It’s that time again. The air is crisp, the leaves are turning, the kids are back in school. And readings have returned in earnest to the college.

To Stony Brook Southampton, that is, where the fall iteration of the Writers Speak series of free author appearances starts up on Wednesday at 7 p.m. with Kim Addonizio, who is out with two new books, “Mortal Trash: Poems” and “Bukowski in a Sundress: Confessions From a Writing Life.” 

This one is different, in part because preceding it at 5:30 will be an open house for prospective students in the M.F.A. program in creative writing and literature, which sponsors Writers Speak. Julie Sheehan, the program’s director, and other faculty members will discuss workshops in fiction, creative nonfiction and memoir, poetry, and playwriting. Emma Walton Hamilton will go over the children’s literature fellows program. A reception for Ms. Addonizio starts at 6:30.

Coming down the pike for Writers Speak are Dani Shapiro, the author of “Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life,” on Oct. 19, John Knight, an editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, in conversation with Emily Gilbert, a creative writing instructor at the Stony Brook campus, on Nov. 2, Lia Purpura, a poet, on Nov. 16, and Ruth Franklin, a book critic, together with the college’s Susan Scarf Merrell on Nov. 30. Students enrolled in the M.F.A. program will read from their work on Dec. 7. 

The readings, which involve book signings and periods for questions and answers, happen in the Radio Lounge, upstairs in Chancellors Hall.

Look what wonders a change of scenery can bring. For her latest children’s book, Susan Verde of East Hampton has left behind art museums, yoga, leisurely bicycle rides, budding friendship among felines, and every other conceivable bourgeois nicety for the desert sands and dirt-floor huts of West Africa.

In “The Water Princess” (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, $17.99), she tells the story of the fashion model Georgie Badiel’s childhood, dominated by daily trips with her mother to a distant well for water for drinking, cooking, and washing. Gie Gie imagines herself a kind of sorceress with powers over the natural world — the swirling winds, the tall grass, the wild dogs. But not the water. That she cannot conjure or entice closer. Pot on head, she must walk.

Relayed simply, even beautifully, before sunrise every morning mother and daughter begin their trek, one not without its pleasures, what with the singing, a stop for a snack of shea nuts under the spread of a karite tree, a brief frolic with other children at the well. But still Gie Gie dreams nightly of a day when the water will not only be plentiful and readily at hand, but free of befouling mud.

All this is illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds in broad swaths of ochre and shades of rich purple for the evening sky. The watercolors fill every square inch of every page. Good luck finding a more eye-pleasing picture book this year.

The lessons for spoiled North American children are self-evident, but the book also gets across the idea of helping others in far-off places — through the Georgie Badiel Foundation, for instance, which works to bring clean water to the people of Burkina Faso.

“Attitude of Gratitude”

Back in the States, the stakes may be lower, to put it mildly, the hum of the earth distant and all but drowned out, and yet a girl can still make a difference and have a good time doing it. 

Gerry, the sprightly, tiara-wearing heroine of the “Very Fairy Princess” books by Julie Andrews and her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton of Sag Harbor, and illustrated by Christine Davenier, is back in “Attitude of Gratitude” (Little, Brown, $17.99). Once again we see our schools gamely trying to stanch society’s disintegration by stepping in where distracted or economically beleaguered parents can’t or won’t. In this case, with a day designated for giving compliments and expressing thanks. 

Gerry is more than up for it, but then the challenges come — a friend out sick, a jar of sprinkles dumped, the disruption of a fire alarm, and, last but not least, the insult of seeing her artwork displayed sideways. In a wry comment on modern art, however, her cornucopia is deemed an improvement when seen as a clown face. 

Naturally each setback presents a chance to turn the proverbial lemons with their circling fruit flies into a cool, refreshing drink — sweet, not too bitter. Battle through the adversity, kid. Grab that single can of beans from the shelf and hand it over for the food pantry. It’s the least you can do.

“Naughty Mabel Sees It All”

A truncheon’s a bit much. Instead, another princess of sorts, of the canine variety that is, Naughty Mabel, makes me think of a tall glass carefully selected from a kitchen cabinet, slowly filled to the brim with tap water, carried just so to avoid spilling a single drop, and briskly dashed full in the face of this inane, unfunny creature. 

