It may seem an impossible task to convince white Southerners living in poverty—without adequate health care or affordable housing—that they benefit from white privilege, but Howard has spent a lifetime challenging entrenched fallacies and formidable foes. A lifelong activist and professional community organizer, Howard feels a deep connection with the working poor, the chemically addicted, […]
Bigsby met the playwright in the 1960s, founded the Arthur Miller Centre for American Studies at the University of East Anglia in 1989, and has written extensively about his life and work, so his questions throughout the book are knowledgeable, though there’s little new here. The devastating impact of the Great Depression is a constant […]
Orion Casey lives for music, but she won’t sing in public. She developed a phobia after her frenemy, Melissa Rae, and her minions openly mocked Orion’s singing voice. So while Melissa Rae takes the spotlight in their school’s musical production, Orion is just fine working backstage. Her self-esteem gets a welcome boost from an unlikely […]
Every child develops at their own pace, this book notes: Some acquire skills and abilities rapidly, but others need more time to reach the same targets. This book measures this progress in “inchstones” rather than milestones and reminds readers that, for some kids, “every inch they grow is real. And every inch is a big […]
A four-time Emmy-nominated actress and transgender rights activist, Cox elaborates on a journey that’s been filled with joyful and challenging moments and, ultimately, liberating experiences. The book is split into three parts, each representing an era in the author’s evolution. She was raised in Mobile, Alabama, by an exasperated single mother. Even playgrounds became unsafe […]
Jane Trevally is at a crossroads of sorts. After a traumatic childhood, she sought safety and solace in marriages with wealthy men. Now twice divorced and living with her four dogs in the crumbling English country mansion that is her birthright, she’s feeling the need to do something, to take a job, when one day […]
As the “Letter to Caregivers” at this book’s start explains, the days are long and the years are short when it comes to raising toddlers. But help can be found in these 50 rhymes. Each page contains a brief verse, a takeaway, and a conversation starter for events as mundane as brushing one’s teeth and […]
The author visited Nepal in 2014 in the shadow of Sagarmatha, “goddess of the sky,” better known in the West as Everest, in the hopes of scaling the smaller but still imposing Island Peak. Nearing 65, he worried he was approaching the age where mountain climbing would be infeasible. Also present in Nepal was Joby […]
Berman, an author of multiple pop-culture histories, frames this story as one medium rapidly overtaken by another: Vaudeville was supplanted by silent films, then radio, then talkies, then variety television, then sitcoms. Each era had its superstars—Charlie Chaplin, Jack Benny, the Marx Brothers, Milton Berle, and more—not to mention its scandals. (Berman details the case […]
A skinless Boo Hag and many other truly terrifying creepy creatures, depicted in garishly lit detail, lunge and grimace directly at viewers in this unusually wide-ranging set of supernatural horrors. Organizing his entries into eight alliterative general categories—beginning with nine “Heinous Hags” and ending with assorted “Dark Divinities”—Forst pairs each full-page, and occasionally full-spread, portrait […]