Drawing attention

More cultural but no less bubbly is Maira Kalman’s “And the Pursuit of Happiness,” clearly written in the initial bloom of the Obama presidency. A childlike, guileless celebration of the United States, it shouts Kalman’s belief in this country’s ability to reinvent itself. Kalman tours landmarks like Gettysburg, Monticello, and Mount Vernon, explaining and exploring how democracy works and evolved here. Kalman’s tour seamlessly goes from macro — the government in Washington — to micro — a town hall meeting in Newfane, Vt. To illustrate her lesson in civics, she alternates painting, with pen and ink, and photographs (my favorite: the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn). A delightful book that reminds us what there is about America that is indeed beautiful.

By contrast, Seth Tobocman’s “Understanding the Crash,” produced with Eric Laursen, a contributor to The Nation, and Jessica Wehrle, homes in on the late-2008 recession that still defines this country’s economy. Anything but optimistic, it’s appropriately rendered in black and white and, like Kalman’s book, represents a sharp history lesson. Tobocman’s illustrations are pointed, large, and stark, evocative of propaganda posters of the ’50s. He focuses on the collapse of neighborhoods in his native Cleveland and in Miami; he blames the former on subprime mortgages, the latter on the speculative stock market and the deregulation craze Ronald Reagan launched. This sobering, dramatic book effectively swirls lefty economics, history, and politics to attack the lack of scaffolding in George W. Bush’s vaunted and failed “ownership society.”