Good evening, all. I know, I know, I’ve been very lax about getting a new book review up each week. My schedule isn’t making it easy. I do hope to be posting reviews again soon, and thank you for your forbearance. Meanwhile, here is my selection of the top nonfiction being published this week.
In book news, bestselling novelist Jodi Picoult continues denouncing the book banning Republicans around the country. Under DeSantis’ law greenlighting schools to ban books, Martin County announced the removal of 96 titles from its high school libraries. Twenty of those 96 were Jodi Picoult novels. In this linked interview, Picoult says:
BENITEZ: Why do you think your books are getting banned, especially there in Florida?
PICOULT: That is an excellent question. But unfortunately, in Martin County, Florida, and in many places in Florida, one parent can decide to pull a book from a shelf without even giving a reason for that. And the one parent who wanted to ban all 20 of my books said on her form that she had not read the book, she admitted to that. And she said that some of them were adult romance, which is really interesting because I don't write adult romance. And, in fact, half of the books she pulled do not even have a single kiss in them. But they do have topics like gun rights and women's reproductive health rights and gay rights and things that make—
BENITEZ: Because all of your books are very topical. It's like what's happening in the moment.
PICOULT: Yeah, so they're books that are to encourage kids to think for themselves. They're at a high school library. It's worth saying that. This is not an elementary school library. And the modus operandi is to get the books pulled off the shelves, because the process for review is very muddy. And so the books stay off the shelves, away from kids, until they actually manage to figure out a way to review them. There are some libraries in Florida, actually, school libraries, where they have not had any books in elementary school libraries since Christmas.
On the other end of the spectrum, the sensitivity edits of new editions of old popular books continues. I’m not as outraged as I am by book banning, of course, but I do admit to a bit of annoyed ambivalence about it. A few weeks ago I posted about the edits of Roald Dahl’s books to remove words and references that might be construed as offensive nowadays (and, in a shrewd marketing move, Penguin Random House announced they will be publishing a 20-volume classic set of the original books.) Ian Fleming’s James Bond series has gotten similar treatment. Now, HarperCollins has decided to hire some ‘sensitivity readers’ to go through Agatha Christie’s mysteries to weed out words and descriptions offensive to modern mores.
On the one hand, I feel this is akin to the whitewashing of history. I would rather the original books continue to be available, but with additional material describing the social mores of the time in which the books were written. Along similar lines, I appreciate Turner Classic Movies for showing the unedited versions of movies, and discussing the problematical material before and after.
On the other hand, this really isn’t new. As the article about Agatha Christie points out, the famous Christie mystery And Then There Were None was originally widely published as Ten Little Indians, and most infamously, as Ten Little Niggers in Britain. I loved the Hardy Boys mystery book series in my 1960s boyhood, but I’m fully aware that the versions kids read today are substantially different from the ones I read. More recently, I’ve learned that the versions I read in the 1960s were themselves substantially rewritten from the originals written in the 1920s through 1950s. The originals not only had occasional distasteful references, but also darker plots in which law enforcement wasn’t always the good guys, and in which people drank and smoked.
The copyright infringement lawsuit against the Internet Archive, which I mentioned last week, ended with federal judge John G. Koeltl swiftly and emphatically ruling against the Archive:
“At bottom, IA’s fair use defense rests on the notion that lawfully acquiring a copyrighted print book entitles the recipient to make an unauthorized copy and distribute it in place of the print book, so long as it does not simultaneously lend the print book. But no case or legal principle supports that notion. Every authority points the other direction.”
Finally, this article offers a look at the current state of book publishing in Ukraine:
It’s now been more than a year since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, killing hundreds of thousands, sending millions into exile, and throwing the country’s publishing industry into disarray. The number of titles published in Ukraine was cut almost in half last year, dropping from 17,000 in 2021 to just under 9,000, according to the Ukrainian Book Institute (UBI), which collects data on the industry.
