Here’s this week’s choices for featured nonfiction, culled from the hundreds of books published this week. Something for everyone!
- Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It, by Ari Berman. The mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, represented an extreme form of the central danger facing American democracy today: a blatant disregard for the will of the majority. But this crisis didn’t begin or end with Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Through voter suppression, election subversion, gerrymandering, dark money, the takeover of the courts, and the whitewashing of history, reactionary white conservatives have strategically entrenched power in the face of a massive demographic and political shift. Ari Berman charts these efforts with sweeping historical research and incisive on-the-ground reporting, chronicling how a wide range of antidemocratic tactics interact with profound structural inequalities in institutions like the Electoral College, the Senate, and the Supreme Court to threaten the survival of representative government in America. “Berman pairs wide-ranging and historically grounded analysis of America’s minoritarian political system with a trenchant critique of its departures from democratic common sense. The result is an eye-opening dissection of partisan manipulation." —Publishers Weekly
- The Moment: Thoughts on the Race Reckoning That Wasn't and How We All Can Move Forward Now, by Bakari Sellers. In late May in 2020, while discussing the murder of George Floyd on CNN, Bakari Sellers spoke from the heart sharing devastating insight that touched millions around the world: “It’s just so much pain. You get so tired. We have black children. I have a 15-year-old daughter. I mean, what do I tell her? I’m raising a son. I have no idea what to tell him. It’s just—it’s hard being black in this country when your life is not valued and people are worried about the protesters and the looters. And it’s just people who are frustrated for far too long and not have their voices heard.” Now four years later, he examines the modern political landscape and policies that are impacting Black families and communities and also offers solutions for a better tomorrow. “Brother Bakari Sellers is determined to look past the many distractions of our public discourse to see the potential for an America that works for all of us. In this book he not only shines a light on the lies that are being used to divide Americans; he offers real hope that this moment might be the beginning of a Third Reconstruction.”
— Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II
- The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society, by Joseph E. Stiglitz. We are a nation born from the conviction that people must be free. But since the middle of the last century, that idea has been co-opted. Forces on the political Right have justified exploitation by cloaking it in the rhetoric of freedom, leading to pharmaceutical companies freely overcharging for medication, a Big Tech free from oversight, politicians free to incite rebellion, corporations free to pollute, and more. How did we get here? Whose freedom are we—and should we—be thinking about?
In The Road to Freedom, Nobel prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz dissects America’s current economic system and the political ideology that created it, laying bare their twinned failure. “Free” and unfettered markets have only succeeded in delivering a series of crises: the financial crisis, the opioid crisis, and the crisis of inequality. While a small portion of the population has amassed considerable wealth, wages for most people have stagnated. Free and unfettered markets have exploited consumers, workers, and the environment alike. Such failures have fed populist movements that believe being free means abandoning any obligations citizens have to one another. As they grow in strength, these movements now pose a real threat to true economic and political freedom.
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The White Bonus: Five Families and the Cash Value of Racism in America, by Tracie McMillan. This book asks a provocative question about racism in America: When people of color are denied so much, what are white people given? And how much is it worth—not in amorphous privilege, but in dollars and cents? McMillan begins with three generations of her family, tracking their modest wealth to its roots: American policy that helped whites first. Simultaneously, she details the complexities of their advantage, exploring her mother’s death in a nursing home, at 44, on Medicaid; her family's implosion; and a small inheritance from a banker grandfather. In the process, McMillan puts a cash value to whiteness in her life and assesses its worth. She then expands her investigation to four other white subjects of different generations across the U.S. Alternating between these subjects and her family, McMillan shows how, and to what degree, racial privilege begets material advantage across class, time, and place. "The White Bonus is an invaluable resource for understanding racism in terms of systems, rather than just attitudes. McMillan looks unflinchingly at the benefits and costs of racism through the lens of her own family's gains and losses. A reporter at heart, she digs through the archives of both personal trauma and personal finance to show how every story in the U.S. is actually a story about race."—Lewis Raven Wallace
