Happy Women’s History Month! Today’s book rec is These Truths: A History of the United States by Jill Lepore. This is a pretty comprehensive one-volume history of the US, and it’s beautifully written and pays a lot of attention to the methods and effects of mass communication in creating and…

Happy Women’s History Month! Today’s book rec is all about isolation: Queen of the Sea by Dylan Meconis. This is a graphic novel by my favorite comic artist (I previously recommended Bite Me! by her awhile back, who knows how long ago), and it’s an alternate history version of the…

Happy Women’s History Month! Today’s book rec is In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes. This is a great piece of noir mystery fiction, written right after WWII. A pilot, Dix Steele, moves to LA and happens to run into a former pilot friend, who is now a detective…

Happy Women’s History Month! Today’s book rec is something lighthearted and funny because times are tough out there at the moment. Any Duchess Will Do by Tessa Dare is basically everything you want in a historical romance: about a playboy duke (check!) whose mother wants him to get married and…

Happy Women’s History Month! Today’s book rec is Assata by Assata Shakur. I went into this book knowing basically nothing about Shakur and it was a fascinating read. It starts with her being arrested after a deadly confrontation with a New Jersey state highway patrolman and being chained to the…

Happy Black History Month! Today’s book rec is A Perilous Path: Talking Race, Inequality, and the Law. This is a transcript of a discussion between Sherilynn Ifill (from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund), Loretta Lynch (the former US Attorney General), Bryan Stevenson (a death penalty criminal defense lawyer), and Anthony…

Happy Black History Month! Today’s book rec is No Crystal Stair: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller by Vaunda Michaux Nelson. Lewis Michaux opened the African National Memorial Bookstore on Seventh Avenue up in Harlem in 1932 with just five books to sell…

Happy Black History Month! Today is the day that Frederick Douglass chose as his birthday, since he didn’t know his date of birth. In honor of this bona-fide American hero, today’s book rec is Frederick Douglass in Brooklyn, edited by Theodore Hamm. It’s a collection of speeches Douglass gave at…

Happy Black History Month! Today’s book rec is Life Doesn’t Frighten Me by Maya Angelou, with paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat acting as illustrations. It’s not a story for kids as much as a mantra or an affirmation, a declaration of courage and willpower. The paintings seem like an organic extension…