went along and went to jail following Nixon’s unprecedented resignation, thanks to the White House tapes. (Mr. Whipple suggests a rationale for the taping grew from J. Edgar Hoover’s lying to Nixon that Lyndon Johnson ordered a “bug” on his plane.)

Unmentioned is the oft-denied but enduring notion that Haldeman’s successor as chief of staff, Gen. Alexander Haig, saw Nixon so unstable under the shadow of impeachment that he proposed the military obey no Oval Office order Haig hadn’t co-signed. (Generals Mattis and McMaster, please note.)

Haig remained chief briefly under fill-in President Gerald Ford, but his high-handed ways infuriated Ford loyalists. And their freewheeling access to the Oval Office (“spokes of the wheel,” Ford called it) produced chaos — followed by Ford’s asking the former Nixon aide Don Rumsfeld (“a ruthless little bastard,” Nixon called him) to become chief of staff.

Rumsfeld brought with him a frighteningly fast-paced work atmosphere, flurries of memos and barked orders, and a young protégé named Dick Cheney, then thought of as whip-smart and a genial practical joker.

But there was a limit to what that Dynamic Duo could do to redeem Ford’s reputation and re-electability, especially after the president redefined himself again — and them — with a surprise “Halloween massacre” that, among other shakeups, made Rumsfeld defense secretary and Cheney chief of staff.

And Ford was still dogged by a faltering economy, his pardon of Nixon (in the public interest, he felt), a tumble on the wet steps of Air Force One (mocked mercilessly by the media), and a disastrous TV debate against Jimmy Carter, the onetime nuclear sub commander, peanut farmer, and Democratic governor of Georgia: “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration.”

Carter won and then defined himself as outsider in chief by not selecting any formal chief of staff — the J.F.K. and L.B.J. model, Mr. Whipple notes. “He’d been manager of [his own] campaign, why wouldn’t he be manager of the White House staff too,” explains the author James Fallows, then a Carter speechwriter.

Worse yet, first among equals of Carter’s campaign carry-overs, and thus de facto chief of staff, was his savvy political strategist Hamilton Jordan, 31. A brash former frat boy at the University of Georgia, Jordan was previously executive secretary to Carter as governor, but with none of his boss’s polish and little love for the Washington ways he’d shaped the campaign against, or the “nitty-gritty” of getting policy developed and enacted.

Tieless in chinos and boots, “Ham” often hid out in other aides’ offices to avoid decisions waiting to be made, shunned the press, and made headlines with after-hours escapades — “a sort of personal thumb-your-nose style,” another staffer called it.

None of that kept Carter from making Jordan the manager of his re-election campaign and replacing him with a man many thought should have been chief of staff from the start. The Atlanta lawyer Jack Watson, “charming and focused,” had gotten to know Washington as director of the Carter transition, later head of intergovernmental affairs.

“But a functioning White House, however belated, could not change the harsh reality: inflation, unemployment, sky-high interest rates,” Mr. Whipple concedes, not to mention the lingering Iran hostage crisis. “I don’t think an officially designated chief of staff would have changed anything,” Jimmy Carter himself insisted.

Another Southern outsider who defined himself by his choice of chief of staff, at least initially, was Bill Clinton, drafting his kindergarten classmate Thomas F. (Mack) McLarty, with a fortune made in trucking and gas but no Washington experience.

“Mack the Nice” typified and enabled Clinton’s loyal “Arkansas Mafia,” whose members and other ambitious aides came and went through the Oval Office “like a White House version of the stateroom scene in the Marx Brothers film ‘A Night at the Opera,’ ” Mr. Whipple writes.

Eventually, with his agenda paralyzed and Hillary furious (not least over failure of her health reform plan), the Clintons decided to sack Mack and bring in Leon Panetta, a Nixon administration veteran, later a nine-term Democratic congressman from California, then serving as director of Clinton’s Office of Management and Budget.

Panetta learned to deal with Clinton’s famous predawn calls, his reluctance to stop revisiting decisions already made, and his wife’s penchant for playing chief of staff herself “if she felt he wasn’t being well served,” Panetta says.

But Panetta had set a two-year limit on being chief of staff “to protect [his] humanity,” and was replaced by his former deputy, the entrepreneur-banker Erskine Bowles, previously head of the Small Business Administration, later a part-time Clinton debate coach.

