New Yorker Briefly Noted: Four Book Reviews

The New Yorker's Briefly Noted section reviews four books. 'Death of the Soccer God' by Dimitry Elias Léger is a historical picaresque about Haitian identity, following fictional soccer prodigy Gilbert Chevalier from Port-au-Prince to Columbia University, where he rooms with Miles Davis and consorts with John Coltrane, then leads the US to a 1950 World Cup upset of England in Brazil, meeting a nine-year-old Pelé, before returning to Haiti and clashing with President François Duvalier. 'Nebraska' by Monica Datta is an ambitious novel about a mother, Anna Chatterjee, who kills her disabled son by pushing his wheelchair in front of a train; the story is recounted by a Bengali analyst interpreting records from another analyst connected to Chatterjee's two living children, exploring colonial forces on the unconscious. 'Muskism' by Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff examines Elon Musk's philosophy across Tesla, SpaceX, and DOGE, arguing it is a creed of 'sovereignty through technology' that could shape the future amid institutional breakdown. 'Spawning Season' by Joseph Osmundson is a memoir by a microbiologist about his efforts to become a father as a queer man unable to afford surrogacy or adoption, interwoven with a narrative of salmon reproducing in warming waters, questioning biological fitness in Western society.