Who are you, anyway? It's a simple question. Just complete a name tag at the welcome table and you'll be fine, right? But behind that fig leaf there's a freshet of complications, contradictions and still other questions of identity, not least of which is: Who gets to decide?
A handful of notable books coming out this week, each in its own way, offer stabs at an explanation — or, at least a deeper understanding of the questions involved. As different as their approaches may be — ranging from tribal politics to close-focus mystery, from measured criticism to one, um, intimaterelationship with airplanes — these books all end up tangled in the knotty (occasionally naughty) conundrum of how we define ourselves.