The actor Nathan Lane and his husband, Devlin Elliott, a Broadway producer, who are East Hampton part-timers, have just come out with the second in a series, “Naughty Mabel Sees It All” (Simon and Schuster, $17.99), with Dan Krall, a veteran of film and television animation, handling the artwork. In it, the mansion-dwelling doggie sickens herself by downing a bowl of potpourri and starts seeing double, going on to imagine all manner of monsters lurking in every corner, called forth by the shadows cast by overstuffed armchairs or a neighbor’s dinosaur bones — you name it, she destroys it. 

Turns out Mabel needs contacts.

My own sight fails when it comes to discerning the point of laying out the backstory of the retired paleontologist neighbor or introducing Mabel’s two friends, Smarty-Cat and Scaredy-Cat. Though I admit that may be absurd to say in the context of a children’s book. Because digressions, kids do seem to dig ’em.

“The Great Spruce”

It’s not even Halloween yet, but Christmas these days is on little kids’ minds practically the year round. Besides, as Loudon Wainwright III once put it in a mocking singsong, “Christmas comes but once a year . . . and goes on for two months.”

Coming out next week is a book that fully deserves to be a classic of the holiday. “The Great Spruce” (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, $17.99) by John Duvall, a native Long Islander who works with a tree farm in Jamesport, and Rebecca Gibbon, a British illustrator with a winning midcentury style, is a conservation story to warm the cockles.

“Alec loved to climb trees,” the opening sentence reads. But his favorite, “the most magical of all the trees, tall and strong and spreading ever upward,” stood in his own backyard, planted there by his grandfather.

Each Christmas the two decorate the giant spruce, one year drawing the attention of a man with a clipboard who convinces Alec’s parents to let him take it to the big city for display. Just before the chainsaw teeth start to bite, however, a little civic disobedience by Alec saves the day.

The result? The tree is taken, yes, but with its roots wrapped in a huge burlap ball for replanting whence it came. “We’re just visiting,” Alec tells a curious little girl.

An author’s note explains that such a practice is precisely what held sway in regard to the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree during the Depression years. No better time than now to turn back the clock.

“A School of Our Own”

Samuel Levin and Susan Engel

The New Press, $25.95

Confessions of a reviewer: A book with two authors? Approach with caution. A mother-son writing duo? Possible treacle alert. A teenager who started his own school? Whoop! Whoop! Whoop! Back-patting danger. 

Sigh of relief: This book? No need for alarm. Not cloying. Not self-congratulatory. Instead — thoughtful, thought-provoking, moving.

Here’s the premise, and it’s unusual. Samuel Levin was a high school junior. His before and after-school job was tending cows on a dairy farm — a job he loved. He makes clear over and again how much he loved the heifers, the milking, the smells, the early mornings, even the cow dung. One exceptional young man. 

Who knew that what was happening in his high school was so incorrect? “. . . I’d sit through the first three periods of my day, mostly bored, occasionally annoyed. In the classes that were the least boring, I tried to think of ways to make them more interesting. I’d translate words to binary, think of alternative explanations for data that purported to support a theory, design math puzzles. In the most boring classes, I just thought about other things. I planned science experiments, wrote stories, or daydreamed.” This was not a disaffected young man: He revered his one-on-one math teacher, whom he termed “brilliant.”

Lunch was all right. But then there was the English class with the teacher who “seemed to not like books, or kids for that matter.” Here was a young man who was furious for good reason. 

Weave in his mother’s commentary. “Weave” is the perfect verb because her commentary is seamless. Sam is Susan Engel’s third child; the other two had already graduated from college by the time he was tackling his junior year. “I was painfully aware, like other parents, of the pitfalls of adolescence. After all, there are so many ways for kids between the ages of fourteen and eighteen to screw up. It would be hard not to quake at the potential disasters that lie in wait for the teen who goes astray.”

Ms. Engel goes on to cite the work of the anthropologist Ruth Benedict, who noted “that many cultures lead their youngsters toward maturity by gradually giving them more autonomy and accountability. But our culture, she pointed out, did not. In fact, she argued, our society was notable for the disjuncture we create between childhood and adulthood. We baby them for a very long time and then fling them into a free fall toward adulthood.” And then, gulp, Ms. Engel tells us that Benedict was writing in 1934. How little has changed.