Generally successful in keeping the president focused on his top priorities (“You can’t do a thousand things,” he lectured Clinton), Bowles also led “marathon negotiations” with House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott to get both the first balanced federal budget since 1969 and a Children’s Health Insurance Plan (CHIP) that invested $27 billion in care for poor kids, he recalls telling Clinton. “You could have lit the room up with the smile on his face.”

Far less joyful is Bowles about the successful strategy he devised to handle the Monica Lewinsky scandal — creating a separate staff to deal solely with the president’s sexual indiscretions, led by his deputy, John Podesta, calling himself “Secretary of Shit.”

So far from defining the president was Bowles, indeed, and so disappointed by Bill’s behavior, that it literally made him ill. “I don’t want to know a f*cking thing about it,” he said at one point. At another: “I think I’m going to throw up.” And, finally, he left.

Podesta became Clinton’s fourth and final chief — with “a fine mind, a tough hide, a dry wit . . . a better hearts player” than Bowles, Clinton has written. Together they reached the decision for massive bombing to pacify the Balkans, and for using executive orders to sidestep Congress — “a strategy Podesta championed and would later help perfect as an adviser to Barack Obama,” Mr. Whipple notes.

Clearly the gold standard for White House chiefs of staff was James Baker under both Ronald Reagan and Baker’s longtime Texas pal George H.W. Bush (after two bad picks by Bush: his friend John Sununu, the brilliant but intolerably arrogant, self-serving governor who helped him win in New Hampshire, and his polar opposite, Samuel Skinner, a Chicago businessman serving well as transportation secretary but soon admittedly “overwhelmed” in a tight election year).

Baker was first chosen because Reagan, although also an outsider — an actor from Hollywood no less — was persuaded that he still needed a director, and a guide in the ways of Washington and national politics.

Baker had served as finance chairman of the Republican Party, undersecretary of commerce in the Ford administration, then ran campaigns against Reagan for Ford and George H.W. Bush. In all of which he had impressed key men around Reagan (and, importantly, his wife, Nancy) with his organization, cool efficiency, smooth manners, dress, and charm, Mr. Whipple writes.

Of course conservatives who celebrated Reagan’s win as their own coming to power were outraged by the selection of a pragmatist instead of their ideological favorite, Ed Meese, a Reagan confidant. But Baker cannily proposed that Meese become “counselor to the president” with cabinet rank to preside over cabinet meetings, take charge of policy, and supervise domestic and national security councils. Baker would control access to Reagan, the flow of paper, speeches, and staff.

“It worked for the Gipper, it worked for the country . . . and I was still in position to run everything,” says Baker, who recruited a strong staff, set up a Legislative Strategy Group to decide what was doable (“a key to my success”), and charmed the press while waging continuous rear-guard action against conservative “true believers.”

Baker’s mastery was evident in tense times that followed: the potentially mortal shooting of Reagan, making deals with Democrats for a tax cut, killing a plan to polygraph top officials in search of a leaker, and eventually persuading Reagan that it was necessary to raise taxes when a stubborn recession stalled economic growth.

But all that, plus feeling scapegoated over one instance of bad debate prep in the 1984 re-election campaign, made Baker want out. And the president, with surprising indifference, let him switch jobs with Treasury Secretary Donald Regan — a disaster for all concerned (and perhaps an early sign of Reagan’s developing dementia).

Regan’s outsized ego ultimately put the new chief of staff at odds with Nancy — and out of a job. And it left Baker out of touch with backstage birthing of the Iran-Contra embarrassment — illegal arms sales to Tehran to help free American hostages in Lebanon and illegally fund mercenaries fighting Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista regime. “Iran-Contra never would have happened on James Baker’s watch,” says Dick Cheney.

Not so many years later, ironically, it was Cheney as V.P. and his old mentor Rumsfeld as defense secretary, again, who clearly out-muscled President George W. Bush’s chief of staff, Andy Card, and his doubts about the Iraq War for which Dick, Rummy, and others had been paving the way even before 9/11.

And so it goes. Barack Obama went through four chiefs in his eight years as he fought increasingly effective G.O.P. opposition, announced from the very first, to save a staggering economy, pass the Affordable Care Act (followed by horrendous staff work on the healthcare.gov rollout, but now more popular than ever), and develop a variety of effective (but by definition reversible) executive orders to advance his agenda.

