Author: Alice Burton

Described as a “radically inclusive, intersectional, and transnational approach” to women’s rights, written by an American Muslim woman, attorney, and political philosopher. This centers women of color and is a “counter-manifesto to white feminism’s global, long-standing affinity with colonial, patriarchal, and white supremacist ideals.” This is part of a literature of recent work that notes the importance of decentering white women — particularly upper middle class white women — from feminism and from being seen as the de facto leaders of the movement.

This makes you reexamine or even just examine what we can take for granted, but which comes at the price of someone else’s safety, physically and, I’m gonna say it, spiritually. It looks at jobs that “society considers essential but morally compromised,” like drone pilots, prison guards, and slaughterhouse workers, and how the majority of Americans are shielded from the ethically troubling work we expect unnamed others to do.

While Afghanistan borders the Middle East, this short (less than 250 pages) read can maybe be something of a background on the region for those of us shielded from the on-the-ground realities of what is happening. El Baghdadi and Gatnash “tell the story of the modern Middle East as a series of broken promises. They chart the entrenchment of tyranny, terrorism and foreign intervention, showing how these systems of oppression simultaneously feed off and battle each other.”

This feels a little like the vibe of The Nanny Diaries, but instead of a nanny, it’s a tutor. They’re still talking about “the inner circle of New York’s richest families” though, so if you’re looking for something escapist and to I guess learn some kind of thing about how it’s hard to be rich (but probably not that hard), here y’go. It’s under 200 pages!

It’s like a Mary Roach deep dive, but into taxidermy! Journalist Milgrom goes from “the anachronistic family workshop of the last chief taxidermist for the American Museum of Natural History to the studio where an English sculptor, granddaughter of a surrealist artist, preserves the animals for Damien Hirst’s most disturbing artworks.” And beyond! Obviously I bought this. How could you not.

This university press American women’s suffrage history book is apparently not the first thing you’d maybe reach for. BUT. This is the story of Adella Hunt Logan, a Black suffragist who “taught at Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute but also joined the segregated woman suffrage movement, passing for white in order to fight for the rights of people of color.” Alexander is Logan’s granddaughter, and she grew up hearing her family refer to Tuskegee as “the Hither Isles.”

I have multiple histories of Germany. One is because it has a very fun cover (Germania) and this one because it promises up front that it’s gonna be short. It asks questions like how Roman did Germania ever become? How did Prussia come about (and whatever happened to Prussia)? And more modern questions, but I like things before people stopped wearing fun hats.

I have a lot of books about the history of women in America! They are on some of my “no, we can’t donate books in this genre” shelves. I’m proud of this one because it feels like a deep cut of the work of Daina Ramey Berry, also known for co-authoring A Black Women’s History of the United States. No, you’re right, a real deep cut would be 2007’s “Swing the Sickle for the Harvest is Ripe”: Gender and Slavery in Antebellum Georgia. I don’t have that one. YET. But this one “shows the lengths to which enslavers would go to maximize profits and protect their investments.” Berry researched this for over ten years! And she “resurrects the voices of the enslaved and provides a rare window into enslaved peoples’ experiences and thoughts, revealing how enslaved people recalled and responded to being appraised, bartered, and sold throughout the course of their lives.”

Did you know they used clamshell razors in colonial America? And that at least 85% of American women regularly remove hair from their bodies? Historian Herzig examines what’s up with that. She also shows how over time, mainstream American beliefs about visible hair changed, and how its existence — “particularly on young, white women—came to be perceived as a sign of political extremism, sexual deviance, or mental illness.” Wow! That seems bad. We should probably think about that more.

After the unexpected death of an in-law, Buist “decided to confront death head-on by visiting seven death festivals around the world.” She goes to Mexico, Nepal, Sicily, Thailand, Madagascar, Japan, and Indonesia (they seem to throw in New Orleans as a bonus site), looking for “the answers to both fundamental and unexpected questions around death anxiety.” As someone who reads a bunch of Caitlin Doughty books, I’m glad more people are writing about death and the way cultures respond to it. America is overall bad at it! Let’s look at other places.

Get ready, m’nerds, because here’s a dive into New Orleans architecture (awwwww yeah). The Creole architecture of New Orleans is iconic, but what about the people behind it? Dudley “examines the architectural activities and influence of gens de couleur libres—free people of color—in a city where the mixed-race descendants of whites could own property.” Not specific enough? She also writes “an intimate microhistory of two prominent families of Black developers, the Dollioles and Souliés.” So neat! So historical.

This book, with a foreword by Kiese Laymon, explores the intersections of “Blackness, gender, fatness, health, and the violence of policing.” Harrison is a a fat, Black, disabled, and nonbinary trans writer who examines anti-fatness as anti-Blackness, and offers strategies for “dismantling denial, unlearning the cultural programming that tells us ‘fat is bad,’ and destroying the world as we know it, so the Black fat can inhabit a place not built on their subjugation.”