Then one day, not unlike any other, Sam made sure that so much did change. He worked intensely on creating “the Independent Project.” He figured out how to work with educators and fellow students to create a curriculum that would work for his fellow students, for himself, and for teachers. A high school that was a high school created by students, for students, about students. 

His mother’s comments? “At seventeen, Sam was naive. And he was brash. From the time he decided to do this, it never seemed to occur to him that he might not get past the first stage.” She knew the pitfalls that awaited him. She knew the possibilities of success.

And success came piling on. Fellow students loved IP. They were no longer bored, angry, disillusioned. They were connected to their studies.

Mr. Levin inherited the educational reform genes from both his grandmother and mother. His grandmother Tinka Topping and Ms. Engel have been education advocates on the East End for decades, playing pivotal roles in the founding of the Hampton Day School — back in the late 1960s — as well as the Hayground School. Ms. Engel, a psychology professor at Williams, is an expert in autobiographical memory and the development of curiosity. Her previous books include “Real Kids: Creating Meaning in Everyday Life.”

A proofreader this reviewer would have hoped for: a high school English teacher (different from the one referenced above) who might have caught noun-pronoun disagreement and a few other grammatical snafus. However, it is the heart, the passion of the underlying mission that carries this book.

One of the impressive aspects of this educational experiment is the willingness of Mr. Levin and Ms. Engel to discuss shortcomings. In “Appendix: Nuts and Bolts,” the authors admit that teachers are not as widely acknowledged in the text as they were in the beginning of the work. 

“We haven’t discussed teachers yet,” Ms. Engel writes, “because Sam originally envisioned one role for them and ended up contending with a very different one. The truth is, the school wasn’t able to allot the teacher hours the IP wanted. This is ironic, given that one of the faculty’s biggest fears was that teachers would become irrelevant or redundant in the IP. Part of it came down to the unions. The teachers couldn’t work with the IP without extra compensation, and the school didn’t have enough money for that. The upshot was that teachers had a surprisingly marginal role in the Independent Project, when they were intended to have a central role. . . . The teachers’ job in the Independent Project is nuanced and slippery. They have to guide without leading, help without pushing. They must use their judgment about when to step in and when to step back. They should use their passion for and mastery over their own subject to model how to work in that field.”

“A School of Our Own” is a mother-son love story. A love story regarding learning. One of the most touching love stories is one of the most unexpected: A young woman in the IP project was cutting class during IP. Problematic, right? Where was she? Sneaking out to memorize lines from “Macbeth.”

Susan Engel grew up in Sagaponack. She and Samuel Levin will speak about their book next Thursday at 5:30 p.m. at the Hayground School in Bridgehampton.

Laura Wells is a regular book reviewer for The Star. She lives in Sag Harbor.

“Rembrandt’s Shadow” by Janet Lee Berg tells the story of Sylvie Rosenberg, a teenage daughter of a successful but emotionally distant art dealer in Holland in the 1930s. When the Nazis occupy the country, her father trades a painting by Rembrandt for his daughter’s safety and that of 25 other Jews.

Sylvie finds herself standing on a train platform surrounded by Gestapo, guns, and attack dogs, wondering if the next train will take her to Spain or to a concentration camp. Across locations and decades, the book follows her experiences at a British internment facility in Jamaica and on to Long Island, where a new life with a door-to-door salesman ends up with her and her son being abandoned.

The debut novel, just published by Post Hill Press, is based on the experiences of the Katz family, of whom Ms. Berg’s husband is a descendant. Ms. Berg, the author of “Glitz of the Hamptons” and a contributor of essays to The Star for many years, will read from it on Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Quogue Library. She will also discuss restitution of art looted during World War II.

For those out and about farther up the Island tomorrow, Ms. Berg can be seen at 7 p.m. at the Book Revue in Huntington.

“Drive!”

Lawrence Goldstone

Ballantine, $28

Lawrence Goldstone has come down to earth. Following his 2014 book, “Birdmen,” a history of early aviation, he has now presented us with “Drive! Henry Ford, George Selden, and the Race to Invent the Auto Age.” (Dare we speculate that his next topic will be submarines?)

“Drive!” is a highly readable melding of business history and cultural history, focusing on a brief period of time, around the turn of the last century, when the advent of the automobile changed the American scene forever.

