Greetings, everyone. I'm afraid the week overmatched me again, and I don’t have a fresh review for you, but my usual list of this week’s new releases is below.
My intended book review was of After the Ivory Tower Falls: How College Broke the American Dream and Blew Up Our Politics—and How to Fix It, by Philadelphia Inquirer national columnist Will Bunch. It was published today, and I really wanted to review it on its pub date, but...sorry, Will. Next Tuesday, I promise. I first met Will Bunch back in 2006, when I published this diary here on Daily Kos: More Fun in Philly With "English-Only" Geno's Cheesesteaks! The popular tourist trap Geno’s Steaks had been in the news because the owner, Joe Vento, had a sign in their takeout order window saying "This is America. When ordering, speak English." My diary offered photographic evidence that the beef for their cheesesteaks in fact came from...South America! I also pointed out how the neighborhood, once the heart of Italian immigrant South Philadelphia, was now home to many Mexican immigrants: at the time, within a four-block radius of Geno's there were at least at least ten Mexican restaurants, ten Mexican groceries, a couple Mexican music shops, two Mexican haircut places, all of which had opened up in the preceding couple years. (I lived there for many years, right around the corner, in fact, from Geno’s Steaks.)
Turns out Will Bunch saw the article on Daily Kos, and helped the story get national attention. Bunch was also a panelist Netroots Nation, probably sometime in the 2007-2010 range. He used to post here on Daily Kos, but I can’t seem to find his username now.
His earlier books include Tear Down This Myth: The Right-Wing Distortion of the Reagan Legacy and The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama.
THIS WEEK’S NEW HARDCOVERS
- On Critical Race Theory: Why It Matters & Why You Should Care, by Victor Ray. On Critical Race Theory: Why It Matters & Why You Should Care, by Victor Ray.
The author explains the centrality of race in American history and politics, and how the often mischaracterized intellectual movement became a political necessity. He draws upon the radical thinking of giants such as Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to clearly trace the foundations of critical race theory in the Black intellectual traditions of emancipation and the civil rights movement. From these foundations, Ray explores the many facets of our society that critical race theory interrogates, from deeply embedded structural racism to the historical connection between whiteness and property, ownership, and more.
- Listening Well: Bringing Stories of Hope to Life, by Heather Morris.
- The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide, by Steven W. Thrasher. Having spent a ground-breaking career studying the racialization, policing, and criminalization of HIV, Dr. Thrasher has come to understand a deeper truth at the heart of our society: that there are vast inequalities in who is able to survive viruses and that the ways in which viruses spread, kill, and take their toll are much more dependent on social structures than they are on biology alone.
- Asian American Histories of the United States, by Catherine Ceniza Choy. This newest entry in Beacon Press’ Revisioning History series is a nearly 200-year history of Asian migration, labor, and community formation in the US. Reckoning with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the surge in anti-Asian hate and violence, award-winning historian Catherine Ceniza Choy presents an urgent social history of the fastest growing group of Americans. The book features the lived experiences and diverse voices of immigrants, refugees, US-born Asian Americans, multiracial Americans, and workers from industries spanning agriculture to healthcare.
- Deer Creek Drive: A Reckoning of Memory and Murder in the Mississippi Delta, by Beverly Lowry. In 1948, in the most stubbornly Dixiefied corner of the Jim Crow south, society matron Idella Thompson was viciously murdered in her own home: stabbed at least 150 times and left facedown in one of the bathrooms. Her daughter, Ruth Dickins, was the only other person in the house. She told authorities a Black man she didn’t recognize had fled the scene, but no evidence of the man's presence was uncovered. When Dickins herself was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, the community exploded. Petitions pleading for her release were drafted, signed, and circulated, and after only six years, the governor of Mississippi granted Ruth Dickins an indefinite suspension of her sentence and she was set free. This book tells a story of white privilege that still has ramifications today, and reflects on the brutal crime, its aftermath, and the ways it clarified her own upbringing in Mississippi.
- Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Underworld, by T. J. English. For the first half of the 20th century mobsters and musicians enjoyed a mutually beneficial partnership. By offering artists like Louis Armstrong, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, and Ella Fitzgerald a stage, the mob, including major players Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, and Charlie “Lucky” Luciano, provided opportunities that would not otherwise have existed. Even so, at the heart of this relationship was a festering racial inequity. The musicians were mostly African American, and the clubs and means of production were owned by white men. It was a glorified plantation system that, over time, would find itself out of tune with an emerging Civil Rights movement. Some artists, including Louis Armstrong, believed they were safer and more likely to be paid fairly if they worked in “protected” joints. Others believed that playing in venues outside mob rule would make it easier to have control over their careers.
- Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller, by Alec Nevala-Lee. During his lifetime, Buckminster Fuller was hailed as one of the greatest geniuses of the twentieth century. As the architectural designer and futurist best known for the geodesic dome, he enthralled a vast popular audience, inspired devotion from both the counterculture and the establishment, and was praised as a modern Leonardo da Vinci. To his admirers, he exemplified what one man could accomplish by approaching urgent design problems using a radically unconventional set of strategies, which he based on a mystical conception of the universe’s geometry. His views on sustainability, as embodied in the image of Spaceship Earth, convinced him that it was possible to provide for all humanity through the efficient use of planetary resources. From Epcot Center to the molecule named in his honor as the buckyball, Fuller’s legacy endures to this day, and his belief in the transformative potential of technology profoundly influenced the founders of Silicon Valley.
- Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America's Misguided Wars, edited by Andrew Bacevich and Daniel A. Sjursen. Fifteen original essays from American veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan—hailing from a wide range of services, ranks, and walks of life—who have come out in opposition to these conflicts. Selected for their candor and eloquence by fellow veterans Andrew Bacevich and Daniel Sjursen, these soldiers vividly describe both their motivations for serving and the disillusionment that made them speak out against the system. Their testimony is crucial for understanding just how the world’s self-proclaimed greatest military power went so badly astray.
- Memoirs, by Robert Lowell, edited by Steven Gould Axelrod and Grzegorz Kosc. A complete collection of poet Robert Lowell’s autobiographical prose, from unpublished writings about his youth to reflections on the triumphs and confusions of his adult life.
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 with Hummingbird Media for ebooks and Libro.fm for audiobooks. The ebook app is admittedly not as robust as some, but it gets the job done. 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