On My Radar:

Reconsidering Reagan: Racism, Republicans, and the Road to Trump
by Daniel S. Lucks
Beacon Press
Trade Paperback


From the publisher's website:

Ronald Reagan is hailed as a transformative president and an American icon, but within his twentieth-century politics lies a racial legacy that is rarely discussed. Both political parties point to Reagan as the “right” kind of conservative but fail to acknowledge his political attacks on people of color prior to and during his presidency. Reconsidering Reagan corrects that narrative and reveals how his views, policies, and actions were devastating for Black Americans and racial minorities, and that the effects continue to resonate today.

Using research from previously untapped resources including the Black press which critically covered Reagan’s entire political career, Daniel S. Lucks traces Reagan’s gradual embrace of conservatism, his opposition to landmark civil rights legislation, his coziness with segregationists, and his skill in tapping into white anxiety about race, riding a wave of “white backlash” all the way to the Presidency. He argues that Reagan has the worst civil rights record of any President since the 1920s—including supporting South African apartheid, packing courts with conservatives, targeting laws prohibiting discrimination in education and housing, and launching the “War on Drugs”—which had cataclysmic consequences on the lives of Black and Brown people.

Linking the past to the present, Lucks expertly examines how Reagan set the blueprint for President Trump and proves that he is not an anomaly, but in fact the logical successor to bring back the racially tumultuous America that Reagan conceptualized.

On My Radar:

Odetta: A Life in Music
by Ian Zack
Beacon Press
Trade Paperback



From the publisher's website:

The first in-depth biography of the legendary singer and “Voice of the Civil Rights Movement,” who combatted racism and prejudice through her music.

Odetta channeled her anger and despair into some of the most powerful folk music the world has ever heard. Through her lyrics and iconic persona, Odetta made lasting political, social, and cultural change.

A leader of the 1960s folk revival, Odetta is one of the most important singers of the last hundred years. Her music has influenced a huge number of artists over many decades, including Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, the Kinks, Jewel, and, more recently, Rhiannon Giddens and Miley Cyrus.

But Odetta’s importance extends far beyond music. Journalist Ian Zack follows Odetta from her beginnings in deeply segregated Birmingham, Alabama, to stardom in San Francisco and New York. Odetta used her fame to bring attention to the civil rights movement, working alongside Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, and other artists. Her opera-trained voice echoed at the 1963 March on Washington and the Selma to Montgomery march, and she arranged a tour throughout the deeply segregated South. Her “Freedom Trilogy” songs became rallying cries for protesters everywhere.

Through interviews with Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, Judy Collins, Carly Simon, and many others, Zack brings Odetta back into the spotlight, reminding the world of the folk music that powered the civil rights movement and continues to influence generations of musicians today.

In My TBR Stack:

Demystifying Shariah: What It Is, How It Works, and Why It's Not Taking Over Our Country
by Sumbul Ali-Karamali
Beacon Press
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

Through scare tactics and deliberate misinformation campaigns, anti-Muslim propagandists insist wrongly that shariah is a draconian and oppressive Islamic law that all Muslims must abide by. They circulate horror stories, encouraging Americans to fear the “takeover of shariah” law in America and even mounting “anti-shariah protests” . . . . with zero evidence that shariah has taken over any part of our country. (That’s because it hasn’t.) It would be almost funny if it weren’t so terrifyingly wrong—as puzzling as if Americans suddenly began protesting the Martian occupation of Earth.

Demystifying Shariah explains that shariah is not one set of punitive rules or even law the way we think of law—rigid and enforceable—but religious rules and recommendations that provide Muslims with guidance in various aspects of life. Sumbul Ali-Karamali draws on scholarship and her degree in Islamic law to explain shariah in an accessible, engaging narrative style—its various meanings, how it developed, and how the shariah-based legal system operated for over a thousand years. She explains what shariah means not only in the abstract but in the daily lives of Muslims. She discusses modern calls for shariah, what they mean, and whether shariah is the law of the land anywhere in the world. She also describes the key lies and misunderstandings about shariah circulating in our public discourse, and why so many of them are nonsensical.

This engaging guide is intended to introduce you to the basic principles, goals, and general development of shariah and to answer questions like: How do Muslims engage with shariah? What does shariah have to do with our Constitution? What does shariah have to do with the way the world looks like today? And why do we all—Muslims or not—need to care?