Although the emphasis is clearly on America — and ultimately on Henry Ford and the company he founded in 1903 — Mr. Goldstone enriches the study of his subject by including chapters on the scientific development of the internal-combustion engine, dating back to the 17th century, and on the development of the automobile in Europe, which began slightly earlier than it did in the United States.

The parallels on both sides of the Atlantic are striking. They include a great deal of trial and error. At first, the horseless carriage was assumed to be a frivolous fad that would soon pass. The invention was initially a plaything of the wealthy. The notion of speed, however, engaged the popular imagination. Automobile races, in Europe and in America, were immensely popular events, despite their tendency to produce gruesome injuries and fatalities among participants and spectators alike. The attention-grabbing Vanderbilt Cup race, underwritten in 1904 by William K. Vanderbilt II, a racing enthusiast, was originally to cover a course from Sag Harbor to Brooklyn. 

“By June, Willie K. was finally resigned to the route he had chosen not being approved, so — reluctantly and with some irritation — he shortened the course to a 30-mile triangle, which would be traversed ten times. . . . The roads on the triangle were almost entirely within Nassau County, just east of the New York City line, but one corner spilled over into Queens. . . .”

The passion called “automobilism” swept across Europe and America, and it was not destined to be short-lived.

Though much about Henry Ford’s actual accomplishments is enshrouded in uncertainty — he is portrayed as perennially quick to take credit for things without acknowledging the contributions of others — it is indisputable that he was among the first Americans (possibly the very first) to see the widespread potential of the automobile across the wide swath of both urban and rural sections of the country. Thus, “while most of his competitors vied to make a more prestigious automobile, a more luxurious automobile, a more unique automobile, Henry Ford set about making an automobile that was plain, dull, and precisely the same as every other, right down to the color of the paint. But his car would also be supremely functional, simple to operate, and built not to impress but to get its passengers reliably from one place to another. . . .”

That is how Ford became the wealthiest man in America.

At the heart of Mr. Goldstone’s book (though I am not convinced that it is the best part of the story he has to tell) is an event that occupied newspaper headlines at the time but has been relegated to the footnotes of history books for probably a century now. In 1895, George B. Selden, a patent attorney from Rochester, obtained a United States patent on a gasoline-powered automobile, although he never produced a single working specimen of the invention. When others did begin to produce motorcars, in the early 1900s, Selden asserted his patent rights and demanded the payment of royalties. 

Several leading manufacturers — including Winton, Cadillac, Locomobile, Peerless, and Olds, among others — acquiesced, paid royalties to Selden, and formed the Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers. Others, including the staunch individualist Henry Ford, did not. And not just because they didn’t want to. Ford and others disputed the relevance of the Selden patent on substantive grounds.

While it lasted, the conflict was intense. Selden placed advertisements threatening not only unlicensed manufacturers with lawsuits for patent infringement, but threatening also their dealers and the purchasers of their vehicles. (Ford was quick to indemnify his dealers and all purchasers of Ford automobiles.) Mr. Goldstone’s description of the simultaneous automobile shows in New York in 1906 — one sponsored by Association of Licensed Automobile Manufacturers, the other by the competing Automobile Club of America — captures the ethos of the moment. “The dual — or dueling — auto shows were, to that point, the most significant public display of the rift among automakers.”

The Selden patent dispute amounted to a kind of American archetype playing out, pitting the inventor, the son of a prominent judge who was one of the founders of the Republican Party, against the plainspoken son of a farmer from Michigan. Ultimately, the matter went to trial. The decision was appealed. One can infer the outcome from the fact that George Selden’s name has been widely unknown until the publication of this volume.

While car buffs might revel in the plentiful detail provided by Mr. Goldstone, the greatest pleasure in this book is due to the colorful cast of characters, the amusing anecdotes, and what I can only describe as fun-to-know trivia. Consider the number of recognizable automobile names that receive first names here:

John and Horace Dodge (who worked with Ford until they left to begin their own auto company), Louis and Arthur Chevrolet, Ransom Olds, James Ward Packard, Armand Peugeot, Gottlieb Daimler, Karl Benz, Louis and Marcel Renault — we are well reminded that these were people (often quite interesting ones) before they were cars.

