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NonfictionBiography

The Rulebreaker

Biographer Susan Page paints a colorful portrait of trailblazer Barbara Walters in her compulsively readable The Rulebreaker.
Biographer Susan Page paints a colorful portrait of trailblazer Barbara Walters in her compulsively readable The Rulebreaker.
Nonfiction

Ascent to Power

Ascent to Power is a carefully crafted biography that superbly captures the presidency of Harry S. Truman.
Ascent to Power is a carefully crafted biography that superbly captures the presidency of Harry S. Truman.
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Dogland

Tommy Tomlinson’s wry, witty Dogland leads readers behind the scenes and in front of the judges at 100-plus dog shows around the country.
NonfictionSocial Science

The White Bonus

Review by Catherine Hollis

Acclaimed journalist Tracie McMillan’s muckraking, experiential methods have earned her prizes, acclaim and the special animosity of Rush Limbaugh, a sure sign of the power of her investigative work. With The White Bonus: Five Families and the Cash Value of Racism in America, McMillan offers a powerful and necessary exposé of the financial benefits of whiteness in the U.S.

In a style reminiscent of Barbara Ehrenreich, The White Bonus spotlights five working- and middle-class white families, including a very revealing and honest look at McMillan’s own. The book examines how zoning laws, discrimination in trade unions and the failure of school desegregation have rippled into the present, giving white families what McMillan calls the “white bonus,” a multigenerational “societal and familial security net unavailable to Black Americans.” In chapters focused on school, work, poverty and crime, McMillan develops case studies of how individuals and families benefit from whiteness even when they are accused of crimes or are scraping by on minimum wage. McMillan’s quantitative analysis starkly reveals how American institutions continue to benefit white people at the expense of Black Americans. 

Each case study is supported by extensive interviews and reporting, and presented with novelistic detail in a propulsive narrative. A chapter about the Becker family of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, illustrates “the steady reemergence of racially homogenous schools after a few decades of progress toward racial integration” that followed Brown v. Board of Education. The Beckers bucked the trend of white flight and sent their children to local public schools that had predominantly Black student bodies. While the oldest sibling benefitted from “gifted and talented” programs that primarily served white students in an otherwise diverse student population, the youngest sibling experienced a stark decline in educational quality at the same school after many of the white families left the district. 

McMillan’s own family story is told with admirable honesty, particularly regarding the impact of her father’s abuse after her mother’s death. These autobiographical chapters not only provide a detailed financial accounting of her own family’s white bonus, but also brilliantly shape a central insight that analogizes its dangers: The silence surrounding domestic violence is replicated in our society at large when we avoid addressing the impact of structural racism. Remaining silent about either is incompatible with morality.

Journalist Tracie McMillan’s latest investigates how five families—including her own—benefit from systemic white privilege.

Chamber Divers

In Chamber Divers, Rachel Lance uncovers the Navy scientists who risked their lives to improve the odds of underwater and amphibious missions in World War II.
NonfictionMemoirMedicine

Committed

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Writing saved Janet Frame’s life.

In 1951, the 27-year-old writer was scheduled for a lobotomy. She’d spent her adulthood in psychiatric facilities, and the extremely damaging practice was in its heyday. But after Frame’s debut book won a literary award, a doctor called off the procedure.

Frame is one of many authors Suzanne Scanlon references to create a throughline between reading, writing and illness in her memoir, Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen. Here, the author of novels Promising Young Women and Her 37th Year, an Index, traces her entwined reading and mental health histories.

In her early 20s, Scanlon spent more than two years in a psychiatric hospital and experienced shorter hospitalizations for several years to follow. Both during that first stint and the years since, she’s turned to books for insight into the world and her own mental health, a practice mirrored in her childhood. When her mother was dying, 8-year-old Scanlon created order from the grief and chaos around her through imaginative play. The immersive nature of this coping strategy is akin to what Scanlon now finds in literature.

Committed leaps across time, mirroring how Scanlon comes to understand her own narrative, organizing an unconventional timeline from her fragmented memories. She also plays with form, occasionally breaking from running narrative with lists explaining her illness, or switching from first- to second-person to place the reader in a scene.

Committed is also about authors who faced mental illness, among them Marguerite Duras and Sylvia Plath. Janet Frame, Scanlon writes, is “the patron saint of writers once institutionalized, the long-institutionalized, the young women everywhere told they were hopeless, what would become of them now, defined by the places where they lived.”

“What we call mental illness is so rarely portrayed with any depth or complexity,” Scanlon writes. But as she combs the archives of her reading, she finds “information about what it means to be alive in [any] shifting historical moment.” By lacing her story with literary analysis and cultural history, she creates a thoughtful reflection on how societal expectations can impact people, women in particular, and how writing and reading can provide a port in the storm.

