Sorry, everyone, but I couldn’t get to a full review this week. Travelling back and forth for the Queen’s funeral just took up too much of my time. I’ve been reading Neal deGrasse Tyson’s new book Starry Messenger and it was my planned feature. Maybe next week.
Anyway, here are some of the new nonfiction books of interest published today. See also the weekly comment I do for the Black Kos diary featuring books specifically of interest to BIPOC.
(I didn't really go to the Queen's funeral. I didn't even read about it or watch the coverage.)
THIS WEEK’S NEW HARDCOVERS
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Abominations: Selected Essays from a Career of Courting Self-Destruction, by Lionel Shriver. A collection of the novelist’s nonfiction writing bringing together thirty-five works curated from her many columns, features, essays, and op-eds for the likes of the Spectator, the Guardian, the New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, speeches and reviews, and some unpublished pieces. Relentlessly skeptical, cutting, and contrarian, this collection showcases Shriver’s piquant opinions on a wide range of topics, including religion, politics, illness, mortality, family and friends, tennis, gender, immigration, consumerism, health care, and taxes.
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American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America's First Paramedics, by Kevin Hazzard. Until the 1970s, if you suffered a medical crisis, your chances of survival were minimal. A 9-1-1 call might bring police or even the local funeral home. But that all changed with Freedom House EMS in Pittsburgh, a group of Black men who became America’s first paramedics and set the gold standard for emergency medicine around the world, only to have their story and their legacy erased—until now.
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Barred: Why the Innocent Can't Get Out of Prison, by Daniel S. Medwed. Thousands of innocent people are behind bars in the United States. But proving their innocence and winning their release is nearly impossible. A groundbreaking exposé of how our legal system makes it nearly impossible to overturn wrongful convictions.
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Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization, by Neil deGrasse Tyson. The Black astrophysicist offers a new collection of science essays, but this time geared towards
shining new light on the crucial fault lines of our time—war, politics, religion, truth, beauty, gender, and race—in a way that stimulates a deeper sense of unity for us all. In a time when our political and cultural views feel more polarized than ever, Tyson provides a much-needed antidote to so much of what divides us, while making a passionate case for the twin chariots of enlightenment—a cosmic perspective and the rationality of science.
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The Big Fix: Seven Practical Steps to Save Our Planet, by Hal Harvey and Justin Gillis. An engaging, accessible citizen’s guide to the seven urgent changes that will really make a difference for our climate—and how we can hold our governments accountable for putting these plans into action.
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Cannibal Capitalism: How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet and What We Can Do About It, by Nancy Fraser. Marxist feminist theorist Nancy Fraser charts the voracious appetite of capital, tracking it from crisis point to crisis point, from ecological devastation to the collapse of democracy, from racial violence to the devaluing of care work. These crisis points all come to a head in Covid-19, which Fraser argues can help us envision the resistance we need to end the feeding frenzy.
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Chaotic Neutral: How the Democrats Lost Their Soul in the Center, by Ed Burmila. This book tracks the evolution (or devolution) of the Democratic Party from the New Deal era to Biden’s status-quo candidacy and the pandemic, when, even in the midst of a national crisis, the Democrats could not manage to pass sweeping progressive legislation. It is a timely analysis and, simultaneously, a timeless one that pinpoints why Dem politicians act like also-rans even when they’re in power. Burmila doesn’t pull any punches as he describes the Democrats’ brand of futility politics, but he also doesn’t claim that all is futile, instead laying out a potent strategy for how the party might abandon its lesser-of-two-evils strategy and shift back into drive.
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The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser. The New Yorker journalists offer an ambitious and lasting history of the full Trump presidency from the chaotic beginning to the violent finale.
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Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America, by Dahlia Lithwick. One of the nation’s foremost legal commentators, tells the gripping and heroic story of the women lawyers who fought the racism, sexism, and xenophobia of Donald Trump’s presidency—and won.
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Lies of Omission: Algorithms versus Democracy, by Catherine DeSoto.
There is a sharp and more hostile divide emerging in the United States. The shift is documented by various polls, and the speed of the change is alarming. There are certainly contributing factors, but one factor is unique to the contemporary era: receiving the majority of our information via social media experiences. Media algorithms, and to some extent overt censorship, serve users curated content that is unlike what their neighbors receive. Lies of Omission brings together various perspectives on the causes and effects of the divided information streams. Psychology and neuroscience, combined with some historical jurisprudence, are woven together to spell out the dangers of the modern social media experience. Importantly, the human response can be understood as rooted in our psychology and neurochemistry.
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Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America, by Joan Donovan, Emily Dreyfuss, and Brian Friedberg. A groundbreaking investigation into the digital underworld, where far-right operatives wage wars against mainstream America, from a masterful trio of experts in media and tech.
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We Are Proud Boys: How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered in a New Era of American Extremism, by Andy Campbell. A gripping investigation into the nation’s most notorious far-right group, revealing how they created a new blueprint for extremism and turned American politics into a blood sport.
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Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World, by Anthony Sattin. Moving across millennia, Nomads explores the transformative and often bloody relationship between settled and mobile societies. Often overlooked in history, the story of the umbilical connections between these two very different ways of living presents a radical new view of human civilization. From the Neolithic revolution to the twenty-first century via the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the great nomadic empires of the Arabs and Mongols, the Mughals and the development of the Silk Road, nomads have been a perpetual counterbalance to the empires created by the power of human cities.
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Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America, by Pekka Hämäläinen. Acclaimed historian Pekka Hämäläinen presents a sweeping counternarrative that shatters the most basic assumptions about American history. Shifting our perspective away from Jamestown, Plymouth Rock, the Revolution, and other well-trodden episodes on the conventional timeline, he depicts a sovereign world of Native nations whose members, far from helpless victims of colonial violence, dominated the continent for centuries after the first European arrivals. From the Iroquois in the Northeast to the Comanches on the Plains, and from the Pueblos in the Southwest to the Cherokees in the Southeast, Native nations frequently decimated white newcomers in battle. Even as the white population exploded and colonists’ land greed grew more extravagant, Indigenous peoples flourished due to sophisticated diplomacy and leadership structures.
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A Man of Iron: The Turbulent Life and Improbable Presidency of Grover Cleveland, by Troy Senic. With the proviso that the book’s publisher, Threshold, publishes conservative books, here is a biography of an under-explored president.
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Faith, Hope and Carnage, by Nick Cave and Seán O'Hagan. Your music offering of the week. Created from more than forty hours of intimate conversations with Seán O’Hagan, it is a profoundly thoughtful exploration, in Cave’s own words, of what really drives his life and creativity.
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This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You, by Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas. a journey into the science and soul of music that reveals the secrets of why your favorite songs move you. But it’s also a story of a musical trailblazer who began as a humble audio tech in Los Angeles, rose to become Prince’s chief engineer for Purple Rain, and then created other No. 1 hits , including Barenaked Ladies' "One Week," as one of the most successful female record producers of all time.
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
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