It makes sense that the automobile was originally marketed to doctors, as a time-saving (and thus a lifesaving) device. Personally, I was pleased to learn exactly how the name Mercedes-Benz was arrived at. And another longtime mystery was answered for me: Among my early childhood memories, in a Midwestern suburb, was that the family across the street, in the early 1950s, drove a Hudson. It’s the only one I ever saw or heard of. It seems that, in 1908, the Detroit department-store magnate Joseph L. Hudson (if you’re over a certain age, you will have heard of his emporium) bought a failing automobile manufacturer and began producing low-priced cars. “Never an immense success, Hudson was sufficiently profitable to remain in business until 1954.”

A last bit of good trivia: Ford’s first car was the Model A, in 1903. Each time changes were made or a new prototype developed (not all went into production), the letter changed. The Model T, the car that “made” the Ford Motor Company, was produced from 1909 until 1927. Counterintuitively, it was followed by another Model A, from 1927 until 1931.

Finally, Mr. Goldstone deserves credit for his handling of Henry Ford himself, a prickly subject, at best, for a historian to take on. The author’s treatment is balanced. He gives the automaker credit for his iconic accomplishments but does not shrink from describing his shortcomings. Ford was a misanthrope, a cruel player of practical jokes, and a terrible father (Mr. Goldstone’s contrasting descriptions of Henry and Edsel Ford, his only son, are particularly touching). 

Even though the elder Ford was not the sort of person you would invite to your next party, there is no denying the significant place he occupies in the annals of American business.

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

Lawrence Goldstone lives in Saga­ponack.

A high tea in woodsy Sagaponack north of the highway on the property of a sculptor of some note might be enough of a draw. But add in the poetry of the recently departed as read by other poets, accented by a live performance of jazz and blues, the enticement of sandwiches and pastries, and what’s more, some potent fruit of the vine courtesy of a vineyard, Wolffer, just down the road, and now you’re talking an honest-to-goodness happening.

The day is Sunday, the time is 4 to 6 p.m., the place is 93 Merchants Path at the studio of Hans Van de Bovenkamp, the music is by OCDC (that would be Cynthia Daniels and Sarah Greene), and the poems to be read are the work of Robert Long, who was an editor and art critic at The Star, Antje Katcher, whose last, posthumous collection was “Catechism,” Diana Chang, and Siv Cedering, who was married to Mr. Van de Bovenkamp. 

The readers will be Fran Castan, a Long Island Poet of the Year not long ago, Canio Pavone, the founder of Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor, Janice Bishop, and Carol Sherman of East Hampton, who just came out with a new book of poetry, “Adios, San Miguel.” 

The afternoon has been organized by Virginia Walker, who lives on Shelter Island and teaches English and humanities at Suffolk Community College. She and a fellow poet, the late Michael Walsh, wrote “Neuron Mirror” together, and copies will be given to those who attend. The collection raised money for the Lustgarten Foundation’s research into a cure for pancreatic cancer. Admission to the reading is $20, also to benefit the Lustgarten Foundation.

Seating is limited. R.S.V.P.s, due by tomorrow, are being taken at 631-749-2394 or by email at [email protected]. 

And now for a taste of the meat of the matter, “Poem for My Mother,” by Ms. Cedering:

Remember when I draped

the ruffled cotton cape

around your shoulders,

turned off the lights

and stood behind your chair,

brushing, brushing your hair.

The friction of the brush

in the dry air

of that small inland town

created stars that flew

as if God himself was there

in the small space 

between my hands and your hair.

Now we live on separate coasts

of a foreign country.

A continent stretches between us.

You write of your illness,

your fear of blindness.

You say you wake afraid

to open your eyes.

Mother, if some morning

you open your eyes to see

daylight as a dark room around you,

I will drape a ruffled cotton cape

around your shoulders

and stand behind your chair,

brushing the stars out of your hair.

Over the summer The New York Times ran a piece about a rush by publishers to reissue books about Donald Trump, given his ascendancy to the Republican nomination for president. When it came to Harry Hurt III’s 1993 “Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump,” however, the original publisher, Norton, would have none of it.