- Kingdom of Rage: The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace, by Elizabeth Neumann. Another book by a lapsed Republican. This former counterterrorism official who began her career under George W. Bush explores how modern evangelicalism and right-wing conservatism intermingled to form the combustible ideology that resulted in the January 6 attacks on the Capitol—and which threatens to destroy the American Church from within. Testifying before Congress in February of 2020, Neumann warned that anti-Semitic and white supremacist terrorism was a transnational threat that was building to the doorstep of another major attack. Shortly after her testimony, she resigned from her role as Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention in protest of what she believed was then-President Trump’s failure of leadership and his stoking of the hatred, anger, and division from which she had dedicated her life to protecting her country. “In this breathtakingly honest book, a former senior Trump Administration Homeland Security official and devout Christian explains the sources of radicalization in our country -- including contemptuous politics, a toxic gun culture, intermingling of conservative Republican politics and religion, and deliberate efforts to strengthen partisan divisions.” —Jessica Stern
- On a Move: Philadelphia's Notorious Bombing and a Native Son's Lifelong Battle for Justice, by Mike Africa. Jr. The incredible story of MOVE, the revolutionary Black civil liberties group that Philadelphia police bombed in 1985, killing 11 civilians—by one of the few people born into the organization, raised during the bombing's tumultuous aftermath, and entrusted with repairing what was left of his family. Among the children most affected by the bombing was Mike Africa Jr. Born in jail following a police attack on MOVE that led to his parents’ decades-long incarcerations, Mike was six years old and living with his grandmother when MOVE was bombed. In the ensuing years, Mike sought purpose in the ashes left behind. He began learning about the law as a teenager and became adept at speaking and inspiring public support with the help of other MOVE members. In 2018, at age 40, he finally succeeded in getting his parents released from prison. "The bombing was an unthinkable act, thought out and executed with reckless abandon. Now, in this searing and urgent new book, Mike Africa Jr. fearlessly tells the true story of what happened that fateful day, why the MOVE organization was formed, and how overpolicing and underfunding communities can end in inevitable tragedy." — Bakari Sellers
- Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass, by Ramin Setoodeh. I haven;t come up with a solid review of this book, so I’m not sure if thus Variety reporter has written an entertainment fluff book or if he dekves with the racism and political chaos of the show. Here for the first time is the definitive untold story of Donald Trump’s years as a reality TV star. Trump himself admits he might not have been president without The Apprentice. Setoodeh chronicles Trump’s dramatic tenure as New York’s ultimate boss in the boardroom, a mirage created by Survivor producer Mark Burnett and NBC boss Jeff Zucker. With unprecedented access, including hours of interviews with Trump, his boardroom advisers George Ross and Carolyn Kepcher, Eric Trump, and some of the most memorable contestants, and writing with flair and authority, Setoodeh shares all the untold tales from this legendary show that has left its mark on popular culture, shaped the legend of its star, and ultimately changed American history.
- Ascent to Power: How Truman Emerged from Roosevelt's Shadow and Remade the World, by David L. Roll. When Roosevelt, in failing health, decided to run for a fourth term, he gave in to the big city Democratic bosses and reluctantly picked Senator Truman as his vice president, a man he barely knew. Upon FDR’s death in April 1945, Truman, after only 82 days as VP, was thrust into the presidency. Utterly unprepared, he faced the collapse of Germany, a Europe in ruins, the organization of the UN, a summit with Stalin and Churchill, an increasingly hostile Soviet Union, and the question of whether atomic bombs would be ready for use against Japan. Spanning the years of transition, 1944 to 1948, Ascent to Power illuminates Truman’s struggles to emerge as president in his own right. “The sudden death of Franklin Roosevelt shook the world; the recognition that power would pass to Harry Truman shook it even more. But the untested Truman turned out to be just what America and the world needed as World War II segued into the Cold War. No one has told this vital story more thoroughly or with greater verve and insight than David Roll does in this fine book.”—H. W. Brands “As the global order Truman built teeters at the brink, Ascent to Power could not be more relevant.”—Evan Thomas
- FDR's Mentors: Navigating the Path to Greatness, by Michael J. Gerhardt. Franklin Delano Roosevelt wasn’t a born leader. He became one. As a boy he was in poor health, was insecure, and an average student at best. Growing into manhood, the lessons he learned came not from books but from influencers of his lifetime, beginning with Endicott Peabody, the most renowned US headmaster of the twentieth century. He instilled in Roosevelt a confidence and strength that empowered the young student and propelled him to greatness as one of the most revered presidents of the United States. In FDR’s Mentors, Michael Gerhardt tells the extraordinary stories of the men and women who had a vital impact on Roosevelt’s life, career, and pragmatic personality: his distant cousin Teddy; his wife Eleanor; President Woodrow Wilson; journalist Lewis Howe; Winston Churchill; and New York Democratic Party leader Al Smith. “Written in the best intellectual traditions of history, biography, political science, and law, F.D.R.’s Mentors distills library rooms of volumes on the life and work Franklin D. Roosevelt, the architect of the New Deal and Commander-in-Chief during World War II, into an engaging, one-volume history of the intellectual origins of a monumental 13-year presidency.” —Bruce Allen Murphy