The war has been especially difficult on the printing sector, which is centered in Kharkiv and had a significant amount of infrastructure destroyed. As a result, the total number of books printed in Ukraine fell from 25.7 million in 2021 to 9.2 million in 2022.
THIS WEEK’S NEW HARDCOVERS
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The Long Reckoning: A Story of War, Peace, and Redemption in Vietnam, by George Black. George Black recounts the inspirational story of the small cast of characters—veterans, scientists, and Quaker-inspired pacifists, and their Vietnamese partners—who used their moral authority, scientific and political ingenuity, and sheer persistence to attempt to heal the horrors that were left in the wake of the military engagement in Southeast Asia, such as agent orange and unexploded munitions. Their intersecting story is one of reconciliation and personal redemption, embedded in a vivid portrait of Vietnam today, with all its startling collisions between past and present, in which one-time mortal enemies, in the endless shape-shifting of geopolitics, have been transformed into close allies and partners.The Long Reckoning is being published on the fiftieth anniversary of the day the last American combat soldier left Vietnam.
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Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, by Abraham Riesman. Even if you’ve never watched a minute of professional wrestling, you are living in Vince McMahon’s world.In his four decades as the defining figure of American pro wrestling, McMahon was the man behind Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, John Cena, Dave Bautista, Bret “The Hitman” Hart, and Hulk Hogan, to name just a few of the mega-stars who owe him their careers. Just as importantly, McMahon is one of Donald Trump’s closest friends—and Trump’s experiences as a performer in McMahon’s programming were, in many ways, a dress rehearsal for the 45th President’s campaigns and presidency. McMahon and his wife, Linda, are major Republican donors. Linda was in Trump’s cabinet. McMahon makes deals with the Saudi government worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
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Dismissed: Tackling the Biases That Undermine our Health Care, by Angela Marshall, with Kathy Palokoff. Here's the uncomfortable truth: Race, gender, sexual orientation, age, body size, income, and other cultural factors have a significant bearing on whether you will be diagnosed and treated correctly. The good news is regardless of whether you are a patient, healthcare provider, or administrator, there are steps you can take today to combat medical bias. The only book on this subject written by a primary care doctor who is a woman of color, Dismissed examines all forms of bias – those related to race and ethnicity, gender identity and sexual orientation, age, disabilities, obesity, and the increasing bias against science – instructing patients, doctors, and administrators alike on how we can all identify bias – and how we can all do better.
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Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society, by Dr. Arline T. Geronimus. America has woken up to what many of its citizens have known for centuries and to what public health statistics have evidenced for decades: systemic injustice takes a physical, too often deadly, toll on Black, brown, working class and poor communities, and any group who experiences systemic cultural oppression or economic exploitation. Marginalized Americans are disproportionately more likely to suffer from chronic diseases and to die at much younger ages than their middle- and upper-class white counterparts. Black mothers die during childbirth at a rate three times higher than white mothers. White kids in high-poverty Appalachian regions have a healthy life expectancy of 50 years old, while the vast majority of US youth can expect to both survive and be able-bodied at 50, with decades of healthy life expectancy ahead of them. In the face of such clear inequity, we must ask ourselves why this is, and what we can we do.
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Emotional Labor: The Invisible Work Shaping Our Lives and How to Claim Our Power, by Rose Hackman. A scathing, deeply-researched foray into the invisible, uncompensated work women perform every day. Nearly every day, women are forced to edit their emotions to accommodate and elevate the emotions of others. Too many of us are asked to perform this exhausting, draining work at no extra cost, especially if we’re women or people of color. Emotional labor is essential to our society and economy, but it’s so often invisible. In this groundbreaking, journalistic deep dive, Rose Hackman shares the stories of hundreds of women, tracing the history of this kind of work and exposing common manifestations of the phenomenon. But Hackman doesn’t simply diagnose a problem—she empowers us to combat this insidious force and forge pathways for radical evolution, justice, and change.
