Author: Alice Burton

“But Alice,” you say, “hasn’t this been out for thirty years?” Yes! But now, this 1990 music memoir has a new postscript by the late Ronnie Spector. Spector’s book covers her time as lead singer of the Ronettes (who sing the eponymous excellent song) and her emotionally abusive marriage to music producer Phil Spector. Rolling Stone named this one of the best rock memoirs of all time, and there are so many of those!

Trilobites!! So many of them in the past. So weird. They lived from over 500 million years ago (again, Neanderthals were around like…35,000 years ago) to over 250 million years ago. They were alive so long ago but also alive for so long! You can find their fossils in Siberia, Morocco, Australia. This tells their history and has hundreds of photos of them. The author is a “field associate in paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History” and personally owns more than 4,000 trilobite fossils. Again — there’s someone for every interest.

Ooo this is all about what it’s like to be a Myanmar person, in yet another interesting release from Catapult. Pyae looks at the “knots and complications of immigration status, eating habits, Western feminism in an Asian home, and more, guiding us toward an expansive idea of what it means to be a Myanmar woman today.” Also things like “the patriarchal Myanmar concept of hpone which governs how laundry is done,” and just, dang. Catapult is definitely a newer press and they keep publishing things I want to read.

From the author of The Hidden Life of Trees comes another book about trees. Hurray! As the title says, this is about walking in the forest and learning “how to be a forest detective.” Forest detective! It tells you how to understand the nature around you and awaken to “the ancient past and thrilling present of the ecosystem around you.” I love it.

Extremely acclaimed actress Viola Davis tells her story of growing up in poverty with an abusive and alcoholic father, being inspired by Cicely Tyson, finding her feet in acting, and fighting against the harmful, stereotypical roles offered her by Hollywood. We talked about this on For Real and can you believe the breadth of Davis’s work? As Kim suggested, this is probably going to be great on audio.

Author Lim was raised in Hong Kong with Chinese and English parents. After being a reporter there for over ten years, she writes a history of the city, including “the British takeover in 1842, the negotiations over the 1997 return to China, and the future Beijing seeks to impose.” Also she talks about guerrilla calligraphers? Which is so cool.

A history of gender and sexuality in Native North America! “Two-Spirits” is “an umbrella term denoting feminine and masculine qualities in one person.” When Europeans came to America and forced changes to the Indigenous ways of life, this cultural understanding was at risk of disappearing. Smithers traces its history from early Spanish invasion to the present day. Another excellent release from Beacon Press!

Is the only peanut fact you know about George Washington Carver? Ok, well in Jori Lewis’s super interesting book, she looks at how the demand from the European soap industry for peanut oil extended slavery in West Africa into the twentieth (yes, twentieth) century. It’s about enslavement and imperialism and plants and I love this cover v much.

Ok, I have to use a quote from the author for this: “When I tell people who don’t speak Spanish what prieta means–dark or the dark one–their eyes pop open and a small gasp escapes … How do I tell them that now, even after the cruelty of children, Prieta means love? That each time Prieta fell from my grandmother’s lips, I learned to love my dark skin.” This is a memoir that covers Ramírez’s return home to Texas and mourning of her grandmother. What I’ve read of it, I love.

Historian Manjapra studies transnationalism, race, and colonialism. His latest focuses on emancipation, detailing five types, starting in the 1770s and going through the 1880s. These include “the Gradual Emancipations of North America, the Revolutionary Emancipation of Haiti, the Compensated Emancipations of European overseas empires, the War Emancipation of the American South, and the Conquest Emancipations that swept across Sub-Saharan Africa.” However, none of these “required atonement for wrongs committed, or restorative justice for the people harmed.” Sometimes you can see the solution or even just the failings of something by looking at historical patterns, and Manjapra lays the pattern out here.

This is one those me picks. It starts in 1719! 132 women (called “cassette girls”) were sent from France to towns and villages bordering the Mississippi River. These women were “falsely accused of sex crimes” and sent as prisoners to provide women for the new colonies after being pulled from orphanages, workhouses, and prisons. Of 132 women, 62 survived, or only 47%. This is the story of how they got to America and what they did when they got there.

