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Defining Style

Emphasizing personal style, Joan Barzilay Freund’s Defining Style is a freeing, inspiring and extremely innovative look at interior design.
Emphasizing personal style, Joan Barzilay Freund’s Defining Style is a freeing, inspiring and extremely innovative look at interior design.
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Flower Philosophy

There is such beauty to discover in Anna Potter’s Flower Philosophy, along with quotes from writers and thinkers, stunning photographs and first-rate project ideas.
NonfictionSocial ScienceFamily & Relationships

Hanging Out

Review by Celia Mattison

Sheila Liming’s Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time is a thoughtful manifesto on the inherently subversive and joyous act of socializing. In seven chapters about different types of hanging out (“Dinner Parties as Hanging Out,” “Hanging Out on the Job,” etc.), Liming explores the fading art of leisure and its cultural roots.

Liming defines hanging out as a conscious act of refusal in a production-obsessed society. “Hanging out is about daring to do nothing much,” she writes, “and, even more than that, about daring to do it in the company of others.” She acknowledges that it is a peculiar time—amid the COVID-19 pandemic—to call for a return to the in-person hang, but this context is precisely why we are realizing the importance of spending idle time in physical communities. We cannot let corporate capitalism snatch away what is left of our free time, Liming argues. “Time is being stolen from us—not for the first time . . . but at newly unprecedented rates.”

Hanging Out reads as a chattier, slightly more precious version of How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell. The book embraces its call for intentional meandering with wide-ranging references and a loose narrative structure. An English professor, Liming is unsurprisingly the most compelling when she incorporates literary criticism into her treatise. While the personal stories drag, the fiction references crackle. This is particularly true in her analysis of “party literature” in the chapter “Hanging Out at Parties,” in which Liming looks at several 20th-century novels and examines the different ways parties have functioned as social mechanisms.

What is quickly revealed in Liming’s contemplative writing is that hanging out—and all of its possible ramifications, limitations and effects—is too enormous a subject to comprehensively discuss. Instead, Liming uses her time to argue for the importance of mingling with others and finding time, even in an increasingly virtual world, to enjoy the hang.

Sheila Liming’s Hanging Out reveals how the joyous act of socializing is inherently subversive.

Hijab Butch Blues

Lamya H’s memoir is a generous, probing and brilliant response to the question of how she could be both a queer person and a practicing Muslim.
NonfictionNatureMemoir

Holding Fire

Review by Becky Libourel Diamond

“We’re getting it wrong in this beautiful, ravaged place,” writes author Bryce Andrews (Down From the Mountain) in Holding Fire: A Reckoning With the American West. “Over and over, we find a lovely valley, shoot it through the ecological heart, grind its bones to dust, and pour the foundation of an edifice less interesting than what existed before.” It is his ah-ha moment in this vibrant, candid account of his experiences working as a cowboy in Montana.

Although it’s labeled as a memoir, Holding Fire also has many elements of regional nonfiction, natural history and even social science. As a result, it is structured in a fresh and unpredictable way, with each chapter opening a new window into Andrews’ thoughts, feelings and prior experiences. Framed around the inheritance of his grandfather’s gun, a Smith & Wesson revolver, each reflection focuses on a particular idea that has helped Andrews comprehend the fragility of life and inevitability of death.

As Andrews ruminates on his personal history, he dots his musings with descriptive, emotive prose. “In quiet moments all through childhood,” he writes, “I entertained a Western fantasy in which the sky’s broad dome appeared first, its sun a magnet tugging upward on my heart.” Guns were never a big part of his life until he lived and worked on a ranch, where he had to hunt and keep critters at bay. These encounters provided life lessons and new proficiencies, particularly when hunting with fellow rancher Roger, whom he calls “the lodge’s wrangler and outfitter.” But the more Andrews lived with the gun, the more it led him to realize the destruction caused by violence. He eventually forged the gun into a useful gardening tool, learning blacksmithing in the process.

Holding Fire is a meditation on the past, present and future of not only Andrews’ own life but also the lives of all mortal creatures.