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Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope, by Sarah Bakewell. Humanism is an expansive tradition of thought that places shared humanity, cultural vibrancy, and moral responsibility at the center of our lives. The humanistic worldview—as clear-eyed and enlightening as it is kaleidoscopic and richly ambiguous—has inspired people for centuries to make their choices by principles of freethinking, intellectual inquiry, fellow feeling, and optimism.
This sweeping new history illuminates the very personal, individual, and, well, human matter of humanism and takes readers on a grand intellectual adventure. Voyaging from the literary enthusiasts of the fourteenth century to the secular campaigners of our own time, from Erasmus to Esperanto, from anatomists to agnostics, from Christine de Pizan to Bertrand Russell, and from Voltaire to Zora Neale Hurston, Bakewell brings together extraordinary humanists across history. She explores their immense variety: some sought to promote scientific and rationalist ideas, others put more emphasis on moral living, and still others were concerned with the cultural and literary studies known as “the humanities.” Humanly Possible asks not only what brings all these aspects of humanism together but why it has such enduring power, despite opposition from fanatics, mystics, and tyrants.
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Playing God: American Catholic Bishops and The Far Right, by Mary Jo McConahay. Seasoned Catholic journalist and former war correspondent Mary Jo McConahay tells the story of how the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops have become one of the most formidable and reactionary forces in America — by campaigning to alter democratic institutions under the guise of religious liberty, and allying with major right-wing contributors such as the Kochs.
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Gangbuster: One Man's Battle Against Crime, Corruption, and the Klan, by Alan Prendergast. At the height of the roaring 1920s, the ex-frontier town of Denver, Colorado, emerged from the postwar boom as the future of the American city. But the slick façade of progress and opportunity masked a murky stew of organized crime, elaborate swindles, and widespread government corruption. One man risked everything to alter the course of history. As gripping as it is prescient, Gangbuster is the first-ever history of the battle waged by one rookie District Attorney, Philip Van Cise, against the KKK, organized crime, and government corruption at the highest levels throughout the 1920s. One century later, in the face of contemporary society’s divisiveness and fearmongering politics, the personal courage of this maverick’s battle against underworld figures and a mainstream white supremacist movement is more relevant and inspiring than ever.
- Birdgirl: Looking to the Skies in Search of a Better Future, by Mya-Rose Craig. Birdgirl follows Mya-Rose and her family as they travel the world in search of rare birds and astonishing landscapes. But a shadow moves with them, too—her mother's deepening mental health crisis. In the face of this struggle, the Craigs turn to nature again and again for comfort and meaning.
Each bird they see brings a moment of joy and reflection, instilling in Mya-Rose a deep love of the natural world. But Mya-Rose has also seen first-hand the reckless destruction we are inflicting on our fragile planet, as well as the pervasive racism infecting every corner of the world, leading her to campaign for Black, Indigenous, people of color. Joining the fight of today's young environmental activists, Mya-Rose shares her experiences to advocate for the simple, profound gift of nature, and for making it accessible to all, calling her readers to rediscover the power of our natural world.
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Egg: A Dozen Ovatures, by Lizzie Stark. An unconventional history of the world’s largest cellular workhorse, from chickens to penguins, from art to crime, and more. The egg is a paradox—both alive and not alive—and a symbol as old as culture itself. In this wide-ranging and delightful journey through its natural and cultural history, Lizzie Stark explores the egg’s deep meanings, innumerable uses, and metabolic importance through a dozen dazzling specimens.
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Where We Meet the World: The Story of the Senses, by Ashley Ward. Our senses are what make life worth living. They allow us to appreciate a sip of an ice-cold drink, the sound of laughter, the touch of a lover. But only recently have incredible advances in sensory biology given us the ability to understand how and why our senses evolved as they have. In Where We Meet the World, biologist Ashley Ward takes readers on a breathtaking tour of how our senses function. Ward looks at not only the five major senses—vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch—but also a host of other senses, such as balance and interoception, the sense of the body’s internal state. Drawing on new research, he explores how our senses interact with and regulate each other, and he uncovers what we can learn from how other animals—and even bacteria—encounter the world.