This apparently led to a Kickstarter campaign to fund a self-publishing effort, but then it was Echo Point to the rescue, the results of which you can see for yourself on Saturday from 4 to 6 p.m. at Page restaurant at 63 Main Street in Sag Harbor (Mr. Hurt’s home village, naturally), where the author will sign copies of his eyebrow-raising exposé of personal, financial, and real estate development shenanigans. Reservations are being taken at [email protected].

Mr. Hurt is a former correspondent (Newsweek), columnist (The Times), and editor (Travel + Leisure Golf). Given that background, one might wonder if he won’t feel a touch of disappointment at the electoral loss of four years of entertaining press conferences and bluster at the hands of a President Trump. 

But that’s a question for another time — or for the 30 seconds while he scrawls his name in front of you.

"The Underground Railroad"

Colson Whitehead

Doubleday, $26.95

In Colson Whitehead’s 2001 novel, “John Henry Days,” a black journalist known only as J. attends the annual John Henry festival. J. is a junketeer — that is, a journalist on assignment who enjoys sponging off publishers for free lodging and per diems in exchange for mediocre copy on frivolous subjects. The tension of the novel was in watching Mr. Whitehead juxtapose the journalist’s disaffection with scenes of the real-life exploits of the legendary John Henry. It was clear that Mr. Whitehead, a former journalist, was excoriating himself — for eating at the trough of junk publishing while other African-Americans did important work.

With his new novel, “The Underground Railroad,” Mr. Whitehead no longer needs to take himself to task. 

The novel tells the story of Cora, a teenage slave who flees for the North. Early in the novel, Mr. Whitehead depicts life on the plantation with a visceral authority that still has the ability to shock in our jaded era. 

“Not long after it became known that Cora’s womanhood had come into flower, Edward, Pot, and two hands from the southern half dragged her behind the smokehouse. If anyone heard or saw, they did not intervene. The Hob women sewed her up.”

But Mr. Whitehead is too smart a writer to make “The Underground Railroad” simply another litany of white atrocities and triumphant freedom. That story has been told countless times, and told well. In this novel, after 60 pages of plantation life scenes (which include a brilliant set piece about a tiny garden plot that Cora protects with brutal determination), the writer finds a completely new way to tell the story of the escaped slave. 

Mr. Whitehead, whose novels often brush against the barriers of postmodernism, invents a real — rather than metaphorical — underground railroad, complete with boxcars, tracks, and railway men. (It is interesting that many high school teachers have complained that they bought copies of Mr. Whitehead’s book based on the title and Oprah’s recommendation, only to find that the novel completely upended the historical facts.) And if the reader thinks that such a railway is a one-way ticket to safety, they will have to think again. Mr. Whitehead has a few more tricks up his sleeve. 

The author manipulates time and space so that when Cora gets off the railroad in South Carolina she sees a skyscraper, then meets a group of whites who seem accepting of fleeing slaves, but on whom they are in fact conducting genetic experiments. (This hearkens to the Tuskegee incident beginning in the 1930s in which African-American men with syphilis were led to believe they were receiving treatment but were in fact the subject of a medical experiment.) That the reader is not exactly sure what time period Cora is suddenly in only makes the encounter more disorienting and creepy. Stops in Indiana and Tennessee offer different, though equally imaginative, perils. 

Still, “The Underground Railroad” doesn’t always keep its momentum; sometimes Mr. Whitehead’s postmodern flourishes seem to get the best of him. Just when you are caught up in the suspense of Cora’s flight, for example, Mr. Whitehead interjects yet another character, taking us backward or forward in time and disrupting the novel’s trajectory. Some of these characters are worth the diversion, such as the brutal white slave hunter Ridgeway (“If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn’t be in chains”), while others are less interesting. Of course it may simply be that Cora is so compelling a character — and you are rooting so hard for her to find freedom — that any detour from her story can seem like a narrative misstep.

Nevertheless, there’s no denying that the book is a triumph. Mr. Whitehead has found a new way to tell the story of slavery that seems more real than if he had stuck to the facts. “All art is a lie that helps us see the truth more clearly,” Picasso once said. “The Underground Railroad” fulfills that edict, and is undoubtedly the most audacious and inventive novel of the year. 

Colson Whitehead is the author “Sag Harbor,” about his time growing up there.

Kurt Wenzel’s novels include “Lit Life.” A regular book reviewer for The Star, he lives in Springs.

