Good evening, everyone. Welcome to Super Tuesday! My Senator here in Arizona Kyrsten Sinema finally made it official that she did not plan on running for six more years of sabotaging Democratic
goals. In November, it most likely will be Ruben Gallego versus the ultra-MAGA Kari Lake, so we’ve got our work cut out for us. Here’s a link to Gallego’s memoir about his serving as a Marine in Iraq, published a couple years ago: They Called Us "Lucky": The Life and Afterlife of the Iraq War's Hardest Hit Unit.
They Called Us “Lucky” details Ruben Gallego’s journey and includes harrowing accounts of some of the war’s most costly battles. It details the struggles and the successes of Ruben—now a member of Congress—and the rest of Lima Company following Iraq, examining the complicated matter of PTSD. And it serves as a tribute to Ruben’s fallen comrades, who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
Kari Lake has a book too--Unafraid: Just Getting Started--but I’m not going to bother linking to it. It was published by Winning Team Publishing, the sewage publishing house co-founded by Donald Trump, Jr. I will add it soon to my The Book Dumpster feature at The Literate Lizard, where I add my own annotations to the publisher’s descriptions of various right-wing books.
My Women’s History Month promo is up, with dozens of 20% off selections for adults, teens and kids. April will probably feature a month-long environmental promo for Earth Day. And I’m also putting together a Blue Wave Special of discounted books to help us fight disinformation, Trump and the GOP, and win big in November. Once that promo goes live, it will run through the election. I’ve given it a head start with three books discounted now: Hit 'Em Where It Hurts, by Rachel Bitecofer, Taking Down Trump, by Tristan Snell; and Attack From Within, by Barbara McQuade. More to come!
THIS WEEK’S NOTABLE NEW NONFICTION
- Metaracism: How Systemic Racism Devastates Black Lives—and How We Break Free, by Tricia Rose. In Metaracism, pioneering scholar Tricia Rose cuts through the noise with a bracing and invaluable new account of what systemic racism actually is, how it works, and how we can fight back. She reveals how—from housing to education to criminal justice—an array of policies and practices connect and interact to produce an even more devastating “metaracism” far worse than the sum of its parts. While these systemic connections can be difficult to see—and are often portrayed as “color-blind”—again and again they function to disproportionately contain, exploit, and punish Black people. “Marshalling extensive evidence into a lucid and powerful narrative, Rose provides an essential new look at American inequality. Even readers well versed in the topic will have their eyes opened by this cogent analysis.”—Publishers Weekly
- How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler, by Peter Pomerantsev, In the summer of 1941, Hitler ruled Europe from the Atlantic to the Black Sea. Britain was struggling to combat his powerful propaganda machine, crowing victory and smearing his enemies as liars and manipulators over his frequent radio speeches, blasted out on loudspeakers and into homes. British claims that Hitler was dangerous had little impact against this wave of disinformation. Except for the broadcasts of someone called Der Chef, a German who questioned Nazi doctrine. He had access to high-ranking German military secrets and spoke of internal rebellion. His listeners included German soldiers and citizens, as well as politicians in Washington DC who were debating getting into the war. And--most importantly--Der Chef was a fiction. He was a character created by the British propagandist Thomas Sefton Delmer, a unique weapon in the war. Then, as author Peter Pomerantsev seeks to tell Delmer's story, he is called into a wartime propaganda effort of his own: the US response to the invasion of Ukraine. In flashes forward to the present day, Pomerantsev weaves in what he's learning from Delmer as he seeks to fight against Vladimir Putin's tyranny and lies. “Pomerantsev digs deep into the history of information warfare to help us understand how to fight charlatans and fear mongers in the present.”—Anne Applebaum
- A History of Women in 101 Objects, by Annabelle Hirsch. With engaging prose, compelling stories, and a beautiful full-page image of each object, Annabelle Hirsch’s book contains a curated and diverse compendium of women and their things, uncovering the thoughts and feelings at the heart of women’s daily lives. The result is an intimate and stirring alternative history of humans in the world. The objects date from prehistory to today and are assembled chronologically to show the evolution of how women were perceived by others, how they perceived themselves, how they fought for freedom. Some (like a sixteenth-century glass dildo) are objects of female pleasure, some (a thumbscrew) of female subjugation. “An excellent reminder that women have always been there. They may be written out of texts, but the objects they leave behind reveal them in all their complexity. Women who fought, women who worked, women who wielded power and carried agency. Through these 101 objects, you can touch the hands of ancestors and understand the worlds they inhabited.”—Dr. Janina Ramirez
- The Witch of New York: The Trials of Polly Bodine and the Cursed Birth of Tabloid Justice. by Alex Hortis. Before the sensational cases of Amanda Knox and Casey Anthony—before even Lizzie Borden—there was Polly Bodine, the first American woman put on trial for capital murder in our nation’s debut media circus.