- The Great Abolitionist: Charles Sumner and the Fight for a More Perfect Union, by Stephen Puleo. In the tempestuous mid-19th century, as slavery consumed Congressional debate and America careened toward civil war and split apart–when the very future of the nation hung in the balance–Charles Sumner’s voice rang strongest, bravest, and most unwavering. Where others preached compromise and moderation, he denounced slavery’s evils to all who would listen and demanded that it be wiped out of existence. Before and during the Civil War, at great personal sacrifice, Sumner was the conscience of the North and the most influential politician fighting for abolition. Throughout Reconstruction, no one championed the rights of emancipated people more than he did. “Puleo’s rich biographical history is a perfectly timed reminder that to survive, our union needs figures with the courage to stand for core ideals which cannot be compromised.”—Christopher C. Gorham
- Covert City: The Cold War and the Making of Miami, by Vince Houghton and Eric Driggs.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was perhaps the most dramatic and dangerous period of the Cold War. What's less well known is that the city of Miami, mere miles away, was a pivotal, though less well known, part of Cold War history. With its population of Communist exiles from Cuba, its strategic value for military operations, and its lax business laws, Miami was an ideal environment for espionage. Covert City tells the history of how the entire city of Miami was constructed in the image of the US-Cuba rivalry. From the Bay of Pigs invasion to the death of Fidel Castro, the book shows how Miami is a hub for money and cocaine but also secrets and ideologies. Cuban exiles built criminal and political organizations in the city, leading Washington to set up a CIA station there, codenamed JMWAVE. It monitored gang activities, plotted secret operations against Castro, and became a base for surveilling Latin American neighbors. The money and infrastructure built for the CIA was integral to the development of Miami. “With Covert City, Miami finally gets its due as a central artery of intrigue and skullduggery in American geopolitics. The fact that most of the events in this startling narrative unfolded outside the purview of mass media or beyond the knowledge of the general public is a testament to the murky residue of the Cuban Revolution.”—T.J. English
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I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays, by Nell Irvin Painter. Throughout her prolific writing career, Nell Painter has published works on such luminaries as Sojourner Truth, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Malcolm X. Her unique vantage on American history pushes the boundaries of personal narrative and academic authorship. Led by an unbridled curiosity for her subjects, Painter asks readers to reconsider ideas of race, politics, and identity. I Just Keep Talking assembles her writing for the first time into a single volume, displaying the breadth and depth of Painter’s decades-long historical inquiry and the evolution of Black political thought—and includes a dazzling introduction and coda being published for the first time in this collection. “Nell Irvin Painter is one of the towering Black intellects of the last half century…[I Just Keep Talking] is more than an odyssey for the senses; it’s a revelation that will inspire courage in anyone seeking to express their truth.” —Henry Louis Gates, Jr
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Undiplomatic: How My Attitude Created the Best Kind of Trouble, by Deesha Dyer. Without credentials or connections, community college student and advocate Deesha Dyer navigated her imposter syndrome, landing one of the most exclusive positions in the White House. Moved by the election of the country’s first Black president, Deesha Dyer applied for a White House internship in 2009 as a thirty-one-year-old part-time community college student, taking a leap that carried her into a permanent full-time position, followed by three promotions landing her at the epicenter of politics. In spite of the little voice in her head telling her she didn’t deserve to be there, Deesha thrived and rose to the highly coveted role of White House social secretary, giving her a front-row seat to defining moments in history. Undiplomatic is a deeply personal narrative about combating self-doubt while being on top of the world. Deesha reflects on how imposter syndrome threatened her self-esteem, proven aptitude, and survival until she overcame doubt, unearthed true love for herself, and learned that your unique worth is not something to be earned, but something inherently deserved. “By telling the story of her own inspiring and unexpected path to Barack Obama’s White House, Deesha Dyer offers powerful lessons about how to suppress self-doubt and chase one's dreams. Undiplomatic is powerful, smart, and very funny.”—Dan Pfeiffer