Remember the Poetry Marathon? Held each summer at the Marine Museum on Bluff Road in Amagansett for years before it quietly left the scene? Well, it’s back, this time for one day only, but after that you can look for it again next summer, thanks largely to Dee Slavutin, a Springs poet seemingly struck by this inspiration earlier this summer as she stood in The Star’s front office. Part of the idea was to hold a tribute to the past organizers, Sylvia Chavkin and Bebe Antell. 

What that means in the short term is that a lineup of poets, including Ms. Slavutin, will read from their work on Sunday starting at 4 p.m. at the marathon’s traditional location. A reception with refreshments will follow. 

Among the readers: Carole Stone, known to review poetry books for this newspaper, Virginia Walker, the author of the recent “Neuron Mirror,” Rosalind Brenner, Michelle Murphy, Walter Donway, Jo Carney, and Pauline Yeats. Teri Kennedy will handle the introductions.

Below is “The Bird Clock” from Ms. Slavutin’s new collection, “Wingspan: Search for Food.”

“What are you doing with your life?”

I hear in their warble.

I reply only to the mourning dove,

dwelling in his continuum as on a

swell that never crests.

When this dove speaks my ribs sway.

I glimpse myself in shadow and form.

When I listen to this steadfast bird,

his beguiling cool control,

the patient syrup in his throat,

time stops from cresting;

in (t)his one note, I am.

Eleven birds make noise like garbage trucks,

removing the debris of hours.

Their chirps are empty pushcarts selling time.

Proof, there is less than plenty left.

“From Silk to Silicon”

Jeffrey E. Garten

HarperCollins, $29.99

I’ve attended every Democratic convention since 1980, when, as a high school senior, I navigated the Missouri caucuses to emerge as a Ted Kennedy delegate. This summer — nine conventions later — I was particularly excited to go to Philadelphia to see the first woman ever nominated for president by a major party. It would be smooth sailing, I thought. 

Yet, each night when I stood in the crowded Wells Fargo Center, it was clear that something was amiss. The neatly packaged party narrative was interrupted. Bernie Sanders supporters, activists, and other progressives were making an unusual objection. Theirs wasn’t solely an antiwar message or a civil rights protest. This year’s political revolution had an antitrade message at its core. Hand-drawn signs with “TPP” written on them and a bold slash through it were everywhere. I heard Buffalo Springfield’s refrain in my head, “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.” 

Hillary Clinton, once an advocate for multilateral trade agreements, was forced to back off her endorsement of the Trans-Pacific Partnership to keep her coalition together. And in Cleveland at the Republican convention one week earlier, the G.O.P. — usually a steadfast proponent of open markets and increased international commerce — nominated a dissident with a distinctly nationalistic message. For globalists and trade enthusiasts, this may truly be the summer of their discontent. 

Swimming against the tide of rhetoric and going far deeper than sound bites, Jeffrey Garten’s “From Silk to Silicon: The Story of Globalization Through Ten Extraordinary Lives” explains the complex economic and geopolitical forces beneath the uproar. Like Mr. Garten’s previous works, including “The Politics of Fortune” and “A Cold Peace,” this book is deeply researched, thoughtful, and enlightening. Mr. Garten reframes the trade dilemma in human terms, profiling 10 individuals who were crucial to the rise of globalism. In doing so, he helps the lay reader understand why globalization is causing such a ruckus.

Some of the profiles are of people we know — or think we know — well: Genghis Khan, John D. Rockefeller, Margaret Thatcher, and Deng Xiaoping. Others were new to me: the British Empire builder Robert Clive, the early technology entrepreneur Cyrus Field, and the European diplomat Jean Monnet. According to Mr. Garten, each “made the world smaller and more interconnected.” The framework, the author further explains, is essential because “understanding the central personalities of our past constitutes the flesh and blood of history.”

Mr. Garten gets right to the heart of the tension in the opening chapter, on Genghis Khan, the brutal conqueror who opened the trade routes across China, the Middle East, and the Indian Ocean to establish what became known as the Silk Road. Mr. Garten notes, “His life reflects the two sides of globalization — the dislocation and destruction that it can inflict and the peace, modernization, and prosperity that it can create.”