DDT! Originally it was meant to save lives during WWII by killing the insects that spread disease. When its harmful effects were widely publicized by Rachel Carson and others, it was banned in 1972. Now it seems to be back? Conis tells the story of this harmful 20th century chemical in her book with its excellent, excellent cover.

New York Times Opinion editor Thottam tells the story of six Kentucky nuns who traveled to India in 1947 and built a hospital in Bihar, “an impoverished and isolated state in northern India that had been one of the bloodiest regions of Partition.” Thottam’s mother was trained by these women to become a nurse in the 1960s. This is the story of the women whose lives were changed by Nazareth Hospital.

This is so specific that I love it? Like, wow, they find 15 diverse women scientists who study earthquakes. This is just under 200 pages and for ages 12 and up (excellent). Check out stories like: “Dr. Debbie Weiser travels to communities post-disaster, such as Japan and China, to evaluate earthquake damage in ways that might help save lives during the next Big One. Geologist Edith Carolina Rojas climbs to the top of volcanoes or searches barren deserts for volcanic evidence to measure seismic activity. Geophysicist Lori Dengler works with governments to provide guidance and protection against future tsunamis.” We frequently talk on For Real about how there is someone who is interested in everything, and this not only highlights that super cool fact, but also shows young people potential careers in earthquake science. Hurray!

Apparently this person is on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and costar Erika Jayne (who is someone?) threw Beauvais’s book in the trash, which, if you do this on a reality show, might actually be a kind friendship thing to do since it results in book publicity like the above. Apparently her book is about being born in Haiti, immigrating to Boston, and eventually embarking on an acting career that included NYPD Blue (the ’90s!) and, now, “RHOBH.” This seems very fun if you watch this franchise! I asked my two friends who do to describe her and they said “icon” and “she’s perfect and probably too good and smart for the Real Housewives machine, but I’m thankful she’s a part of it.”

Teen nonfiction! Harts is an NYU professor and founder of The Memo, a career development company for women of color. In her book for teen women of color, she shares advice and anecdotes for finding your voice and making it be heard. It is “all about finding your own unique path to success—at school, at work, at home, and beyond.”

A food memoir! People love food memoirs, and rightly so, because they are great. This in particular talks about South Asian food (the author “keeps her parents’ memory alive through her Bengali food”) and the role food plays in the immigrant’s journey to their new home.

Meitner was a German Jewish scientist who discovered nuclear fission! Yep, she found out how to split the atom. Was her male lab partner rewarded by the Nobel committee? Yes. Was she? Of course not. This falls under the Abrams Young Readers imprint and features illustrations that explain Meitner’s life, work, and pacifism in the face of the use of her work for the atomic bomb.

If your school was like my school, you had to memorize a bunch of sixteenth century explorers and where they went and absolutely nothing about the consequences of their actions. Enter Ferdinand Magellan! The publisher describes this as “a study in failure” and says that Magellan was “focused less on circumnavigating the world or cornering the global spice market than on exploiting Filipino gold.” If you want to find out the researched truth about one of the famed explorers, check this out.

Newton’s ancestors demonstrate what can at the least be called a colorful history. In this delve into hereditary traits, genetics, and more, she looks into how much we might be influenced by those who came before us, how intergenerational trauma might come into play, and “modernity’s dismissal of ancestors.” Which is legit! This is Newton’s first book and it looks fascinating.

Musician and writer Henry shares how he became an activist and how he was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. As the subtitle might suggest, Henry discovered that many white friends and colleagues “were more interested in debating whether racism existed or whether Henry was being polite enough in the way he used his voice.” His work now is focused on social justice and nonviolent social change.

I love a collection, and this one shares twelve stories highlighting parts of the immigrant experience, including exploitation by employers, a frequent inability to get a driver’s license, difficulty obtaining healthcare, among other issues.