In her stirring memoir, Committed, Suzanne Scanlon tracks her entwined reading and mental health histories.
NonfictionMemoir

Get real with your bookclub

Feature by Julie Hale

This Isn’t Going to End Well: The True Story of a Man I Thought I Knew by Daniel Wallace is an electrifying look at how to navigate loss. Wallace considers the nature of grief and connection as he tells the story of his brother-in-law William Nealy, who died by suicide at 48. After his death, Wallace grapples with unresolved feelings and troubling questions about Nealy’s life. Writing with compassion, reflection and self-scrutiny, he explores his own personal demons and the boundaries of friendship.

In A Dutiful Boy: A Memoir of Secrets, Lies and Family Love, Mohsin Zaidi recounts the challenges of his conservative upbringing in London. Raised by traditional Muslim parents, Zaidi has a difficult time coming to grips with his sexual identity. As a student at Oxford, he is able to live an authentic life as a gay man, but he finds himself at a turning point when his father and a witch doctor attempt to alter his sexuality. Exploring family, community and self-love, Zaidi’s bold, revealing book will spark inspired dialogue among readers.

Leta McCollough Seletzky investigates the complex life of her father, Marrell McCollough, in The Kneeling Man: My Father’s Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. McCollough belonged to the Invaders, a Black militant group in talks with Martin Luther King Jr. prior to his assassination, and he was on the scene when King was killed. Yet he led a surprising double life: He was also a police officer secretly charged with gathering information on the Invaders. In this powerful memoir, Seletzky struggles to accept the truth about her father and to reconcile it with her identity as a Black woman.

In Normal Family: On Truth, Love, and How I Met My 35 Siblings, Chrysta Bilton examines the remarkable circumstances of her parentage. During the 1980s, Bilton’s gay mother, Debra, decided to have children. With a handsome man named Jeffrey Harrison serving as a sperm donor, she became pregnant and gave birth to Bilton. Decades later, Bilton makes disturbing discoveries about Harrison, who harbored secrets about his donor experiences. Discussion topics such as identity, honesty and traditional parenting roles make this a standout pick for book clubs.

4 intriguing memoirs explore the nature of family secrets.

Facing the Unseen

In Facing the Unseen, Black Man in a White Coat author Damon Tweedy makes an impassioned call for better mental health care.
NonfictionMusicBlack History

My Black Country

Review by Henry L. Carrigan Jr.

Beyoncé’s new album, Cowboy Carter, has sparked a sometimes contentious debate about the nature and identity of country music. It’s an invigorating topic that has long been explored by writers and scholars. A number of excellent books, such as Charles L. Hughes’ Country Soul, Francesca Royster’s Black Country Music and Daphne Brooks’ Liner Notes for the Revolution, have contributed deeply to the conversation about race and country music. Now, acclaimed songwriter, producer and novelist Alice Randall (Black Bottom Saints, The Wind Done Gone) provides a detailed and far-reaching account in her mesmerizing My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music’s Black Past, Present, and Future. 

Part autobiography and part music history, Randall’s sprawling yet tightly controlled text uncovers the roots of Black country and reveals its future in the work of contemporary country artists such as Miko Marks, Rissi Palmer, Rhiannon Giddens, Mickey Guyton and Allison Russell. Randall reveals that Black country was born on December 10, 1927, when banjoist DeFord Bailey played “Pan American Blues” on “Barn Dance,” a radio show out of Nashville, Tennessee; Bailey became the first superstar of the Grand Ole Opry. In addition, as Randall points out, other Black performers stood at the forefront of country music. The eight-fingered Lesley Riddle, who created a new three-fingered picking technique for playing the guitar, taught songs to the folk group the Carter Family, and pianist Lil Hardin, who would marry Louis Armstrong, was the first Black woman to play on a hillbilly record—Jimmie Rodgers’ Blue Yodel No. 9, also known as Standin’ on the Corner. 

In Randall’s brilliant genealogy of country music, “DeFord Bailey is the papa, Lil Hardin Armstrong is the mama, Ray Charles is their genius child, Charley Pride is DeFord’s side child, and Herb Jeffries is Lil’s stepson.” As Randall reiterates, “Black Country is a big tent with many entry points.” For example, Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner can be considered Black country because their songs meet some criteria on the generally accepted country checklist: influences of Evangelical Christianity, African music and English, Irish or Scottish ballad forms; “concerns with female legacy”; offering advice, using “banjo, fiddle, steel guitar, fife [and] yodeling voice,” to name just a few. Randall adds that these qualities aren’t a litmus test, but “a likeness test. It’s a way to educate your ears and your eyes. Is there Blackness you have refused to see and hear?”