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We Are Home: Becoming American in the 21st Century: an Oral History, by Ray Suarez. We are a nation of immigrants, never more than now. In recent decades, the numbers have skyrocketed, thanks to people coming from many continents—especially Asia, Africa, and South America. Just like their predecessors, they face countless obstacles, including political hatred. And yet, just like their predecessors, they work hard. They persist. And they become us. The newest Americans are poorly understood and frequently presented only in stereotypes. Veteran journalist, broadcaster, and interviewer Ray Suarez has criss-crossed the country to speak to new Americans from all corners of the globe, and to record their stories. This portrait of our newest citizens is full of their own, compelling voices. It’s a story as old as the country, yet each new wave of arrivals tells that classic story in new and crucially important ways. “Ray Suarez is that rare national treasure who is as compelled by other people's voices as his own….In this volume, a snapshot of an urgent, even desperate, era, Suarez's signature wit and care for his interview subjects radiates.”—Alissa Quart
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The Whole Staggering Mystery: A Story of Fathers Lost and Found, by Sylvia Brownrigg. When the author received a package addressed to her father that had been lost for over fifty years, she wanted to deliver it to him before it was too late. She did not expect that her father, Nick, would choose not to open it. A few years later, she and her brother finally did. Nick, an absent father, was a would-be writer and back-to-the-lander who lived off the grid in Northern California. Nick’s own father, Gawen—also absent—had been a wellborn Englishman who wrote a Bloomsbury-like novel about lesbian lovers, before moving to Kenya and ultimately dying a mysterious death at age twenty-seven. Brownrigg was told Gawen had likely died by suicide. Reconstructing Gawen’s short, colorful life from revelations in the package takes her through glamorous 1930s London and staid Pasadena, toward the last gasp of the British Empire in Kenya, and from there, deep into the California redwoods, where Nick later carved out a rugged path in the wilderness, keeping his English past at bay. Vividly weaving together the lives of her father and grandfather, through memory and imagination, Brownrigg explores issues of sexuality and silences, and childhoods fractured by divorce. "Engrossing . . . Brownrigg’s skillful interweaving of slippery narrative threads adds up to an immersive reading experience." —Kirkus Reviews
- A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages: The World Through Medieval Eyes, by Anthony Bale.
Europeans of the Middle Ages were the first to use travel guides to orient their wanderings, as they moved through a world punctuated with miraculous wonders and beguiling encounters. In this vivid and alluring history. Using previously untranslated contemporaneous documents from a colorful range of travelers from as far and wide as Turkey, Iceland, North Africa, and Russia, medievalist Anthony Bale invites readers on an odyssey across the medieval world, recounting the advice that circulated among those venturing to the road for pilgrimage, trade, diplomacy, and war. Bale provides indispensable information on the exchange rate between Bohemian ducats and Venetian groats, medieval cures for seasickness, and how to avoid extortionist tour guides and singing sirens. He takes us from the streets of Rome, more ruin than tourist spot, and tours of the Khan’s court in Beijing to Mamluk-controlled Jerusalem, where we ride asses across the holy terrain, and bustling bazaars of Tabriz. We also learn of rumored fantastical places, like ones where lambs grow on trees and giant canes grow fruit made of gems. And we are offered a glimpse of what non-European travelers thought of the West on their own travels. “A global Middle Ages for our times. Anthony Bale reinvents and redefines the period through its intrepid travelers.… A joyful, erudite book.”— Jerry Brotton
- Double Exposure: Resurveying the West with Timothy O'Sullivan, America's Most Mysterious War Photographer, by Robert Sullivan. Timothy O’Sullivan is America’s most famous war photographer. You know his work even if you don’t know his name: A Harvest of Death, taken at Gettysburg, is an icon of the Civil War. He was also among the first photographers to elevate what was then a trade to the status of fine art. The images of the American West he made after the war, while traveling with the surveys led by Clarence King and George Wheeler, display a prescient awareness of what photography would become; years later, Ansel Adams would declare his work “surrealistic and disturbing.” The places that O’Sullivan pictured offered a reckoning with how the changes wrought on the land were already under way in the 1860s and '70s, and how these changes were a continuation of the Civil War by other means. "Robert Sullivan follows the nineteenth-century footsteps of photographer Timothy O'Sullivan, reports with artistry and passion on what they both saw, and makes you love the country in its darkness as well as its light. The double story—Sullivan's and O'Sullivan's—and the pinpoint details drew me in so I couldn't put it down." —Ian Frazier
- A Body Made of Glass: A Cultural History of Hypochondria, by Caroline Crampton.