For all the former chiefs interviewed for this book, it seems, the job was more demanding than they ever imagined, but one they would not have missed. If in the end they emerge more as servants than shapers of their presidents, we can still appreciate their extraordinary efforts and accomplishments — as well as the personal, political, and historical forces at play when they fell short.

Chris Whipple, who summers on Shelter Island, will speak about his new book at the Quogue Library on Aug. 6 at 5 p.m. and will be at Authors Night in East Hampton on Aug. 12.

David M. Alpern lives in Sag Harbor, worked more than 50 years as a reporter, writer, editor, and broadcaster for U.P.I. and Newsweek, and now hosts a weekly podcast for World Policy Journal.

The cover of Critical Hit number one shows its two heroines, faces obscured by scarves, bandit-style, cargo pants looped with utility belts worthy of Batman, wielding the heavy tools of their vengeance-wreaking trade — a sledgehammer and an ax. In shaded relief above them we see what spurs their mission — the lab-experimented cat, the hunter-stalked deer — and understand that the gals have turned the implements of the abattoir and the barnyard into weapons of animal liberation.

Matt Miner created the mini-series, with its action “on behalf of tortured animals,” he said in an email, “as a way to give voice to the frustrations I feel working in the animal protection arena and, at times, feeling helpless to stop the cruelty all around us on a daily basis. Our heroes don’t fight guys in capes and tights, they take on dog fighters and animal abusers.”

And it’s for this reason that he’ll be at what could be called a comic-book convention with a conscience, courtesy of Nancy Silberkleit, co-C.E.O. of Archie Comics, on Sunday at 111 Cove Hollow Road in East Hampton. “It excited me that he was using graphic literacy that way,” she said of what prompted her invitation.

Mr. Miner, who lives in Queens, donates his profits from the series and from its predecessor, Liberator, both published by Black Mask, “back into my real-world dog rescue work with redemptionrescues.org.”

In what would otherwise be its dotage, Archie Comics, as it nears 76, has become hip, even aware, you might say, thanks to Ms. Silberkleit’s interest in social issues. “We’ve made efforts to promote healthy eating — well, you can’t make Jughead that way,” she said, laughing over the stick-thin character’s indulgence of his hamburger habit, which could out-clog Elvis Presley’s.

Archie Comics not long ago introduced a gay character created by the writer-illustrator Dan Parent — Kevin Keller, who’s also popular on the atmospheric CW television series “Riverdale,” based on the comic book. In print, “Riverdale High School just didn’t represent who makes up these schools today,” Ms. Silberkleit said.

What’s more, she led the company to publish a Rwanda issue, one titled “Bottle Battle” addressing ubiquitous plastics, and another, “The Trend Setter,” in which Archie Andrews himself is mercilessly mocked for something as inconsequential as a hat — even by goody-two-shoes Betty. “She’s supposed to be understanding,” Ms. Silberkleit said. “We expect a thumbs-up from her, but she takes the hat and throws it in the garbage can, showing that actions can be just as hurtful as words.”

“This is the 21st century,” she went on, “and there are many new ways we have to be responsible. Like with cyberbullying. You have to think about what you say. Is your information real? Is it kind? Is it supportive? Socially, with the internet, it’s really been a challenge, we’ve had to up our game. So we try to be out there and high-spirited and friendly.”

And thus the theme of her Comic Book Extravaganza. Its hours are 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and admission is free.

Other attendees include Marty Grabstein, a voice-over artist who worked on the animated “Courage the Cowardly Dog,” a cult favorite that aired on Cartoon Network, and Captain Kaos (Matt Rohde), a Shelter Islander who takes striking photos of “Star Wars” figurines set up in the outdoors around the East End. For collectors, Atomic Comics of Shirley will have a booth.

“It’s a day for families to come out and maybe dress up in costumes,” Ms. Silberkleit said. “A day to meet artists and see how comics are made.”

“The One-Cent Magenta”

James Barron

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, $23.95

Among the most gratifying reading experiences one can enjoy is to penetrate a book that, at first glance, appears to be esoteric or of little interest, only to find it riveting. Daniel James Brown’s “The Boys in the Boat” and virtually anything by John McPhee jump to mind as examples of this phenomenon.

