Usually the words introducing this weekly summary of Wall Street Journal book reviews would be signed “C.C.” That was Chris Carduff, who edited our Books section for six years until he died on Monday after a brief illness at age 66. Chris usually focused on one of the book reviews in the newsletter and reflected on its importance, or perhaps on the author. He was always instructive.

When I offered Chris the job as Books editor in 2017, I knew he had long experience as an editor at the Library of America and other places. I also knew he had a vast store of literary knowledge, having nurtured the publication of many classics. He was the publishing consultant to the John Updike literary trust and was shepherding the publication of Updike’s letters when he died.

What I didn’t know then, but came to appreciate, was the tremendous dedication he would bring to the job. He literally let no sentence go uninspected. He took pride in every review. Chris also had a generous and collaborative spirit that made him a pleasure to work with. He made a great contribution to the Journal and its readers, and my colleagues and I will do our best to carry on his considerable legacy.

Paul A. Gigot
Editorial Page Editor

Bar Exam: In October 1906, along the Oregon coast, a four-masted sailing ship named the Peter Iredale was fast approaching the mouth of the Columbia, on its way up the river to Portland. But stiff winds forced the barque ashore, where it became wedged in the sand. More than a century later, a portion of the shipwreck can be still seen emerging from the sands. The rusting steel skeleton is a haunting reminder of the dangers of the  “Graveyard of the Pacific.” This coastal area, which includes the perilous Columbia River Bar, is responsible for over 2,000 recorded wrecks. 

Mark Yost on “Graveyard of the Pacific: Shipwreck and Survival on America’s Deadliest Waterway” by Randall Sullivan. Read the review

Globalist: Leonora Carrington’s life was as unusual as her paintings. Born in England, she lived in Mexico for 70 years. She could have been a socialite, but ended up a Surrealist. Still, Carrington, who died in 2011, resisted identifying with that 20th-century movement. “I try not to think of myself as anything,” she once said.

Maxwell Carter on “Surreal Spaces: The Life and Art of Leonora Carrington” by Joanna Moorhead. Read the review

Harmony: “It is a great experience—this marriage!” wrote George Eliot to a friend. “All one’s notions of things before seem like the reading of a mystic inscription without the key.” Though the author of “Middlemarch” and other classic works of fiction was never legally married to her longtime partner George Henry Lewes, she found in their union an identity that had eluded her until then. Clare Carlisle’s biographical portrait highlights how Eliot’s “double life” served not to diminish her own creative powers, but to advance her singular genius.

Anna Mundow on “The Marriage Question: George Eliot’s Double Life” by Clare Carlisle. Read the review

1. The History of Clocks & Watches By Eric Bruton (1979)
2. The Universal History of Numbers By Georges Ifrah (1998)
3. Computing Before Computers By William Aspray (1990)
4. The Mysterious Affair at Olivetti By Meryle Secrest (2019)
5. The Man Behind the Microchip By Leslie Berlin (2005)

The Wall Street Journal bestseller list is compiled from data collected by Circana BookScan.