Bryce Andrews’ vibrant, candid account of working as a cowboy in Montana provides a moving meditation on the fragility of life and inevitability of death.

Home Therapy

Anita Yokota is both a licensed counselor and an interior designer, and she marries the two paths ingeniously in Home Therapy.
NonfictionHistoryBlack HistoryAmerican History

I Saw Death Coming

Review by Deborah Mason

You may have learned in high school that the post-Civil War Reconstruction was an inevitable failure. In her latest book, I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction, historian Kidada E. Williams demonstrates that, far from dying a natural death, Reconstruction was destroyed in a not-so-secret war waged against Black citizens.

Williams argues that the end of Reconstruction was the explicit goal of Confederates who refused to accept their military defeat. Abetted by war-weary white Northerners who wanted to put the Civil War behind them, a president who had no interest in securing civil rights for Black people and authorities who didn’t care to enforce the law, armed militias and Klansmen engaged in a concerted battle to destroy Black citizens who voted, ran for office or merely owned and farmed their own land. These white aggressors invaded homes and subjected Black Americans to a host of crimes, from arson and torture to rape and murder. The destruction of property alone amounted to millions of dollars in today’s currency, while the damage to victims, their families and their communities remains incalculable.

Williams, an associate professor of history at Wayne State University, lays out her case with forensic precision. She writes with authority about the political and social circumstances that enabled these attacks, as well as the impact that these acts of terror had on Black people’s health and financial security, for both the injured parties and the generations following them. But her most compelling evidence comes from the victims themselves: witness testimonies from the Congressional hearings on the Ku Klux Klan in 1871 and transcripts of Works Progress Administration interviews with the last survivors of slavery in the 1930s. 

These testimonies make for harrowing reading, but that is no reason not to read them. Previously enslaved people recounted the horrors of these “visits”—the deaths of loved ones, the rapes, the lingering physical and psychic wounds, the loss of hard-earned wealth—with dignity and courage, knowing full well the risks they ran by testifying. Williams honors their suffering by placing them at the center of this important, overdue correction to the historical record.

Kidada E. Williams demonstrates that the progress of the post-Civil War Reconstruction was hampered by a not-so-secret war against Black citizens.

Linocut

Sam Marshall’s book makes linocut printmaking feel approachable, with friendly, precise instructions and projects that build in degrees of complexity.
NonfictionHistoryBlack HistoryBiography

Master Slave Husband Wife

Review by Deborah Mason

Everyone should know the story of Ellen and William Craft, the subjects of Ilyon Woo’s Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey From Slavery to Freedom. In 1848, Ellen, a light-skinned Black woman, disguised herself as a wealthy, young white man in a wheelchair. William, her husband, accompanied Ellen as an enslaved man, tending to his “master’s” needs. Together they traveled in disguise from the mansion in Georgia where they were enslaved to freedom in the North. Every step of their journey depended on them keeping their wits about them, especially for Ellen. Ship captains, train conductors and even a friend of her enslaver were fooled by Ellen’s ability to perform a role that transformed her demeanor in every conceivable way—from woman to man, Black to white, slave to master. Their self-emancipation was a triumph of courage, love and intelligence.

Yet the Crafts’ story is more than a romantic adventure, and Woo does an excellent job of providing historical context for the dangers they faced without losing the thread of a terrific story. The Crafts’ lives were not magically transformed merely by crossing the Mason-Dixon Line, Woo explains. The North, while free, was still hostile territory for self-emancipated Black people, with rampant bigotry and racism even among abolitionists. However, the greatest danger to Ellen and William was the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, which required everyone to return formerly enslaved people to their enslavers and forced the Crafts into exile in England until after the Civil War.

The real strength of Master Slave Husband Wife comes from Woo’s exploration of how Ellen was perceived and treated after her spectacular escape catapulted her into celebrity. Woo, whose earlier book, The Great Divorce, explored another convention-defying 19th-century woman, makes the excellent point that Ellen’s method of escape was not only brilliant but transgressive, defying conventions of gender and race. Even the fair skin tone that allowed her to pass as white was the product of generations of rape, giving the lie to myths of the “happy slave.” With empathy and admiration, Woo details Ellen’s quiet refusal to conform to the racist, classist and sexist expectations of her enemies, benefactors, supporters and even her husband. Thanks to Woo, Ellen is finally at the center of her own story as someone who heroically challenged America’s myths of equality and freedom.