I had hoped that would be the case with James Barron’s recent book, “The One-Cent Magenta: Inside the Quest to Own the Most Valuable Stamp in the World.” After all, Mr. Barron’s previous book, “Piano: The Making of a Steinway Concert Grand,” had been a compelling read. Alas, this time I was disappointed.

The subject here is the history of the rarest, and thus the most valuable, postage stamp ever issued and, by extension, the arcane world of philately, which the author, a well-regarded New York Times reporter, calls Stamp World.

The essence of the book is contained in nine sentences on the back of the jacket:

In 1856, a batch of one-cent magenta stamps were printed, sold, and forgotten.

In 1873, a twelve-year-old boy discovered one of those stamps in his uncle’s basement but had no idea it had become a rarity.

In 1878, the stamp got a spot in the castle of a fabulously wealthy French nobleman.

In 1922, it was bought by an American plutocrat, who may have burned a second one-cent magenta so that this one would remain the only one in the world.

In 1933, the plutocrat’s widow claimed it even though her estranged husband’s will stated the one-cent magenta was not hers to inherit.

In 1940, the stamp was sold by Macy’s to a mysterious buyer who was not identified for three decades.

In 1970, it was acquired at auction by a syndicate led by an entrepreneur who traveled with the stamp in a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist.

In 1980, it was purchased by John E. du Pont, who would later die in prison while serving a thirty-year sentence for murder.

In 2014, it was won at Sotheby’s by a celebrated shoe designer for almost $9.5 million.

On the one hand, that’s all you need to know. On the other hand, the remainder of Mr. Barron’s 241 pages of text is fleshed out by his skillful digging into the essential facts listed above.

The one-cent magenta was “an accidental icon. It was not supposed to be so special.” In 1856, the postal authorities in British Guiana (the country now called Guyana) failed to receive a shipment of 100,000 postage stamps from London. The colonial postmaster commissioned a local newspaper to print a batch of “provisional” stamps in two denominations — two-cent stamps for letters and one-cent stamps for periodicals. It is not known how many were produced, nor how briefly they were in circulation.

The stamps lacked artful design and were not aesthetically pleasing. Over time, that has ceased to matter. As any collector (or student of economics) well understands, what matters is rarity. And in this case, there seems to be but one. Unique in all the world, as they say. That’s the only thing a committed collector needs to know.

As one might expect, the one-cent magenta’s value has increased exponentially over time. Recounting its odyssey chronologically, Mr. Barron emphasizes this point by titling each chapter, beginning with the third, with the stamp’s value at the time. What sold for one (British) cent when it was issued in 1856 sold for six shillings in 1873, £120 five years after that, $32,500 in 1922, and so on. Chapter 11, about the American shoe designer Stuart Weitzman’s 2014 purchase of the one-cent magenta, is titled “$9.5 million.”

Some of Mr. Barron’s background digressions are particularly worthwhile. He notes, for example, the history of the British postal service. Until the 1830s, one could “post” (or mail) things for free. It was incumbent on the recipient to pay. The problem was, they often didn’t, and the postal service was losing a great deal of money. The biggest culprits were newspapers, which were all sent and delivered by post at the time. (There’s a slap-on-the-forehead moment when one realizes why so many newspapers have the word “Post” in their names — not to mention The Saturday Evening Post, the American magazine of revered memory.)

In 1839, Rowland Hill, an English educator, proposed a system of postal reform, the centerpiece of which was that senders would pay postal fees, and a stamp would be affixed to each item sent to prove that the mailing costs had been paid in full. The postage stamp was born — at heart, a tax stamp.

Within a short time, the collecting of stamps (with their implications of exotic places and great distances crossed) became a popular obsession worldwide. Mr. Barron’s discussion of the imperfection of the coined term “philately,” for the interest in stamps, provides a distinct Aha! moment.

In terms of his central focus, however, the one-cent magenta stamp and those who have owned it, this is really a small book. (Measuring 5 by 7 inches in size, that is literally true, as well.) It might have been more successful as a featured article in The New York Times Magazine.

The difficulty is that there is not much by way of the elements that contribute to a gripping story. There is no real dramatic tension, no sustained mystery, no captivating characters, and no awe (as in the transformation of raw materials into a musical instrument capable of producing sublime sound).

“The One-Cent Magenta” is likely to appeal most to committed philatelists. And they, as Mr. Barron acknowledges, make up a dwindling population.