On My Radar:

The AOC Generation: How Millennials Are Seizing Power and Rewriting the Rules of American Politics
by David Freedlander
Beacon Press
Hardcover


From the publisher's website:

The AOC Generation examines the resurgent young left—including groups like Justice Democrats, the Democratic Socialists of America and Brand New Congress—and documents how and why they got active and energized in political organizing, the success and limitations of their approaches—and through their stories, it tells the history and the future of a generation.

In 2018, the country watched as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rose from unknown part-time bartender to the halls of Congress at the age of 29 and became a household name for her progressive, passionate politics. With firsthand accounts detailing the final days of her campaign, which he spent beside her as she fought for every last vote, Freedlander connects her ample political talents and ability to command the media and the public’s attention to the newfound political awakening of millennial activists. Inspired in part by the Bernie Sanders campaign, and furthered by a series of critical issues including catastrophic climate change, a rigid political system, and widening income inequality, these young people organized into new groups that became a conduit for their energy, ideas, and passions. And all of their activity isn’t just political. They’ve created their own media eco-system, with podcasts, streaming networks, and even dating sites that cater to their interests.

With this new generation gaining traction, with little signs of backing down and securing crucial political seats as Ocasio-Cortez did in 2018, The AOC Generation presents a thoughtful analysis of how they came of age in an America they are determined to reshape.

In My TBR Stack:

Here She Is: The Complicated Reign of the Beauty Pageant in America
by Hilary Levey Friedman
Beacon Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Many predicted that pageants would disappear by the 21st century. Yet they are thriving. America’s most enduring contest, Miss America, celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2020. Why do they persist? In Here She Is, Hilary Levey Friedman reveals the surprising ways pageants have been an empowering feminist tradition. She traces the role of pageants in many of the feminist movement’s signature achievements, including bringing women into the public sphere, helping them become leaders in business and politics, providing increased educational opportunities, and giving them a voice in the age of #MeToo.

Using her unique perspective as a NOW state president, daughter to Miss America 1970, sometimes pageant judge, and scholar, Friedman explores how pageants became so deeply embedded in American life from their origins as a P.T. Barnum spectacle at the birth of the suffrage movement, through Miss Universe’s bathing beauties to the talent- and achievement-based competitions of today. She looks at how pageantry has morphed into culture everywhere from The Bachelor and RuPaul’s Drag Race to cheer and specialized contests like those for children, Indigenous women, and contestants with disabilities. Friedman also acknowledges the damaging and unrealistic expectations pageants place on women in society and discusses the controversies, including Miss America’s ableist and racist history, Trump’s ownership of the Miss Universe Organization, and the death of child pageant-winner JonBenét Ramsey.

Presenting a more complex narrative than what’s been previously portrayed, Here She Is shows that as American women continue to evolve, so too will beauty pageants.

On My Radar:

Odetta: A Life in Music and Protest
by Ian Zack
Beacon Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Odetta channeled her anger and despair into some of the most powerful folk music the world has ever heard. Through her lyrics and iconic persona, Odetta made lasting political, social, and cultural change. 

A leader of the 1960s folk revival, Odetta is one of the most important singers of the last hundred years. Her music has influenced a huge number of artists over many decades, including Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, the Kinks, Jewel, and, more recently, Rhiannon Giddens and Miley Cyrus. 

But Odetta’s importance extends far beyond music. Journalist Ian Zack follows Odetta from her beginnings in deeply segregated Birmingham, Alabama, to stardom in San Francisco and New York. Odetta used her fame to bring attention to the civil rights movement, working alongside Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, and other artists. Her opera-trained voice echoed at the 1963 March on Washington and the Selma to Montgomery march, and she arranged a tour throughout the deeply segregated South. Her “Freedom Trilogy” songs became rallying cries for protesters everywhere.

Through interviews with Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, Judy Collins, Carly Simon, and many others, Zack brings Odetta back into the spotlight, reminding the world of the folk music that powered the civil rights movement and continues to influence generations of musicians today.

Listen to the author’s top five Odetta hits while you read:

1. Spiritual Trilogy (Oh Freedom/Come and Go with Me/I’m On My Way) 
2. I’ve Been Driving on Bald Mountain/Water Boy 
3. Take This Hammer 
4. The Gallows Pole 
5. Muleskinner Blues

Access the playlist here:  http://spoti.fi/3c2HnF4

On My Radar:

Wilding: Returning Nature to Our Farm
by Isabella Tree, with an introduction by Eric Schlosser
New York Review Books
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

For years Charlie Burrell and his wife, Isabella Tree, farmed Knepp Castle Estate and struggled to turn a profit. By 2000, with the farm facing bankruptcy, they decided to try something radical. They would restore Knepp’s 3,500 acres to the wild. Using herds of free-roaming animals to mimic the actions of the megafauna of the past, they hoped to bring nature back to their depleted land. But what would the neighbors say, in the manicured countryside of modern England where a blade of grass out of place is considered an affront? 