Caroline Crampton’s life was upended at the age of seventeen, when she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a relatively rare blood cancer. After years of invasive treatment, she was finally given the all clear. But being cured of the cancer didn’t mean she felt well. Instead, the fear lingered, and she found herself always on the alert, braced for signs that the illness had reemerged. Now, in A Body Made of Glass, Crampton has drawn from her own experiences with health anxiety to write a revelatory exploration of hypochondria—a condition that, though often suffered silently, is widespread and rising. She deftly weaves together history, memoir, and literary criticism to make sense of this invisible and underexplored sickness. “Crampton’s unflinching honesty and skill with words make for a tender and often heart-breaking history of medicine. Every medical professional should read this book.” — Subhadra Das
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The Complications: On Going Insane in America, by Emmett Rensin. An intimate portrait of what it’s like to live with schizoaffective disorder of the bipolar type as well as a biting, revelatory critique of America’s mental health culture. Emmett Rensin has written and edited articles for major national media outlets, and taught writing and literature at prestigious schools. But he has also lost jobs and friends, been hospitalized and institutionalized, and cycled through a daunting combination of medications. With scorching honesty, he reflects on his messy, fragile attempt to live his life, his periods of grace, and his near misses with disaster and death. “It is an incredible thing to watch Emmett Rensin dismantle the incoherent, platitudinous beliefs well meaning Americans hold around the subject of what they will call, with delicate distance, 'mental illness.' The Complications is so brilliant, fresh, and resistant to cliché it eventually led me back to that most familiar idea: the thin line between madness and genius.” — Kerry Howley
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The Everything War: Amazon’s Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power, by Dana Mattioli. From veteran Amazon reporter for The Wall Street Journal, The Everything War is the first untold, devastating exposé of Amazon's endless strategic greed, from destroying Main Street to remaking corporate power, in pursuit of total domination, by any means necessary. “Mattioli debuts with a blistering exposé of how Amazon used its 'size, leverage, and access to data across industries to choke competition.' Mattioli’s impressive reporting—which draws on internal documents and hundreds of interviews with employees, senior executives, and government officials—recreates the company’s conquests in disturbing detail....This is investigative journalism at its finest."—Publishers Weekly
- All That Happiness Is: Some Words on What Matters, by Adam Gopnik. This slim, elegant volume presenting a radical alternative to our culture of relentless striving. Our society is obsessed with achievement. Young people are pushed toward the next test or the “best” grammar school, high school, or college they can get into. Adults push themselves toward the highest-paying, most prestigious jobs, seeking promotions and public recognition. As Adam Gopnik points out, the result is not so much a rat race as a rat maze, with no way out. Except one: to choose accomplishment over achievement. Achievement, Gopnik argues, is the completion of the task imposed from outside. Accomplishment, by contrast, is the end point of an engulfing activity one engages in for its own sake.
- The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters, by Susan Page. Barbara Walters was a force from the time TV was exploding on the American scene in the 1960s to its waning dominance in a new world of competition from streaming services and social media half a century later. She was not just a groundbreaker for women, but also expanded the big TV interview and then dominated the genre. By the end of her career, she had interviewed more of the famous and infamous, from presidents to movie stars to criminals to despots, than any other journalist in history. Page conducted 150 interviews and extensive archival research to report on the daring things Walters did to become the woman who reinvented the TV interview, as well as the secrets she kept until her death. This is the eye-opening account of the woman who knew she had to break all the rules so she could break all the rules about what viewers deserved to know. "Susan Page pulls a Barbara Walters -- asking all the right questions, just as personal and sharp as Barbara used to in her xray-penetrating interrogations: how did she land her "gets," how did plot out her interviews, who did she think of she thought of as her rivals (and how she dealt with them)... along with questions about her far less successful personal life." —Lesley Stahl
- American Flygirl, by Susan Tate Ankeny. One of WWII’s most uniquely hidden figures, Hazel Ying Lee was the first Asian American woman to earn a pilot’s license, join the Women Airforce Service Pilots, and fly for the United States military amid widespread anti-Asian sentiment and policies. “The Allied victory over fascism in World War II hinged on the courageous efforts of countless hidden heroes….The inspiring story of a trailblazer twice over within the gallant WASP ranks: Hazel Ying Lee, the first Asian American woman to earn a pilot’s license, and one of only two Asian Americans to earn her silver wings as a WASP. In Ankeny’s skilled hands, Lee’s story soars through an unforgettable flight of wartime courage, triumph, and tragedy.” —Gregg Jones
- Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent, by Judi Dench. For the very first time, 89-year-old actress Judi Dench opens up about every Shakespearean role she has played throughout her seven-decade career, from Lady Macbeth and Titania to Ophelia and Cleopatra. In a series of intimate conversations with actor & director Brendan O'Hea, she guides us through Shakespeare's plays with incisive clarity, revealing the secrets of her rehearsal process and inviting us to share in her triumphs, disasters, and backstage shenanigans. She serves up priceless revelations on everything from the craft of speaking in verse to her personal interpretations of some of Shakespeare's most famous scenes, all brightened by her mischievous sense of humor, striking level of honesty and a peppering of hilarious anecdotes, many of which have remained under lock and key until now. "A literary demonstration of how the iconic actor has lost none of her energy, flair, and fiery intelligence... Dench’s memoir of the roles she has loved is a witty, thoroughly entertaining romp through the Shakespearean world." - Kirkus Reviews
- The Backyard Bird Chronicles, by Amy Tan. In 2016, Amy Tan grew overwhelmed by the state of the world: Hatred and misinformation became a daily presence on social media, and the country felt more divisive than ever. In search of peace, Tan turned toward the natural world just beyond her window and, specifically, the birds visiting her yard. But what began as an attempt to find solace turned into something far greater—an opportunity to savor quiet moments during a volatile time, connect to nature in a meaningful way, and imagine the intricate lives of the birds she admired. "The drawings and essays in this book do a lot more than just describe the birds. They carry a sense of discovery through observation and drawing, suggest the layers of patterns in the natural world, and emphasize a deep personal connection between the watcher and the watched. The birds that inhabit Amy Tan’s backyard seem a lot like the characters in her novels.” —David Allen Sibley
- Our Kindred Creatures: How Americans Came to Feel the Way They Do About Animals, by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy. Over just a few decades at the end of the nineteenth century, the United States underwent a moral revolution on behalf of animals. Before the Civil War, animals' suffering had rarely been discussed; horses pulling carriages and carts were routinely beaten in public view, and dogs were pitted against each other for entertainment and gambling. But in 1866, a group of activists began a dramatic campaign to change the nation’s laws and norms, and by the century’s end, most Americans had adopted a very different way of thinking and feeling about the animals in their midst. On the side of reform were such leaders as George Angell, the inspirational head of Massachusetts’s animal-welfare society and the American publisher of the novel Black Beauty; Henry Bergh, founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; Caroline White of Philadelphia, who fought against medical experiments that used live animals; and many more, including some of the nation’s earliest veterinarians and conservationists. Caught in the movement’s crosshairs were transformational figures in their own right: animal impresarios such as P. T. Barnum, industrial meat barons such as Philip D. Armour, and the nation’s rising medical establishment, all of whom put forward their own, very different sets of modern norms about how animals should be treated. “Our Kindred Creatures is the most elegantly written, rigorously researched, and morally nuanced portrait of America's early animal advocates I've ever read. More important, it's the story of how widespread social change happens. Anyone who cares about human-animal relationships should put this book at the very top of their reading list.”—Bronwen Dickey
- Dogland: Passion, Glory, and Lots of Slobber at the Westminster Dog Show, by Tommy Tomlinson. Tomlinson spends three years on the road and goes behind the scenes at more than one hundred competitions across the country, from Midwestern fairgrounds to Madison Square Garden. Along the way he is licked, sniffed, and rubbed up against by dogs of nearly every size, shape, and breed. Like a real-life version of the classic mockumentary Best in Show, Dogland follows one champion show dog—a Samoyed named Striker—as well as his handler, Laura King, and his devoted entourage of breeders and owners as he competes in the 2022 Westminster Dog Show.
- Bare Knuckle: Bobby Gunn, 73-0 Undefeated. a Dad. a Dream. a Fight Like You've Never Seen, by Stayton Bonner. This book takes readers into a previously unknown world: the underground circuit of illegal bare-knuckle fighting. Former Rolling Stone editor Stayton Bonner travels the underground for years with Gunn, the world champion of bare-knuckle boxing with a 73-0 record, shining a light on a secret circuit that's never before been revealed. Along the way, we explore the fascinating history of this first sport in America, Gunn's Irish Traveler community--a sect of religious fighters best known through Brad Pitt's depiction in Snatch--as well as his part in the improbable rise of the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship, the first legal revival of the sport.