Mr. Barron writes well and with perfect clarity. His reporting skills are sharp. In the future, one can only hope that these talents will be applied, once again, to a more worthy subject.

A weekend resident of East Hampton, James I. Lader regularly contributes book reviews to The Star.

James Barron will sign books at the East Hampton Library’s Authors Night on Aug. 12 and be the guest at one of its fund-raising dinners. He has a house in East Hampton.

Catch it while you can: The last of the summer’s free Poetry Marathon gatherings is Sunday, when at least seven poets will read from their work starting at 5:30 p.m. at the East Hampton Town Marine Museum. The museum, on Bluff Road in Amagansett, will be open for touring at 5, and refreshments will be served at a reception afterward.

The readers include Carole Stone, Rosalind Brenner, Walter Donway, Pauline Yeats, Carolyn Bistrian, and Daniel Hays. Joining them will be Dee Slavutin of Springs, who last year took over the marathon from the duo who ran it for many years, Sylvia Chavkin and Bebe Antell. She not only took it over, she raised the money to save it.

“The East End light and landscape inspire more than painters,” Ms. Slavutin said in a release. “Poets, too, claim this inspirational source. If you miss this program you’re losing the last chance this summer to enjoy great poetry in our own backyard.”

Below is one of her new poems, “A Summer Ditty.”

Let me eat the purple and the green,

even if it seems unseemly.

I’m hungry for the taste of leaves,

to wipe my mouth on my sleeve.

Then, push off on pedal to the shore

and ask the sky to give me more.

Watch the gull strut and poke

the salted clam properly soaked.

To delight at sighting an umbrella

still cobbed with webs from the cellar.

Tap my toes in briny foam,

explore the shore, free to roam.

Oh July, July, July, July,

it is to you, I owe this high.

Sheldon and Margery Harnick, and their son, Matthew, have pooled their talents to create “Koi: A Modern Folktale,” with photographs of the legendary fish by Margery and Matthew and text by Sheldon Harnick. They will talk about the book on July 29 at 5 p.m. at BookHampton in East Hampton. 

Ms. Harnick first began taking photographs of koi on a visit to her daughter, Beth, in Malibu, Calif. Those images led her to research the history of koi, which includes many legends that testify to their endurance and perseverance.

Mr. Harnick was inspired by the beauty of the fish to create his own legend, in which the pleasure provided by the fish leads the gods to transform them into powerful dragons. Because koi are Asian in origin, the narrative proceeds in haiku verses. Ms. Harnick’s images capture the beauty of the fish, while Matthew Harnick’s portray the gods and dragons.

Margery Harnick is an accomplished actress, painter, and photographer who has exhibited in New York City and East Hampton. Matthew Harnick recently published his own book, “Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade: A New York Holiday Tradition,” which includes both vintage photographs and his own. Sheldon Harnick is the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning Broadway lyricist. The family has a house in East Hampton. 

All year long, BookHampton hosts authors for readings and book signings, and the latest to join the list of notables is Chelsea Clinton.

On Friday, Aug. 4, Ms. Clinton will be on hand to sign her newest book, “She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World,” which introduces readers to a baker’s dozen of “inspirational women who never took no for an answer, and who always, inevitably and without fail, persisted.” Some are living, others long gone.

The book tells the stories of Harriet Tubman, Helen Keller, Clara Lemlich, Nellie Bly, Virginia Apgar, Maria Tallchief, Claudette Colvin, Ruby Bridges, Margaret Chase Smith, Sally Ride, Florence Griffith Joyner, Oprah Winfrey, and Sonia Sotomayor.

“She Persisted,” according to its publicity, “is for everyone who has ever wanted to speak up but has been told to quiet down, for everyone who has ever tried to reach for the stars but was told to sit down, and for everyone who has ever been made to feel unworthy or unimportant or small.” Ms. Clinton has written two other books: “It’s Your World: Get Informed, Get Inspired & Get Going!” and “Governing Global Health: Who Runs the World and Why?” but “She Persisted” marks her first appearance at BookHampton, which is at 41 Main Street in East Hampton.

The event, which does not include a reading, will begin at 1 p.m., and a ticket must be purchased to attend. The price, $17.99, includes not only a copy of the book, but admission for up to four others to join the signing line. Tickets are available online at bookhampton.com/event/chelsea-clinton-she-persisted. 