On Christmas night, December 25, 1843, in a serene village on Staten Island, shocked neighbors discovered the burnt remains of twenty-four-year-old mother Emeline Houseman and her infant daughter, Ann Eliza. In a perverse nativity, someone bludgeoned to death a mother and child in their home—and then covered up the crime with hellfire. When an ambitious district attorney charges Polly Bodine (Emelin’s sister-in-law) with a double homicide, the new “penny press” explodes. Polly is a perfect media villain: she’s a separated wife who drinks gin, commits adultery, and has had multiple abortions. Between June 1844 and April 1846, the nation was enthralled by her three trials—in Staten Island, Manhattan, and Newburgh—for the “Christmas murders.” “Meticulous research and concise writing adroitly capture the zeitgeist of 1840s New York City, in the end effectively demonstrating how "tabloid justice would, one way or another, alter American law."— David Dominé
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In True Face: A Woman's Life in the CIA, Unmasked, by Jonna Mendez. Jonna Hiestand Mendez began her CIA career as a “contract wife” performing secretarial duties for the CIA as a convenience to her husband, a young officer stationed in Europe. She needed his permission to open a bank account or shut off the gas to their apartment. Yet Mendez had a talent for espionage, too, and she soon took on bigger and more significant roles at the Agency. She parlayed her interest in photography into an operational role overseas, an unlikely area for a woman in the CIA. Often underestimated, occasionally undermined, she lived under cover and served tours of duty all over the globe, rising first to become an international spy and ultimately to Chief of Disguise at CIA’s Office of Technical Service. “Few outside the intelligence community understand the pressures and deceptions involved in spying. Even fewer know what it means to navigate this world while also fighting against discrimination. But all that secrecy can take a toll. In this book, Jonna Mendez takes a risk that she never could in her spying days--to tell the full and unvarnished truth.”—Valerie Plame
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The Riddles of the Sphinx: Inheriting the Feminist History of the Crossword Puzzle, by Anna Shechtman. In this fascinating work—part memoir, part cultural analysis—Shechtman excavates the hidden history of the crossword and the overlooked women who have been central to its creation and evolution, from the “Crossword Craze” of the 1920s to the role of digital technology today. As she tells the story of her own experience in the CrossWorld, she analyzes the roles assigned to women in American culture, the boxes they’ve been allowed to fill, and the ways that they’ve used puzzles to negotiate the constraints and play of desire under patriarchy. “The Riddles of the Sphinx takes the reader from the Algonquin Round Table to smoke-filled Parisian lecture halls, lesbian separatist marches, a contemporary crossword tournament, and an eating disorder treatment center in Paradise, Utah. Writing with intelligence, clarity, and unexpected humor, Anna Shechtman deftly weaves together the neglected histories of the women who made and make the crossword, raising urgent and fascinating questions about the politics of wordplay and the dilemma of living in language." — Christine Smallwood
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Double Click: Twin Photographers in the Golden Age of Magazines, by Carol Kino. The McLaughlin twins were trailblazing female photographers, celebrated in their time as stars in their respective fields, but have largely been forgotten since. Here, in Double Click, author Carol Kino provides us with a fascinating window into the golden era of magazine photography and the first young women’s publications, bringing these two brilliant women and their remarkable accomplishments to vivid life. Frances was the only female photographer on staff in Condé Nast's photo studio, hired just after Irving Penn, and became known for streetwise, cinema verité-style work, which appeared in the pages of Glamour and Vogue. Her sister Kathryn’s surrealistic portraits filled the era’s new “career girl” magazines, including Charm and Mademoiselle. Kino uses their careers to illuminate the lives of young women during this time, an early twentieth-century moment marked by proto-feminist