In the face of considerable opposition the couple persisted with their experiment and soon witnessed an extraordinary change. New life flooded into Knepp, now a breeding hotspot for rare and threatened species like turtle doves, peregrine falcons, and purple emperor butterflies. 

The fabled English nightingale sings again. 

At a time of looming environmental disaster, Wilding is an inspiring story of a farm, a couple, and a community transformed. Isabella Tree’s wonderful book brings together science, natural history, a fair bit of drama, and—ultimately—hope.

I've Seen the Future and I'm Not Going: The Art Scene and Downtown New York in the 1980s
by Peter McGough
Pantheon Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Brilliantly funny, frank, and shattering, this is the bittersweet memoir by Peter McGough of his life with artist David McDermott. Set in New York’s Lower East Side of the 1980s and mid-1990s, it is also a devastatingly candid look at the extreme naiveté and dysfunction that would destroy both their lives.
 
Escaping the trauma of growing up gay in Syracuse and being bullied at school, McGough attended art school in New York, dropped out, and took out jobs in clubs, where he met McDermott. Dazzled by McDermott, whom he found fascinating and worldly, McGough agreed to collaborate with him not only on their art but also in McDermott’s very entertaining Victorian lifestyle. McGough evokes the rank and seedy East Village of that time, where he encountered Keith Haring, Rene Ricard, Kenny Scharf, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, and Jacqueline and Julian Schnabel, among many others. Nights were spent at the Ninth Circle, Danceteria, and Studio 54; going to openings at the FUN Gallery; or visiting friends in the Chelsea Hotel. By the mid-1980s, McDermott & McGough were hugely successful, showing at three Whitney Biennials, represented by the best galleries here and abroad, and known for their painting, photography and “time experiment” interiors. Then, overnight, it was all gone. And one day in the mid-1990s, McGough would find that he, like so many of his friends, had been diagnosed with AIDS.
 
I’ve Seen the Future and I’m Not Going is a compelling memoir for our time, told with humor and compassion, about how lives can become completely entwined even in failure and what it costs to reemerge, phoenix-like, and carry on.


Breathe: A Letter to My Sons
by Imani Perry
Beacon Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Emotionally raw and deeply reflective, Imani Perry issues an unflinching challenge to society to see Black children as deserving of humanity. She admits fear and frustration for her African American sons in a society that is increasingly racist and at times seems irredeemable. However, as a mother, feminist, writer, and intellectual, Perry offers an unfettered expression of love—finding beauty and possibility in life—and she exhorts her children and their peers to find the courage to chart their own paths and find steady footing and inspiration in Black tradition.

Perry draws upon the ideas of figures such as James Baldwin, W. E. B. DuBois, Emily Dickinson, Toni Morrison, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Ida B. Wells. She shares vulnerabilities and insight from her own life and from encounters in places as varied as the West Side of Chicago; Birmingham, Alabama; and New England prep schools.

With original art for the cover by Ekua Holmes, Breathe offers a broader meditation on race, gender, and the meaning of a life well lived and is also an unforgettable lesson in Black resistance and resilience.

On My Radar:

Love & Fury: A Memoir
by Richard Hoffman
Beacon Press
Trade Paperback

My relationship with my own father was fraught with confusion brought on by mutual mistrust and fear.  My fear was of my father's brute strength. His fear was that I would actually get to know him.  I can't say every boy struggles with this or something similar but I do know that when a book comes along that examines father-son dynamics, I'm in.  --Book Dude

From the publisher's website:

Richard Hoffman sometimes felt as though he had two fathers: the real one who raised him and an imaginary version, one he talked to on the phone, and one he talked to in his head. Although Hoffman was always close to the man, his father remained a mystery, shrouded in a perplexing mix of tenderness and rage. When his father receives a terminal cancer diagnosis, Hoffman confronts the depths and limitations of their lifelong struggle to know each other, weighing their differences and coming to understand that their yearning and puzzlement was mutual.

With familial relationships at its center, Love & Fury draws connections between past and present, from the author’s grandfather, a “breaker boy” sent down into the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania at the age of ten, to his young grandson, whose father is among the estimated one million young black men incarcerated today. In a critique of culture and of self, Hoffman grapples with the way we have absorbed and incorporated the compelling imagery of post WWII America and its values, especially regarding class, war, women, race, masculinity, violence, divinity, and wealth.