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Spoken Word: A Cultural History, by Joshua Bennett. In 2009, when he was twenty years old, Joshua Bennett was invited to perform a spoken word poem for Barack and Michelle Obama, at the same White House "Poetry Jam" where Lin-Manuel Miranda declaimed the opening bars of a work-in-progress that would soon revolutionize American theater. That meeting is but one among many in the trajectory of Bennett's young life, as he rode the cresting wave of spoken word through the 2010s. In this book, he goes back to its roots, considering the Black Arts movement and the prominence of poetry and song in Black education; the origins of the famed Nuyorican Poets Cafe in the Lower East Side living room of the visionary Miguel Algarín, who hosted verse gatherings with legendary figures like Ntozake Shange and Miguel Piñero; the rapid growth of the "slam" format that was pioneered at the Get Me High Lounge in Chicago; the perfect storm of spoken word's rise during the explosion of social media; and Bennett's own journey alongside his older sister, whose work to promote the form helped shape spaces online and elsewhere dedicated to literature and the pursuit of human freedom.
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Black Holes: The Key to Understanding the Universe, by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw. At the heart of our galaxy lies a monster so deadly it can bend space, throwing vast jets of radiation millions of light years out into the cosmos. Its kind were the very first inhabitants of the universe, the black holes. They have the power to wipe out any of the universe’s other inhabitants, but no one has ever seen a black hole itself die. But 1.8 billion light years away, the LIGO instruments have recently detected something that could be the closest a black hole gets to death. Gravitational waves given off as two enormous black holes merge together. And now scientists think that these gravitational waves could be evidence of two black holes connecting to form a wormhole – a link through space and time. It seems outlandish, but today’s physicists are daring to think the unthinkable – that black holes could connect us to another universe.
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Presence: The Strange Science and True Stories of the Unseen Other, by Ben Alderson-Day. A psychologist's journey to understand one of the most unusual experiences known to humankind: the universal, disturbing feeling that someone or something is there when we are alone. While the contexts in which they occur are diverse, they are united by a distinct and uncanny feeling of visitation by another. But what does this feeling mean, and where does it come from? When and why do presences emerge? And how can we even begin to understand a phenomenon that can be transformative for those who experience it, and yet so hard to put into words? Through contemporary psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and philosophy. Presence attempts to understand how this experience is possible.
- How Not to Kill Yourself: A Portrait of the Suicidal Mind, by Clancy Martin. Martin chronicles his multiple suicide attempts in an intimate depiction of the mindset of someone obsessed with self-destruction. He argues that, for the vast majority of suicides, an attempt does not just come out of the blue, nor is it merely a violent reaction to a particular crisis or failure, but is the culmination of a host of long-standing issues. He also looks at the thinking of a number of great writers who have attempted suicide and detailed their experiences (such as David Foster Wallace, Yiyun Li, Akutagawa, Nelly Arcan, and others), at what the history of philosophy has to say both for and against suicide, and at the experiences of those who have reached out to him across the years to share their own struggles. “If you’re going to write a book about suicide, you have to be willing to say the true things, the scary things, the humiliating things. Because everybody who is being honest with themselves knows at least a little bit about the subject. If you lie or if you fudge, the reader will know.”
All book links in this diary are to my online bookstore The Literate Lizard. If you already have a favorite indie bookstore, please keep supporting them. If you’re able to throw a little business my way, that would be appreciated. Use the coupon code DAILYKOS for 15% off your order, in gratitude for your support (an ever-changing smattering of new releases are already discounted 15% each week). We also partner Libro.fm for audiobooks. Libro.fm is similar to Amazon’s Audible, with a la carte audiobooks, or a $14.99 monthly membership which includes the audiobook of your choice and 20% off subsequent purchases during the month.
READERS & BOOK LOVERS SERIES SCHEDULE