“Astrophysics for

People in a Hurry”

Neil deGrasse Tyson

W.W. Norton, $18.95

If this were a book review “for people in a hurry,” I’d suggest: Read this book (1) because it’s a conduit to the cosmos, (2) because you’ll become hungry for more, and (3) so that you can join the club! 

If you’re not in a hurry, stay tuned. 

In “Astrophysics for People in a Hurry,” Neil deGrasse Tyson writes a vivid and virtuosic opening chapter, “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” that is a tour d’horizon (pun intended) of those events that unfolded following the origin of our universe. 

Explaining Newton, gravitation, Einstein, general relativity, gravitational waves, nucleosynthesis, planetary science, galaxy formation, stellar evolution, cosmic microwave background, dark energy, dark matter, and many other “matters” in a slim volume, with easy-to-assimilate, seasoned, charming prose, is not a cakewalk. And Dr. Tyson gives you the whole enchilada, tortilla, petits fours, Linzer torte, and bagel. He persuades you to “suspend your disbelief” and wins you over as he eagerly inspires you to wish for more. He has heft and bandwidth.

Dr. Tyson’s description of the events following the Big Bang includes the story of the “leftover light from a dazzling, sizzling early universe.” And, he says, studying the patterns in the cosmic microwave background “is like performing some sort of cosmic phrenology, as we analyze the skull bumps of the infant universe.”

Hollywood science-fiction epics may portray galaxies and space as romantic and glamorous. “Nobody doesn’t like intergalactic space,” Dr. Tyson seems to agree, “but it can be hazardous to your health if you choose to go there.” He points out that you would freeze to death, your blood cells would burst, and you’d be shot full of very high-energy cosmic radiation — nuclear particles of matter that traverse interstellar and intergalactic space after being ejected by distant exploding stars. 

I was not sure why I loved this book so much: because it was so well written, or because it reminded me of my passion for astrophysics. So I asked a very intelligent good friend — a successful businessman and enthusiastic science aficionado — for his layman’s opinion. He wrote:

“For the novice, this book serves as a fascinating and intensive introduction. It will also encourage him or her to read more on astrophysics . . . and marvel at the way in which Tyson organizes and presents his material. His chapter on Newton’s and Einstein’s theories of gravity, juxtaposed with the current concepts of the gravitational effects of dark matter and dark energy, is extraordinary.” 

I completely agree. Dr. Tyson has a wonderful way with words. “So dark matter is our frenemy. We have no clue what it is. . . . But we desperately need it . . . to arrive at an accurate description of the universe.”

You can’t see it (hence dark), but you can infer the effects of dark matter on galaxies, making them appear — unreasonably! — as if they resembled a solid disc, like the wheel on your car that rotates on its axle. (In our solar system, however, planets revolve around the sun at different speeds that depend on their solar distances.) Thus, dark matter is an attractive force gluing a galaxy’s collection of stars together.

This is unlike dark energy, which is a repulsive force acting, so to speak, as if it were “negative gravity” and, as Dr. Tyson puts it, that it “will ultimately win the tug of war, as it forces the cosmic expansion to accelerate exponentially into the future.”

In other words, dark matter is attractive (some might say feminine) and dark energy is repulsive (some might say masculine), and together they invisibly make up about 95 percent of what’s out there. Only some 5 percent of the universe’s total mass energy is visible to us. Was Buckminster Fuller prophetic when he said the greatest discovery of the 20th century was that the invisible is more important than the visible?

“The matter we have come to love in the universe,” Dr. Tyson says, “is only a light frosting on the cosmic cake, modest buoys afloat in a vast cosmic ocean of something that looks like nothing.”

The author mentions Einstein’s problems with Hitler, who disparaged theoretical physics and general relativity as “Jewish science” and thus inferior to “Aryan science” because it was experimental. In fact, Hitler loathed Einstein so much that he wanted him assassinated, and organized a hundred authors to write a book against Einstein’s ideas. Dr. Tyson paraphrases Einstein, who said about this book of negative propaganda that “if he [Einstein] were wrong, then only one [author] would have been enough.”

In discussing the universality of physical laws, the author humorously relates how he ordered a hot cocoa with whipped cream but was disappointed to see no trace of the topping. The waiter said it had sunk to the bottom, but Dr. Tyson pointed out that since whipped cream has a low density it should have been floating on the top, and that either they forgot to put it in or the laws of physics were different in this restaurant near Caltech. When the waiter reluctantly brought the (forgotten) dollop for the hot cocoa, it floated — thus exemplifying that the laws of physics are universal. Of course, one example is not proof. (Let’s hope the waiter got a good tip and became a physicist.)

