René Blum & The Ballets Russes: In Search of a Lost Life (Oxford University Press), by Judith Chazin-Bennahum

René Blum may not have been one of the great 20th-century cultural figures, but as shown in the first biography of the writer, editor and impresario, he worked with several of them and knew many more. The brother of France's socialist prime minister, Leon Blum, René was a man of meticulous taste, an advocate of modern art and popular culture. The announced focus of Judith Chazin-Bennahum's biography is his role in resuscitating the Ballets Russes after the death of Serge Diaghilev in 1929, but the number and diversity of Blum's projects make it hard to see any one tree through the forest of his accomplishments. Blum was caught in the Nazi dragnet after the fall of France and died at Auschwitz, cutting short a remarkable life.