Frank Uwe Laysiepen (1943-2020), better known by the sobriquet Ulay, was a German-born photographer and artist who in 1976 perpetrated one of the most audacious and celebrated art thefts in modern history, albeit as an act of performance art. In this rather uneven account, a triptych of that event, principal author Charney attempts to place the theft, Ulay’s career, and his professional and personal relationship with fellow artist Abramović in the context of classical aesthetics and to assay whether the theft was in fact a crime at all, since the painting in question was returned unharmed, Ulay’s political and cultural statement having been made. Including brief, meandering, and, alas, leaden accounts by Ulay and Abramović themselves, Charney, an art historian and personal friend, also makes a case for the “Berlin lifting” (as the theft was called) as an enduring work of art. Arguably, Charney interprets aesthetic ideas to validate his judgment, but he is not wholly convincing—or unbiased. It’s even debatable whether Ulay’s famous act was genuinely significant—outside a narrow, rarefied slice of the art world. Ulay himself resisted calling it art, preferring to call it an aktion (action) aimed at exposing the disconnect between what is revered as art and what is neglected in society, such as the poor or marginalized, as well as what Ulay saw as the suffocating institutionalization of art. That said, Charney cannot be faulted for adding that the theft “gives us, briefly, a vision of what art can still dare to be: not just beautiful but bold, dangerous, and alive.” Yet the real strength of the book—a monograph, actually—rests not in Charney’s championing of Ulay, but in his wider historical and critical analysis.

Plants make rain, writes ecologist Gaudet, author of The Pharaoh’s Treasure: The Origin of Paper and the Rise of Western Civilization (2018). Forty percent or more of precipitation over land originates through evaporation from plants and trees. When vegetation is cleared, evaporation plummets, seasons come later, temperatures rise, and rainfall diminishes. Ten thousand years ago, the Sahara bloomed because the end of the last ice age—combined with changes in Earth’s axis—warmed the planet and increased rainfall. As the axis cycle continued, temperatures continued to increase, rainfall diminished, and by 3,000 years ago, the Sahara had dried up. Greenhouse gases filling the atmosphere over the past century have interrupted the cycle, which would ultimately have restored the Sahara, but the accompanying disordered weather increased rainfall in northern Africa, persuading some experts, Gaudet included, that reviving the Sahara is worth a try. The author embraces green technology and massive, climate-altering projects, arguing that these will jump-start the return of tolerable weather worldwide. Desalinizing has grown cheap enough to beget extensive, desalinization plants in every Saharan nation for drinking water and irrigation. Egypt’s Qattara Depression has long fascinated engineers who propose a pipeline from the Mediterranean to create a huge inland sea to cool the desert and support a large population. Once huge, Lake Chad is almost dry, but a canal from the Congo River basin carrying water over a thousand miles could revive it. Money and politics are the only barriers. Gaudet mildly approves an ongoing mega-project—the Great Green Wall, aiming to plant billions of trees across North Africa—but has more faith in a spreading practice among locals who have adopted farmer-managed natural regeneration that does not clear trees for crops but preserves and fosters them, enriching the soil. His surprisingly nonapocalyptic conclusion adds that carbon dioxide nourishes plants, and rising levels from global warming already produce significant greening of vegetation over much of the planet.

The co-authors—a pediatrician and a sports journalist—take a widely used metaphor to its limits. They use many elements of or situations common to the two related games as opportunities to lecture readers about the virtues of discipline, consistency, respect, making good choices, learning from mistakes, staying positive, and following rules. These are solid principles—but along with being largely expressed as slogans (“Give 110 Percent”) or platitudes, they’re packed into short, numbered entries that for all the boldface titling soon begin to run together. Moreover, the baseball-bromide connection turns tenuous at times: “Switch-Hitting,” for example, cautions against reckless behavior; “The Check Swing” promotes the importance of keeping promises (“The more you check your swing, the more likely you are to strike out with those depending on you”); and “First and Third” includes a warning about online scams. Even if the overall approach is upbeat, these wearyingly earnest pep talks are unlikely to reach base. Although the co-authors directly address readers as “young adults like you,” the tone of the writing is unlikely to appeal to contemporary teens: “The older kids at school may seem cool, but some of their habits and behaviors may be better to avoid than to imitate.”

Subways are few and far between in North America, but those who’ve ridden them find doing so a visceral experience—the close quarters and unique tableaux of subterranean travel. It’s a thrill, a feast for the senses, a uniquely strange assembly of people of all ages and many walks of life. Gladstone captures the unflagging, ever-moving hum of a subway journey with the refrain of “my subway runs”—it runs under the city; it runs fast; it runs “straight out through the sky!” The train stops at Union Station (presumably in Toronto), where the brown-skinned young protagonist’s mother applies for jobs at the station’s many restaurants. Still, the child knows, the train runs even after the pair have disembarked, even after the little one is fast asleep. In addition to evoking the little one’s affectionate ownership of this mode of transportation, Gladstone aptly conveys the physical sensations of subway travel: the sounds of wind from the tunnels and screeching train wheels, the crush of bodies as passengers shove their way on board. Pratt’s painterly illustrations, expanding upon the experiences detailed in Gladstone’s text, depict a rich parade of humanity: tall, short, impeccably dressed, fast asleep, aboard a busy train line—a vibrant vision of city life.

Jess Cole is struggling to find investors for her startup, Wyst, a company that focuses on women’s physical- and mental-health issues and access to care. She suspects the problem has more to do with the fact that she’s a woman rather than her business plans. To complicate matters, she was previously at the heart of a workplace scandal when a colleague she was dating spread around intimate photos, and the tech world has proven to be a rather small community. In a last-ditch effort to make her dreams come true, Jess enters TechRumble, a competition to fund budding startups—and convinces her twin brother, Spencer, to pose as the company’s founder while she goes undercover as Violet, his assistant. While things start to look up for the future of Wyst, Jess has a hard time reining Spencer in, and she worries that he’s inadvertently jeopardizing everything by courting the competition judges with promises she can’t possibly fulfill. Oliver Kavanagh works as the assistant to the competition’s wealthy host. He and Jess (as Violet) bond rather quickly and cutely morph from friends to lovers. Working as his cousin’s assistant isn’t the career he wants, and he eventually comes to realize what his professional dreams actually are. Jess’ deception hangs over the story, as she’s potentially sabotaged the sole reason she entered TechRumble in the first place, creating wonderful tension that drives most of the book’s momentum. Jess and Oliver’s romance is simply fine. It’s sweet but slow, and Oliver lacks extra oomph as the leading man.