A masterful memoirist, Hoffman writes not only to tell a gripping story but also to understand, through his family, the social and ethical contours of American life. At the book’s core are the author’s questions about boyhood, fatherhood, and grandfatherhood, and about the changing meaning of what it means to be a good man in America, now and into the future.

New Nonfiction Hardcovers This Week

The Mountain: My Time on Everest - The Irresistible Lure of the World's Highest Peak
by Ed Viesturs with David Roberts

Touchstone / Simon & Schuster
Hardcover

VETERAN WORLD-CLASS CLIMBER and bestselling author Ed Viesturs—the only Amer­ican to have climbed all fourteen of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks and the sixth person to do so without supplemental oxygen—trains his sights on Mount Everest, the highest peak on earth, in richly detailed accounts of expeditions that are by turns personal, harrowing, deadly, and inspiring. 

The world’s most famous mountain, Everest remains for serious high-altitude climbers the ultimate goal. Viesturs has gone on eleven expeditions to Everest, reaching the summit seven times. He’s spent more than two years of his life on the mountain. No climber today is better poised to survey Everest’s various ascents—both personal and historic. In The Mountain, Viesturs delivers just that: riveting you-are-there accounts of his own climbs as well as vivid narratives of some of the more famous and infamous climbs throughout the last century, when the honor of nations often hung in the balance, depending on which climbers summited first. In addition to his own experiences, Viesturs sheds light on the fate of Mallory and Irvine, whose 1924 disappearance just 800 feet from the top remains one of mountaineering’s greatest mysteries, and on the multiply tragic last days of Rob Hall and Scott Fischer in 1996, the stuff of which Into Thin Air was made. 

Informed by the experience of one who has truly been there, The Mountain affords a rare glimpse into that place on earth where Heraclitus’s maxim—char­acter is destiny—is proved time and again. Complete with gorgeous photos of Everest, many of which were taken by Viesturs himself, and shots taken on some of the legendary historic climbs, The Mountain is an immensely appealing book for active and armchair climbers alike.

Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us
by Jesse Bering
Scientific American / Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Hardcover

“You are a sexual deviant. A pervert, through and through.” We may not want to admit it, but as the award-winning columnist and psychologist Jesse Bering reveals in Perv, there is a spectrum of perversion along which we all sit. Whether it’s voyeurism, exhibitionism, or your run-of-the-mill foot fetish, we all possess a suite of sexual tastes as unique as our fingerprints—and as secret as the rest of the skeletons we’ve hidden in our closets.

Combining cutting-edge studies and critiques of landmark research and conclusions drawn by Sigmund Freud, Alfred Kinsey, and the DSM-5, Bering pulls the curtain back on paraphilias, arguing that sexual deviance is commonplace. He explores the countless fetishists of the world, including people who wear a respectable suit during the day and handcuff a willing sexual partner at night. But he also takes us into the lives of “erotic outliers,” such as a woman who falls madly in love with the Eiffel Tower; a pair of deeply affectionate identical twins; those with a particular penchant for statues; and others who are enamored of crevicesnot found on the human body. 

Moving from science to politics, psychology, history, and his own reflections on growing up gay in America, Bering confronts hypocrisy, prejudice, and harm as they relate to sexuality on a global scale. Humanizing so-called deviants while at the same time asking serious questions about the differences between thought and action, he presents us with a challenge: to understand that our best hope of solving some of the most troubling problems of our age hinges entirely on theamoral study of sex.

As kinky as it is compassionate, illuminating, and engrossing, Perv is an irresistible and deeply personal book. “I can’t promise you an orgasm at the end of our adventure,” Bering writes, “but I can promise you a better understanding of why you get the ones you do.” 

Law of the Desert Born: A Graphic Novel
by Louis L'Amour, Beau L'Amour, Kathy Nolan, Charles Santino and Thomas Yeates
Bantam / Random House