Dr. Tyson’s book is justifiably at the top of the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list. He’s an authoritative source of clear ideas about our universe and writes in stylistic, eloquent prose without mathematics. This in itself is quite an unusual feat — considering “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in describing the natural sciences,” as the Nobel-winning physicist Eugene Wigner said, describing an extraordinary phenomenon “bordering on the mysterious.” Just like the universe.

Dr. Tyson also has a special way with children. At a recent standing-room-only Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate on “De-Extinction” at the American Museum of Natural History, he came forward from the podium and sat down at the edge of the stage, long legs dangling down to audience level, to listen to an adorable 9-year-old who had a very intelligent question for him. She wore an extremely colorful and elegant combination of eye-catching attire. Neil lifted her gently onto the stage so the multitudes could see her beguiling individuality. The audience was thrilled. 

So he’s a really nice guy — in addition to writing a really good book.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is the director of the Hayden Planetarium and the host of the radio and TV show “StarTalk.” He lives in New York City and East Hampton. 

Stephen Rosen, an astrophysicist who lives in East Hampton, will give a talk, “Albert Einstein: Rock Star,” at the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton on Aug. 10 at 5:30 p.m.

Prick up your ears, poetry fans: Grace Schulman will take to the lectern to read at Sunday’s gathering of the Poetry Marathon in Amagansett. The Springs part-timer not long ago pulled down a Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America for her distinguished lifetime achievements. A distinguished professor of English at Baruch College, she is the author of numerous collections of poems, most recently “Without a Claim.” She edited “The Poems of Marianne Moore” and in 2010 came out with “First Loves and Other Adventures,” a book of essays on artistic influences and the writing life.

Ms. Schulman will be joined by Elise Paschen, whose 1996 volume, “Infidelities,” won a Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker and Poetry magazine. She will read from her latest collection, “The Nightlife,” which was published in May.

The free readings take place at the Marine Museum on Bluff Road, which is open for touring before the 5:30 p.m. start time. A reception follows.

“The Whole Thing

Together”

Ann Brashares

Delacorte, $18.99

Summer, Wainscott, family weirdness. In “The Whole Thing Together” the young-adult novelist Ann Brashares of “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” series fame is back with her suite of strong suits showing. 

The book is immediately engaging, fast moving, and appealingly easy to read. All of these hold through the book’s conclusion in spite of a somber fork in the narrative road. It’s light and breezy meets situation tragedy.

“The Whole Thing Together” is a roundup of the drama befalling a 21st century blended-type family over the course of a summer. Issues, emotions, and decades-old dysfunctions abound. “The Brady Bunch” could never have seen these kinds of complications coming. 

The situational setup, worthy of the family chart at the beginning of the book, is everything here, so stay alert: Lila (a blond, beautiful hippie-type who comes from old money and grew up summering in Wainscott) and Robert (a high-powered investment banker of Bengali heritage raised in Canada by loving adoptive parents) were married briefly but divorced and remain stridently bitter and estranged. They share three daughters ages 19, 21, and 22. They also share joint custody, in a week-on-week-off arrangement, of a large summer house on Georgica Pond in Wainscott. (“How?” the real-estate realists among you might ask. Brashares does not show us a copy of the deed, so you guys will just have to use your imaginations.) 

That way of doing joint custody, where the kids stay in the family home but the parents come and go according to a custody plan, is called “birdnesting,” by the way, only perhaps it does not usually apply to summer houses on Georgica Pond or parents who have in no way come to terms with each other. But this book is written for a young-adult audience, best for ages 14 and up, and that group is less likely to harbor real estate-related disbelief, right? 

Meanwhile, both Lila and Robert are remarried, and each has a 17-year-old child: Ray, son of Lila; Sasha, daughter of Robert. These two individuals live in the same room in the shared house on Georgica Pond, Robert one week, Sasha the next, and so on as the house’s joint custody demands. These two also share their three older half sisters: Mattie, a snarky beauty who no one expects much of; Quinn a green-thumbed free spirit whose understanding everyone relies on, and Emma, a type-A checker-off of accomplishments whose directions everyone follows. Sasha and Ray have each lived with their sisters back home in New York City (Sasha) and in Brooklyn (Ray), where joint custody is also maintained. But because of the bitterness and separateness sustained by their not-shared parents, Ray and Sasha have never met. While this circumstance surely stresses the boundaries of plausibility, Ms. Brashares depicts the rancor between Lila and Robert with numerous details, and the reader will more or less enter the logic of the novel.  