OCEAN LINERS. So vast. So oceanic. This feels very crafted to appeal to the Titanic viewer, with emphases on class differences and experiences between decks (and yes, of course they talk about the Titanic and “The Unsinkable Stewardess” aboard her). Ocean liners occupy a very particular stretch of time in world history. I admit to being jealous of the people who got to experience them and pretend they were living out Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (is there a version of that where I end up with Jane Russell?). I’ve been psyched about this one for a while, and now it’s out!

I just read something (maybe on Twitter?) that was worrying about the defanging of Baldwin the way the culture has done so with Martin Luther King, Jr. Given his recent resurgence in popularity and the spreading of out-of-context quotes, this feels possible. So read him in context! Originally written in 1963, The Fire Next Time contains two essays: “My Dungeon Shook: Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation” and “Down at the Cross: Letter from a Region of My Mind.” It’s a modern classic AND only 130 pages.

What motivates the human tendency to construct Others? Why does the presence of Others make us so afraid? Toni Morrison is here to get into those and other Giant Questions, delivered as part of a lecture series. Sections include “Romancing Slavery,” “Being or Becoming the Stranger,” and “Narrating the Other,” among others. She “looks at configurations of blackness, notions of racial purity, and the ways in which literature employs skin color to reveal character or drive narrative.” Ta-Nehisi Coates writes the foreword.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Dillard “explores and celebrates moments of spirituality, dipping into descriptions of encounters with flora and fauna, stars, and more, from Ecuador to Miami.” The reviews on this are people basically going into ecstasies over her writing about nature. I like that the first essay is “Living Like Weasels.” And it’s just over 200 pages! So short.

Okay, I have three words for you: Katherine. Mansfield. Tourism. Young grew up in New Zealand and writes about her youth, “fantasizing about Paul McCartney, cheering on her older brother’s fledging music career, and yearning for a larger and more creative life.” Then we go onto things like the Mansfield fandom. This is about 250 pages, so a BIT longer, but it’s also a more sort of literary nonfiction, if you’re not feeling the “facts, only facts” urge.

You know about horse girls. They’re the ones who would pretend to be horses at slumber parties and jump over a pile of pillows. Or maybe that was just me and my friends. ANYWAY, this collection of essays written by self-professed horse girls includes Carmen Maria Machado, Jane Smiley, and Sarah Enelow-Snyder, who writes about growing up as a Black barrel racer in central Texas. I love essay collections by an assortment of people! Psyched about this one.

Hwang Sok-yong is a South Korean novelist and activist. In 1989, he traveled to Pyongyang, then went into voluntary exile in New York, and when he finally returned to South Korea, he “was sentenced to five years in the Seoul Detention Center” for breach of national security. This is his memoir, written at age 78, which covers his childhood, his life “as a young activist protesting South Korea’s military dictatorships, as a soldier in the Vietnam War, as a dissident writer first traveling abroad” and more.

A WASP, or White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, is defined as “a member of the privileged, established white upper middle class in the U.S.” or, as Urban Dictionary puts it, “this usually refers to affluent people in the new england area, but also whites of ‘old money’ in other areas throughout the country.” Here they are referred to as the American aristocracy (probably true) and Beran traces them from the nineteenth century to the death of George H.W. Bush in 2018. Here are the Roosevelts, the Kennedys, their frequently disaffected lives, and how they impacted the culture.

You’ve probably heard about inflammation and how we’re supposed to be dealing with it. Patel and Marya’s new book “illuminates the hidden relationships between our biological systems and the profound injustices of our political and economic systems.” Yes! Our endocrine system and our trauma. They are LINKED (according to this book; I myself know nothing). If you’re interested in medicine, anatomy, OR injustice, check this out.

Two-time Olympian Felicien is a retired hurdler from Canada. Wow, hurdling. Running is hard enough, but let’s add jumping over things to that. I looked up the height of Olympic hurdles, and it is 3’6″, which is 67% of my height. In her memoir, Felicien talks about her mother’s immigration to Canada from St. Lucia, and how despite the many obstacles they faced as a family, her mother Catherine pulled them through.

Yeah, like I’m doing an Olympian list of books and NOT including this one. This is about the University of Washington rowing team that represented the United States at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin (the same games where Jesse Owens won FOUR GOLD MEDALS). It details their backgrounds, their growing up during the Great Depression, and how they beat Italy and Germany to win gold.

Thorpe was the first Native American to win a gold medal for the United States in the Olympics, winning TWO gold medals at the 1912 Olympics for classic pentathlon and decathlon. He also played football, baseball, and basketball. He grew up in the Sac and Fox Nation, and after his Olympic wins, played with the New York Giants baseball team (yes, baseball) and played professionally for six seasons! You might have seen the story floating around the internet that someone stole his shoes before the decathlon. He found a mismatched pair of shoes, competed in them, and won gold. Amazing.

Robinson was the winner of the first Olympic 100 meter dash for women at the 1928 Summer Olympics. This history encompasses her career, as well as that of early Olympians like Babe Didrikson (won “two gold medals in track and field at the 1932 Summer Olympics, before turning to professional golf and winning 10 LPGA major championships”[x]) and Stella Walsh (represented Poland at the 1932 Olympics in the 100 m dash and won gold).