John D. Rockefeller also personified the complexities associated with global expansion and economic inequality. Mr. Garten describes Rockefeller as a hard-driving “pioneer and predator.” He built Standard Oil and manipulated the railroads in pursuit of his monopoly. The tables turned on Rockefeller in the 1890s when the Progressives won a big victory with the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act to punish the trusts that controlled tobacco, steel, sugar, and other industries. Standard Oil and Rockefeller himself became targets of public anger. 

Shortly thereafter, Rockefeller started to give away his money, becoming one of the world’s most generous philanthropists. “One can be forgiven for thinking that John was two men, one obsessed with making money, the other with giving it away; one the master of rapacious corporate tactics to slay competitors, the other dedicated to improving conditions for humanity.”

In the chapter on Margaret Thatcher, the author brings the Iron Lady to life. Mr. Garten claims Thatcher’s greatest achievement was not being the first woman to become prime minister of Great Britain, but that she “exceeded this distinction by becoming the world’s most important advocate for freeing trade and investment from government control, selling off state-owned companies to the private sector, weakening labor unions, and in general allowing markets to link with one another to cross borders and build a web of connections that became — and remains — the major force of globalization.” 

I wonder what Prime Minister Thatcher would make of the recent vote by the British public to exit the European Union. And I shudder to think what the Iron Lady would think of the recently elected second female prime minister, Theresa May — a fellow Conservative with a populist tone and antibusiness rhetoric. There are several moments in “From Silk to Silicon” when the past echoes in the present as the arguments for and against globalization continue to reverberate.

The final portrait is of Deng Xiaoping and his tumultuous journey through modern Chinese history. Deng lived and worked in the shadow of Mao Zedong, at times in Mao’s favor and other moments in exile. Deng was a veteran of the Long March and the Chinese Revolution, but wound up under house arrest during the Cultural Revolution. Deng orchestrated an amazing comeback late in life, rising to top positions in the government and ultimately becoming Communist Party leader, China’s most powerful figure, from the 1970s through 1997. 

Mr. Garten identifies Deng as a pivotal figure. “Deng was obsessed with science, technology, and education. . . . He supported increased budgets and better working conditions for researchers. In a sharp departure from Mao, he encouraged more Chinese students to study abroad, and more contact between Chinese and Western scientists. To make his modernization priorities clear, Deng built trips to the West around visits to companies such as Boeing and IBM.”

Throughout the book, one marvels at Mr. Garten’s objectivity, though suspects he is a globalization proponent. That perspective does not prevent him from laying bare globalization’s most horrific elements: “It started slowly enough with the kidnapping of a few African natives, then progressed to bartering with tribal leaders, exchanging Portuguese linen, silver, and wheat for African men, women, and children. On the morning of August 8, 1444, the first cargo of 235 Africans, taken from what is now Senegal, were delivered to the Portuguese port of Lagos. Historians say this is when modern slavery began.” 

One cannot help but notice that Mr. Garten’s history of international commercial activity was — as the elite business world is today — largely the purview of men. Nine of the 10 individuals he profiles are men. All blurbs of praise on the book jacket are from men. There are few female voices.

Male-dominated voices aside, there is little to criticize in “From Silk to Silicon” and much to praise — especially the way in which Mr. Garten is a natural teacher. He educates his reader about economic and foreign policy, bringing us along without an ounce of condescension. You can almost hear the excitement in his voice as he describes each scene with enthusiasm, as if he were discovering these details for the first time.

“From Silk to Silicon” was 10 years in the making, and yet the timing is perfect. The conflict between economic growth and growing inequality makes this book absolutely of the moment. The profiles through history offer current insights into other contemporary quagmires, from environmental pressures to immigration and refugee upheaval. 

In the final chapter, Mr. Garten reviews some common traits among his 10 subjects. “Each had missionary-like faith in what they were attempting to do,” he writes. These leaders also “swam with the stream rather than against it.” They capitalized on the moment. And Mr. Garten expresses surprise at “just how deep in the nitty-gritty most of my subjects waded.” 

Fortitude, good timing, and command of the details could be equally good descriptors for Mr. Garten himself.

Jeffrey E. Garten is dean emeritus at the Yale School of Management. He lives part time in East Hampton.

Sally Susman is a regular book reviewer for The Star. She lives in Manhattan and Sag Harbor.