thinking, excitement about photography’s burgeoning creative potential, and the ferment of wartime New York. Toward the end of the 1940s, and moving into the early 1950s, conventionality took over, women were pushed back into the home, and the window of opportunity began to close. Kino renders this fleeting moment of possibility in gleaming multi-color, so that the reader cherishes its abundance, mourns its passing, and gains new appreciation for the talent that was fostered at its peak. “Engrossing… Kino paints a textured portrait of artists who came of age amid sea changes in magazine publishing and women’s cultural roles, and helped transform the way Americans consumed information and encountered fashion…Fashion, photography, and pop culture aficionados will be captivated.” —Publishers Weekly
- Thunder Song: Essays, by Sasha LaPointe. Drawing on a rich family archive as well as the anthropological work of her late great-grandmother, Sasha LaPointe explores themes ranging from indigenous identity and stereotypes to cultural displacement and environmental degradation to understand what our experiences teach us about the power of community, commitment, and conscientious honesty. Unapologetically punk, the essays in Thunder Song segue from the miraculous to the mundane, from the spiritual to the physical, as they examine the role of art—in particular music—and community in helping a new generation of indigenous people claim the strength of their heritage while defining their own path in the contemporary world. A March Indie Next Pick.
- Beautiful People: My Thirteen Truths About Disability, by Melissa Blake. In the summer of 2019, journalist Melissa Blake penned an op-ed for CNN Opinion. A conservative pundit caught wind of it, mentioning Blake’s work in a YouTube video. What happened next is equal parts a searing view into society, how we collectively view and treat disabled people, and the making of an advocate. After a troll said that Blake should be banned from posting pictures of herself, she took to Twitter and defiantly posted three smiling selfies, all taken during a lovely vacation in the Big Apple: “I wanted desperately to clap back at these vile trolls in a way that would make a statement, not only about how our society views disabilities, but also about the toxicity of our strict and unrealistic beauty standards….When people mock how I look, they're not just insulting me. They're insulting all disabled people. We're constantly told that we're repulsive and ugly and not good enough to be seen. This was me pushing back against that toxic, ableist narrative.” Her tweet went viral, attracting worldwide media attention. Now, in her manifesto, Beautiful People, Blake shares her truths about disability. “Melissa’s willingness to share her unfiltered self opens minds to the experiences of people living with physical disabilities. Her story helps us all unlearn stereotypes that we are conditioned to believe about people with disabilities, and that the media has been guilty of reinforcing.”—Nicholas Ferroni
- Waves in an Impossible Sea: How Everyday Life Emerges from the Cosmic Ocean, by Matt Strassler. Physicist Strassler tells a startling tale of elementary particles, human experience, and empty space. He begins with a simple mystery of motion. When we drive at highway speeds with the windows down, the wind beats against our faces. Yet our planet hurtles through the cosmos at 150 miles per second, and we feel nothing of it. How can our voyage be so tranquil when, as Einstein discovered, matter warps space, and space deflects matter?
The answer, Strassler reveals, is that empty space is a sea, albeit a paradoxically strange one. Much like water and air, it ripples in various ways, and we ourselves, made from its ripples, can move through space as effortlessly as waves crossing an ocean. Deftly weaving together daily experience and fundamental physics—the musical universe, the enigmatic quantum, cosmic fields, and the Higgs boson—Strassler shows us how all things, familiar and unfamiliar, emerge from what seems like nothing at all.
- Saving Michelangelo's Dome: How Three Mathematicians and a Pope Sparked an Architectural Revolution, by Wayne Kalayjian.1742: the famous dome atop Saint Peter’s Basilica, designed by Michelangelo, is fractured and threatened with collapse. The dome is the pride of Italy and the largest of its kind anywhere in the world. And no one knows how to fix it.