Does anyone else confuse Michael Palin with Michael Pollan? It’s easy to! Especially if you grew up hearing the former go “I’m Michael Palin! And you’re watching Comedy Central!” but with a British accent where Palin sounded like “Polin” for some reason. Ok anyway, for some time I thought the guy from Monty Python wrote nature books, and he does not (but he IS a travel writer). This book looks at “three plant-based drugs — opium, mescaline and caffeine” and how they appear in world culture, as well as their bodily effects.

The recent assault on voting rights makes me pretty emo about this one. This is a “brilliant and empowering collection of final reflections and words of wisdom from venerable civil rights champion, the late Congressman John Lewis at the end of his remarkable life.” Each section pivots around the word “on.” On Love, On Marriage, On Immigration, On Forgiveness. It sounds like a declaration (“on, forgiveness!”), and now I am even MORE emo.

I don’t know how I missed this one! Look at that AMAZING cover. Brady-Davis is a trans advocate who grew up in the Omaha, Nebraska foster care system and the Pentecostal faith. Here, she “speaks to anyone who has ever tried to find their place in this world and imparts the wisdom that comes with surmounting odds and celebrating on the other side.” Times are hard and this is exactly the sort of book we should have out there.

Well, this one’s just fun. And a university press book! The Belle Époque is basically the movie Moulin Rouge (French historians don’t @ me). You get the Bohemian scene and Toulouse-Lautrec and ART and SCIENCE. Plus, according to Wikipedia, “a period characterized by optimism, regional peace, economic prosperity, colonial expansion, and technological, scientific, and cultural innovations.” So vaguely like the ’90s, except not that. Also we weren’t optimistic in the ’90s, we were shielded by a thick layer of cynicism and a refusal to be vulnerable. But anyway! Learn about an in-retrospect Golden Age that took place from approximately 1871-1914!

Did you see The Other Boleyn Girl? It made me so mad! It basically took every rumor about Anne Boleyn and said “sure, why not.” Well here, Nolan is out to break down those lies and talk about “the shocking suppression of a powerful woman.” Also this cover’s pretty solid. I’m a fan. Learn some facts about the most famous of the Tudor wives!

I know close to nothing about sports, so I thought this was a medical memoir, but turns out, Dwight Gooden is a baseball player! A baseball player who mainly played in the ’80s and ’90s. This is a memoir of “talent, addiction, and recovery from one of the greatest baseball pitchers of all time.”

Sometimes I’m just like “sure, why not” about a new release. Searcy goes “from the decaying architectural wonder that is the town of Arcosanti, Arizona, to driving the vast, open Texas highway in his much-abused college VW Beetle,” which sounds a lot like a holdover book from the ’60s, but maybe we need a book about a person going on a meandering trip and contemplating life during these times. Times are weird.

Two journalism professors tackle what is happening with journalists in Mexico. Namely, it is a very hard thing to be right now. Since 2000, over 150 journalists have been killed in Mexico, and Bustamente and Relly “examine the networks of political power, business interests, and organized crime that threaten and attack Mexican journalists, who forge ahead despite the risks.” Their book highlights a crisis that, despite its proximity, is little known in America.

I know, there are a lot of serious reads this week! I don’t know what to tell you; publishers looked at mid-July and said “that’s it. The heart of summer. Release the solemn books.” I would like to point out that this one is short (208 pages) and covers something important — namely “how student protest against structural inequalities on campus pushes academic institutions to reckon with their legacy built on slavery and stolen Indigenous lands.” Keep protesting, students!

Yes, it’s the Little Prince guy! This is one of the rare cases where the English title is more poetic than the French (Terre des hommes? Land of Men? no thank you, please). This primarily contains stories of Saint-Exupéry’s time as an airmail carrier, flying across the Sahara Desert and the Andes Mountains. This includes his crash in the Sahara, which is most definitely included in The Little Prince. I love books from the 1920s/1930s. And I didn’t know this one existed!

Yeah, like I’m gonna see a book from almost sixty years ago about oysters and not include it in this list. Look at the beginning of the description: “On the northwest coast of France, just around the corner from the English Channel, is the little town of Locmariaquer.” It sounds like a fairytale! But one with oysters! This is not only about the Belon oysters of Locmariaquer, but also about Brittany and its people.

It’s a history of the Hemings family! Yes, the family that includes Sally Hemings. And look, I’m not THAT old and I still remember when it was kind of big news that Jefferson exploited/sexually-assaulted-due-to-the-power-imbalance Hemings. Here, Gordon-Reed “traces the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family’s dispersal after Jefferson’s death in 1826.” Fair warning that this book is over 900 pages long. But probably a lot of that is endnotes! A bonus of nonfiction: it’s usually not as long as you think it is.

The most recent winner! It also won the 2021 Pulitzer. Les Payne passed in 2018, but he was a storied journalist who co-founded the National Association of Black Journalists. He spent almost thirty years on this book, which was finished by his daughter Tamara. Payne wanted to “transform what would become over a hundred hours of interviews into an unprecedented portrait of Malcolm X, one that would separate fact from fiction.” Based on the number of awards and laudatory statements this has received, it appears he succeeded.