Hardcover

The first graphic novel adaptation of the work of master storyteller Louis L’Amour is a dynamic tale of the Old West that explores the borderlands of loyalty and betrayal with the emotional grittiness of a noir thriller. New Mexico, 1887, a land in the midst of the worst drought anyone can remember. Family histories and loyalties run deep, but when rancher Tom Forrester has his access to the Pecos River cut off by the son of his old partner, he convinces his foreman, Shad Marone, to pay Jud Bowman back for the discourtesy. Yet what starts as a simple act of petty revenge quickly spirals into a cycle of violence that no one can control. Now Marone is on the run, pursued by a sheriff’s posse across a rugged desert landscape. Leading the chase is Jesus Lopez, a half-Mexican, half-Apache with a personal stake in bringing Shad to justice. Newly released from jail, trusted by no one, Lopez swears he’s the only man who can track Marone down. That may be true. But who will live and who will die and what price will be paid in suffering are open questions. Fate and the Jornada del Muerto desert possess a harsh justice that is all their own. With a propulsive script from Beau L’Amour and Kathy Nolan, adapted by Charles Santino and illustrated in bold black-and-white by Thomas Yeates, Law of the Desert Born captures the dust and blood of Louis L’Amour’s West—a world where the difference between a hero and a villain can be as wide as the gap between an act of kindness or brutality or as narrow as a misspoken word.

Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident
by Bill Ayers
Beacon Press
Hardcover

In this sequel to Fugitive Days, Ayers charts his life after the Weather Underground, when he becomes the GOP’s flaunted “domestic terrorist,” a “public enemy.” 

In the heat of the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama's opponents were spinning a chilling narrative that cast him as an enigmatic figure with a group of shadowy associates, including a Black Nationalist preacher, a Palestinian professor, and an "unrepentant domestic terrorist." That imagined terrorist was Bill Ayers, a one-time leader of the Weather Underground. The McCain campaign spent millions of dollars demonizing Ayers specifically and castigating Senator Obama for, in Sarah Palin's deathless phrase, "pallin' around with terrorists." 

That wasn't the first time Ayers found his face plastered all over the media under the label "terrorist." After his memoir Fugitive Days, the story of his life in Students for a Democratic Society and later the Weather Underground, was published on September 10, 2001, he came under furious fire from right-wing media, which bizarrely tied him to the World Trade Center tragedy. Over the years, at the hands of the radical Right, Bill Ayers has become a household name and a public enemy. In reality, Ayers is a dedicated teacher, father, and social justice advocate, and his "shady past" is actually the story of an ardent antiwar activist. 

Ayers was hosting his graduate students at his Hyde Park home during the 2008 presidential debate in which his neighbor Barack Obama was confronted about their association. Public Enemy begins there and then flashes back to tell Ayers's story from the moment he and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, emerged from years on the run and rebuilt their lives as public figures, often celebrated for their community work but much hated by the radical Right.

In the face of defamation by conservative media, and despite frequent death threats, Bill and Bernardine stay true to their core beliefs in the power of protest, dissent, and deep commitment to the welfare of others. Ayers recounts his adventures with the Tea Party, including memorable scenes of "confessing" under entertaining duress that he was indeed the author of Obama's Dreams from My Father, of hosting a dinner party for Fox News stars, of being banned from college campuses and, in one case, from an entire country. He also takes us along to the red carpet at the Oscars, to prison vigils and the Greek islands, and ultimately back to his Hyde Park home, where his activism and commitment to a life that refuses to make a mockery of his values allow him to make the most of his post as America's leading public enemy. 

The Investigator: Fifty Years of Uncovering theTruth
by Terry Lenzner
Blue Rider Press / Penguin

Hardcover

The Los Angeles Times once called investigative lawyer Terry Lenzner one of the most powerful and dreaded private investigators in the world. In his fifty-year career, Lenzner has worked with politicians, celebrities, governments, and corporations worldwide; with a steadfast commitment to the truth, he has uncovered facts that have shaped policy and influenced major legal battles.

In this captivating memoir, Lenzner speaks about his varied career and high-profile cases for the first time. At the Justice Department in 1964, he investigated the murder of three civil rights workers an infamous event that inspired the film Mississippi Burning. He led the national Legal Services Program for the poor, prosecuted organized crime in New York, defended peace activist Philip Berrigan, and represented CIA operative Sid Gottlieb. As a counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, Lenzner investigated Nixon s dirty tricks and followed the money trail that led to the Watergate burglary and cover-up. He was the first person to deliver a congressional subpoena to a sitting U.S. president. He uncovered cost overruns of the Alaska oil pipeline, helped identify the Unabomber, investigated the circumstances of Princess Diana s death, and cleared Hugo Chavez of false corruption charges. Lenzner also worked with President Clinton s defense team during the impeachment hearings.

The Investigator is a riveting personal account: Lenzner astounds with anecdotes of scandal and intrigue, offers lessons in investigative methods, and provides an eye-opening look behind some of the most talked-about media stories and world events of our time.