Sisilla, the narrator of Kraus’ first foray into SF, is a Niffakoq, one in a line of golden children selected for special missions, their brains enhanced with six “niks,” small implants that bestow deeper reserves of intelligence and empathy. These are effectively suicide missions—Niffakoqs traditionally die before their teens. But of course Sisilla isn’t traditional, […]
Do you know that you shouldn’t order fish on Monday? Have you enjoyed The Bear, the collected works of David Chang, or food memoirs like Blood, Bones, and Butter and Crying in H Mart? If so, you owe a debt of gratitude to Anthony Bourdain. Bourdain wasn’t trying to change restaurant culture when he wrote […]
Middle school hasn’t been easy for Izzy. Her twin, Ari, chose to attend a prestigious performing arts academy, leaving Izzy to navigate Kagan Middle School on her own. Ari has countless after-school commitments, practices her violin constantly, and, in a move that breaks Izzy’s heart, decides she wants her own room. Izzy, stinging from the […]
Jonas Salk developed the first effective polio vaccine, but Albert Sabin (1906-1993) developed the only vaccine that can eradicate polio from the planet. Speaking Yiddish when he arrived to the U.S. in 1921, Sabin was a brilliant student, accumulating honors, scholarships, and positions at the prestigious Rockefeller Institute and University of Cincinnati, where he made […]
Solis and Dougherty aim their skillfully written and smartly designed primer at “experts who are writing—or exploring the idea of writing—a nonfiction book.” Whether the reader is an educator, consultant, academic, or simply someone with a wealth of knowledge and “something useful and important to say that will impact readers’ lives in a transformative way,” […]
In his well-crafted debut collection of linked essays, Trinidad, a Filipino Kiwi writer, considers family and identity; the richness of Filipino culture and the challenges of immigration; and gay awakening and queer adulthood. A graphic recounting of catching, gutting, defeathering, and butchering a chicken turns into a warm portrait of his feisty grandmother, a college […]
Elsie Parker gets to spend eight weeks learning about important topics like the difference between sex and gender, but at school, her fifth grade classmates will get their puberty education only via a generic hourlong video in a gender-segregated class at the end of the school year. Elsie decides to fill the gap: She hangs […]
The author says that he’s long been fascinated by John Hughes’ 1986 film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. As an undergraduate at Columbia College Chicago, he visited various locations shown in the film. His eagerness to understand how it was made led him first to film school and, ultimately, to interviewing much of the cast (including […]
Far too many Americans, writes Bostock, are stuck in “a toxic day-to-day grind that leaves them drained and purposeless.” Since the 1970s, corporate America, per the author, has embraced a ruthless approach to profit (epitomized by Milton Friedman’s signature essay, “The Social Responsibility of Business Is To Increase Its Profits”) that has “led to a […]
This follow-up to Riot Act (2024) returns to 1991 and an alternate America that’s ruled by propaganda and fear. Axl is haunted by grief. It doesn’t help that Gigi, his dead friend and longtime crush, is also haunting him. After being murdered during a radical act of civil disobedience, Gigi lingers among the living—specifically inside […]