Randall’s songs have been recorded by artists Glen Campbell, Radney Foster and Justin McBride. Trisha Yearwood scored a number one hit with Randall’s song, co-written with Matraca Berg, “XXX’s and OOO’s.” Yet, as she writes, “I had been so whitewashed out of [my songs], the racial identity of my living-in-song heroes and sheroes so often erased.” Randall devotes a portion of My Black Country to documenting the recording of an album released at the same time as the book, featuring Randall’s songs as reimagined by her “posse of Black Country genius,” which includes, among others, Marks, Giddens, Russell and Randall’s daughter, Caroline Randall Williams.

My Black Country is a landmark book and an essential starting point for conversations about the nature of country music. It is true that mainstream dialogue comes late in country’s history, but coupled with Cowboy Carter, My Black Country feels right on time.

Alice Randall’s brilliant genealogy of Black country music, My Black Country, is both long overdue and, thanks to Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, right on time.

The Ritual Effect

Michael Norton’s fascinating The Ritual Effect encourages us to experiment with, explore and discover rituals to help transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.
NonfictionSocial Science

The Age of Magical Overthinking

Review by Deborah Mason

It’s hardly groundbreaking news that the world is increasingly confusing and isolating. Deaths by despair continue to rise, and America has long been in a mental health care crisis. Our screens feed our wildest conspiracy theories and our equally wild celebrity fantasies, while distancing us from friends and family. We put our faith in “manifesting” our reality, while ignoring the advice of experts. We have access to never-before-imagined amounts of information, but we are no wiser. We contrive conflicts with people online whom we have never met. Our anxiety culminates in a nagging question: “Is it them, or is it me?” Amanda Montell, author of The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality, would probably answer, “It’s all of us.”

A linguist, podcaster and writer, Montell explored the links between language and power in her books Cultish and Wordslut. In her new book, Montell takes on an even more ambitious project: explaining how our cognitive biases combine with our brain functions to skew our perceptions of reality.

This is heavy stuff, but Montell combines erudition with humor and self-deprecation to make it accessible. Her explanations of a dozen cultural biases are clear and backed by research, while her cautionary tales of their destructive impact are personal, often hilarious and frequently moving. So, for example, her commitment to an abusive relationship was the result of the sunk cost fallacy—the conviction that “spending resources you can’t get back . . . justifies spending more.” Her affection for a thoroughly mediocre seat cushion that she made from “the innards of a neglected dog toy” is a charming symptom of the IKEA effect—that “we like things better when we’ve had a hand in creating them.” And our fascination with the vlogs of young women dying from painful disease is an example of survivorship bias. There is no condemnation or exasperation in this book, but there is plenty of humor, compassion and reason.

Reading The Age of Magical Overthinking feels like listening to your smartest friend give excellent advice. Hopefully, we’ll take it.

Amanda Montell explores our cultural and cognitive biases and their perilous consequences in the funny, compassionate The Age of Magical Overthinking.

Prescription for Pain

Prescription for Pain investigates how a pediatrician built an opioid empire in rural Ohio, leaving a trail of devastation in his wake.
NonfictionLiterature

The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians

Review by Jessica Peng

If you’re reading this, you probably love books. You’ve probably stepped into a bookstore and felt an immediate rush of comfort, along with the thrill of getting to browse the bestsellers in your favorite genres, be it poetry or romance or biography. You might’ve grown up frequenting your local library, searching for obscure titles in the computer catalog or laughing at the absurd comments left in well-worn paperbacks. While most book fans are familiar with the experience of visiting bookstores, libraries and other delightful book places, few of us have had the privilege of discovering what goes on behind the scenes. 

That’s where The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians comes in. This project from internationally bestselling author James Patterson and frequent collaborator Matt Eversmann highlights dozens of dedicated, on-the-ground booksellers and librarians to give readers an inside look at the joys and challenges of working amid shelves of books. After taking the time to meet and interview industry experts from around the country, Patterson and Eversmann tell their stories in short, first-person vignettes. Readers will delight in the New York librarian championing literary programs in the prison complex on Rikers Island, the Barnes & Noble manager who started a young adult book club for teens and the independent bookstore owner who fell in love at the store she now runs. 

Of course, the stories in The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians are not all optimistic. Patterson and Eversmann’s heroes face a number of serious problems, from lack of funding to natural disasters to book bans. Although the featured booksellers and librarians handle conflict with competence and goodwill, it is clear that their efforts alone are not enough to save an industry that is threatened by political tension, monopolies and new technologies. The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians is an unique and enchanting work of nonfiction, but it’s also a call to action, a cry for communities to rally around their booksellers.

Patterson is well-known for the millions of dollars and years of work he has already poured into promoting access to literature. There is no better mouthpiece for this project. The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians is an homage to anyone who felt the tingle of magic that only comes with reading, and who made it their mission to share their love with everyone. The first thing you’ll do after reading this book is take a visit to your local bookstore or library!

The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians is a heartwarming celebration that will delight bibliophiles of all stripes.

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