Ilyon Woo tells the remarkable true story of Ellen and William Craft, who came up with an ingenious and daring plan to emancipate themselves from slavery.

Money and Love

Organized around issues such as dating, marriage and deciding where to live, Money and Love is a useful, logical guide for couples on the verge of big life decisions.
NonfictionLifestylesFilmFashion

Red Carpet Oscars

Review by Susannah Felts

As we enter Oscars season, here’s a chance to take a deep, luxurious dive into the history of red carpet fashion and fame. Dijanna Mulhearn’s Red Carpet Oscars chronicles the biggest celebrity event of the year from its beginnings in 1929, “a quiet black-tie dinner,” to the 94th edition in 2022, when the slap seen ’round the world overshadowed the dresses by a long shot. (That said, Mulhearn keeps her gaze steady and makes no mention of the debacle.)

Photographs offer an incredible parade of silver-screen talent throughout. Modern viewers may find the many black-and-white candids from the first three decades of Hollywood especially intriguing; I personally love the 1970s coverage, too. Mulhearn’s text helps tell the couture story, providing social context and a taste of each evening’s drama and the actors’ personalities. “[Joan] Fontaine’s black midi-length dress,” she writes, “felt mournful, possibly reflecting Fontaine’s mood as she imagined watching [Olivia] de Havilland snare the Oscar.” In sum, what we have here is a fascinating, particular angle on American culture.

Dijanna Mulhearn offers a chance to take a deep, luxurious dive into the history of red carpet fashion and fame.

Saying It Loud

Saying It Loud chronicles the shift in the civil rights movement from the nonviolent tactics associated with Martin Luther King Jr. to Black Power.
NonfictionSocial Science

Shielded

Review by Sarojini Seupersad

In 1967, the Supreme Court invented a new legal principle called qualified immunity that limited the public’s right to sue certain government employees. Seemingly designed to protect government officials from frivolous lawsuits, in practice, it mostly shields the police from being sued for misconduct, even if they’ve violated someone’s constitutional rights. In effect, it makes it perfectly legal for the police to infringe on citizens’ rights.

How did we get to the point where the people who are sworn to protect the law do not have to follow it? In her book, Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable, UCLA law professor Joanna Schwartz deftly explains the complicated web of laws and policies that exist in the United States for the sole purpose of protecting the police. In the process, she shines a light on every aspect of the justice system, from the federal jury system, which is disproportionately white and middle class, to Supreme Court decisions that make little sense in the context of everyday life.

After studying police accountability for decades, Schwartz’s expertise in criminal justice law shines in Shielded. The book is part research and part history, and it’s filled with important case law, most of which the average person won’t have heard of. These important courtroom precedents determine how the police are allowed to engage with the public, such as whether or not police need a warrant to search you when you’re minding your business walking down the street. (They don’t.) But this is no legalese-filled academic treatise. It’s incredibly engaging because Schwartz smoothly weaves the human story into each case she explains. After all, there is a real person behind every story of police misconduct. Someone was brutalized or their rights were ignored, and this book explains exactly how the police were allowed to get away with it.

Although these laws have been in place for decades, Schwartz doesn’t believe that they are unstoppable or that police misconduct will continue to go unpunished indefinitely. In addition to dissecting the problem, she also offers ideas for solutions, such as educating the public on the failures of criminal justice law and requiring the police to pay a portion of civil settlements. Shielded is a meaningful, well-researched and readable work that will open many discussions about this important social issue.

Shielded is a meaningful, well-researched work that will open many discussions about the U.S. laws that exist for the sole purpose of protecting the police.

The Love You Save

Goldie Taylor’s absolutely stunning memoir depicts Black life in St. Louis, Missouri, in the 1970s and ’80s with cinematic detail and novelistic prose.

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