This engaging and colorful narrative tells the overlooked story of how Michelangelo’s Dome was saved from disaster by three mathematicians and Pope Benedict XIV, who had asked them for help. It is a gripping story of decisive leadership, crisis management, and scientific innovation, and the resistance that was faced when sailing into the headwinds of conventional thought. "An intriguing look at how an iconic structure came to be, and the challenges that arose in the years that followed. Kalayjian weaves an intricate story at the intersection of engineering, mathematics, politics, and religion.”— Rome Agrawal
- 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool, by James Kaplan. The story of how jazz arrived at the pinnacle of American culture in 1959, told through the journey of three towering artists—Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans—who came together to create the most iconic jazz album of all time, Kind of Blue. The myth of the ’60s depends on the 1950s being the “before times” of conformity, segregation, straightness—The Lonely Crowd and The Organization Man. This all carries some truth, but it does nothing to explain how, in 1959, America’s great indigenous art form, jazz, reached the height of its power and popularity, thanks to a number of Black geniuses so legendary they go by one name—Monk, Mingus, Rollins, Coltrane, and, above all, Miles. Nineteen fifty-nine saw Miles, Coltrane, Bill Evans, and more come together to record what is widely considered the greatest jazz album of all time, and certainly the bestselling: Kind of Blue. “James Kaplan sweeps us into the dazzling world of Swing Street after World War II, a scene as mythical and magical as Pablo Picasso’s Paris, Timothy Leary’s San Francisco, or Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Concord. It is an intimate, enthralling portrait of the titans of 20th-century music—‘friends and geniuses together’—and the revolution they created.” —Debby Applegate
- Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring, by Brad Gooch. Keith Haring was one of the most emblematic artists of the 1980s, a figure described by his contemporaries as “a prophet in his life, his person, and his work.” Part of an iconic cultural crowd that included Andy Warhol, Madonna, and Basquiat, Haring broke down the barriers between high art and popular culture, creating work that was accessible for all and using it as a means to provoke and inspire radical social change. Haring died of AIDS in 1990. To this day, his influence on our culture remains incontrovertible, and his glamorous, tragically short life has a unique aura of mystery and power. “It’s all here: the grade school Walt Disney and Dr. Seuss; the adolescent acid trips; the fondness for Post-it notes and flying saucers; the long tails of Dubuffet and Burroughs; the encounters with Madonna, Warhol, and one game-changer of a subway Johnny Walker Red poster. Brad Gooch takes us deep into Keith Haring’s imagination while somehow managing to fix the aura and energy of the 1980s New York art scene to the page.”—Stacy Schiff
- The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots, by Daniela Rus and Gregory Mone. In The Heart and the Chip, roboticist Daniela Rus and science writer Gregory Mone provide an overview of the interconnected fields of robotics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, and reframe the way we think about intelligent machines while weighing the moral and ethical consequences of their role in society. Robots aren’t going to steal our jobs: they’re going to make us more capable, productive, and precise. “Daniela Rus and Gregory Mone describe a future of robots with almost unimaginable potential—in which robots take on new tasks that will help address the pressing challenges of our civilization. They also propose strategies to mitigate potential dangers of a growing number of robots in our midst. An enjoyable and informative discussion of an important set of technologies.”— Susan Hockfield “Sounds interesting...but part of me imagines robots in the future sitting around a table laughing at this book as I, in my butler’s outfit, serve them cups of hydraulic fluid.” --The Literate Lizard
All book links in this diary are to my online bookstore The Literate Lizard. If you already have a favorite indie bookstore, please keep supporting them, but If you’re able to throw a little business my way, that would be truly appreciated. I would love to be considered ‘The Official Bookstore of Daily Kos.’ Use the coupon code DAILYKOS for 15% off your order, in gratitude for your support (an ever-changing smattering of new releases are already discounted 20% each week). I’m busily adding new content every day, and will have lots more dedicated subject pages and curated booklists as it grows. I want it to be full of book-lined rabbit holes to lose yourself in (and maybe throw some of those books into a shopping cart as well.)
We also partner Libro.fm for audiobooks. Libro.fm is similar to Amazon’s Audible, with a la carte audiobooks, or a $14.99 monthly membership which includes the audiobook of your choice and 20% off subsequent purchases during the month. Note that the DAILYKOS coupon code is only for the bookstore, not for the audiobook affiliate.
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