Amid a liberal scattering of recognizable local businesses and local terrain, summer in Wainscott eventually brings the not-couple’s not-shared children together. The romantic direction in which Sasha and Ray’s relationship seems to move may be creepy to some readers — indeed it is fraught for the characters. There’s quite a bit of guilty talk, for example, from Ray’s point of view, about the Sasha-smell of the sheets in their not-at-the-same-time shared bed (Reader: Do not get stuck on the gross-out of no one changing the sheets between teenage-opposite-gender stays at the house or you will not be able to read the book). 

There’s a prohibition around this relationship well beyond the circumstances of the not-shared parents’ estrangement. Divorce and its ripples — family complications and convolutions — are part of the domestic landscape for many teen readers. It’s not always so clear who counts and who does not count as family. 

The book unfolds as a series of scenes pushing through the summer, the point of view shifting as third-person narration focuses on different characters in irregularly rotating turns. While Ray and Sasha’s story of meeting and forming a relationship initially seems central, it is churned under among concurrent narratives. The summer in question is also the moment for the youngest of the three shared half sisters, Mattie, to learn about her biological parentage and the moment for Emma, the oldest of the sisters, to become engaged. 

Events lead to an engagement party, which precipitates a crisis, which gives way to a tragedy: The family loses Quinn, cast throughout the novel in the role of binder, soother, the ultimate middle child. Her loss is spun here as the avenue toward forging commonality and healing family wounds, an extremely optimistic silver lining.

“The Whole Thing Together” is a patchwork in terms of narrative point of view; depth is not seriously attempted, and issues and emotions are covered in a glancing way, with a kind of extended sound-bite technique. The novel indicates more than truly plumbs the depths of complex ideas around family, but it’s an entertaining and accessible read, with the rolling, scenic quality of the narrative working to create a credible outline of the blended-type family dynamic. 

Many young people with parents who could not work it out, divorced, and continue not to work it out, will likely find something to relate to here. But if they don’t, there’s plenty of young-adult realistic fiction out there that features all kinds of families.

A visit to the East Hampton Library young-adult department should stand teen readers in good stead. Lisa Michne, head of young-adult services, runs a beautifully designed room just for high school students that is staffed and supervised seven days a week. Teen readers can find hangout space away from family dynamics, and book recommendations for the asking.

Evan Harris is the author of “The Art of Quitting.” She lives in East Hampton.

“Sag Harbor: 100 Years of Film in the Village,” an homage to a century of cinema on Main Street, came out on Tuesday. Written by Annette Hinkle, former associate editor of The Sag Harbor Express and currently the community news editor of The Shelter Island Reporter, the book traces the theater’s history from the silent era to its nearly four-decade tenure as the last independent, single-screen theater on the East End. 

The book is filled with vintage photographs, recollections and testimonials by village residents, and fascinating details about films shown there and the people who made it possible. In her introduction, Ms. Hinkle writes, “The beautiful thing about the theater was that for the eight decades it stood, it remained the same. As the world beyond transformed, grew, suffered, went to war and became jaded, within those four walls life appeared to remain a perpetual constant.”

In his foreword, the novelist and essayist Jay McInerney writes, “For as long as any of us could remember, the big red letters floating above Main Street on the white facade of the cinema situated us and grounded us, reminding us, if perhaps we’d had one too many at the bar in the American Hotel, across the street, of just where we were: SAG HARBOR.”

A book launch will be held at Sylvester & Co. in Sag Harbor on July 8 from 6 to 8 p.m. Copies of the $35 hardcover will be in local bookstores and other locations — Naturopathica in East Hampton, Marders in Bridgehampton, and the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill among them, according to Ms. Hinkle — by the end of this week. A portion of the proceeds from sales will be donated to the Sag Harbor Partnership’s campaign to rebuild the cinema, and Ms. Hinkle will have a table at the partnership’s Party Under the Tent on Long Wharf on July 16.