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Great Women Sculptors

The beautifully printed, encyclopedic Great Women Sculptors brings together more than 300 artists who have been excluded from institutions and canons on the basis of gender.
The beautifully printed, encyclopedic Great Women Sculptors brings together more than 300 artists who have been excluded from institutions and canons on the basis of gender.
NonfictionSocial ScienceLGBTQ+

American Teenager

Nico Lang’s powerful American Teenager closely follows seven transgender young adults, rendering complex, searing and sensitive portraits of their lives.
Nico Lang’s powerful American Teenager closely follows seven transgender young adults, rendering complex, searing and sensitive portraits of their lives.
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NonfictionAudioHumor

How to Be Perfect

Review by Autumn Allen

In How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question (9 hours), Michael Schur, creator of “The Good Place” and co-creator of “Parks and Recreation,” explores philosophical questions about how humans define good character and behavior and how to achieve it. The audiobook is read mostly by the author, whose well-paced, attentive narration keeps his humorous, personality-driven (albeit sometimes meandering) content clear and engaging.

Actors from “The Good Place” comprise the audiobook’s remaining cast, with Kristen Bell, D’Arcy Carden, Ted Danson, William Jackson Harper, Manny Jacinto, Marc Evan Jackson, Jameela Jamil and even philosophy professor Todd May (who had a cameo on the show) bringing distinctive tones, attitudes and comedic gravitas to their performances.

This is a lively audio production for thoughtful readers interested in questions of goodness (“Should I punch my friend in the face for no reason?”), and it’s perfect for listening in both spurts or over a single long stretch. How to Be Perfect turns serious questions into playful thought exercises to aid in making better decisions with less angst.

With guest appearances from the cast of “The Good Place,” this is a lively audio production for thoughtful readers interested in moral dilemmas.
NonfictionHistoryBiography

Sisters of Mokama

Review by Alice Cary

“My mother was part of a generation of women who inherited all the burdens of the past and yet found the will and the means to reject them,” writes Jyoti Thottam, a senior Opinion editor at the New York Times. When her mother was 15, she left her home at the southern tip of India and traveled more than 1,000 miles to Mokama, a small town in an area considered to be the poorest and most violent in the country. There, she spent seven years studying nursing at a hospital run by a handful of Catholic nuns from Kentucky. As an adult, Thottam found herself wondering: How did these unlikely events transpire?

After 20 years of meticulous research, Thottam has chronicled Nazareth Hospital’s history in Sisters of Mokama: The Pioneering Women Who Brought Hope and Healing to India. This immersive, transportive read starts with the hospital’s founding in 1947, in the midst of the Partition of India into India and Pakistan. The fact that six nuns from Kentucky even managed to travel to Mokama at this time—much less stay and transform a vacant building into a successful hospital and nursing school—is nothing short of miraculous.

Once the sisters reached Mokama, they faced endless deprivations, including bone-chilling cold; suffocating heat; monsoons; a scarcity of food, medicine and supplies; and a lack of electricity and running water in the early years. Undaunted, the resourceful nuns nevertheless insisted on the highest of standards. They put a container of water upstairs, drilled a hole through the floor and ran a rubber hose down to the operating room so that surgeons could scrub under a continuous stream of water before surgery. One sister even built a still to provide distilled water.

Thottam has done an excellent job of transforming numerous interviews, letters and records into a compelling narrative that conveys the hardships and triumphs of these dedicated nuns and the nurses they trained. Everyone was overworked, and things weren’t always smooth. The young, homesick Indian girls were only allowed to speak English, and the nuns could be extremely strict. In telling their stories, Thottam makes a multitude of personalities come alive and shares a variety of perspectives without passing judgment.

On the surface, Sisters of Mokama seems like such an unlikely story. It’s a good thing Thottam has documented this little-known saga so that generations to come will know it really happened.

After 20 years of research, Jyoti Thottam shares the immersive and unlikely story of a group of nuns from Kentucky who opened a hospital in India in 1947.
NonfictionScience

Vagina Obscura

Review by Linda Castellitto

For an entire month in 2018, science journalist Rachel E. Gross’ “vulva had felt on the verge of bursting into flames.” There were few options for contending with, let alone eradicating, the bacterial infection plaguing her nether regions. Her best hope? Boric acid—or, as her doctor put it, “basically rat poison,” which has been used since the 19th century in vaginal suppositories, as well as for killing roaches. Gross’ understandable alarm, as well as her frustration with her own anatomical ignorance, spurred her onto the wide-ranging investigatory journey she chronicles in her engaging and enormously fascinating debut, Vagina Obscura.

Thanks to entrenched sexism, any book about female anatomy and medical history is bound to have physically and psychologically harrowing passages. Gross’ is no exception. After all, it wasn’t until 1993 that a federal mandate forced doctors to include women and minorities in medical research. “Women—and especially women of color, trans women, and women who are sexual minorities—have historically been excluded from this supposedly universal endeavor,” she writes.

In addition to offering valuable historical context about the medical field’s reluctance to properly study cervices, ovaries, uteruses, et al., Vagina Obscura also serves up optimistic evidence for a more equitable future. Gross writes with enthusiasm about pioneering doctors and researchers and shares stories of the people who’ve benefited from their work. To wit: Australian urologist Helen O’Connell’s research on clitoral anatomy laid the foundation for reconstructive surgeries for genital-cutting survivors. Biologist Patty Brennan’s realization that female ducks’ vaginas rotate opposite to males’ corkscrew penises challenged scientific assumptions about copulation. The activism of Cori Smith, a 28-year-old trans man, has drawn attention to trans and nonbinary people with endometriosis. Gender-affirmation surgeon and transgender woman Marci Bowers is “pushing the boundaries of what surgeons can do to give patients the appearance and sensation they desire.”

Gross makes it clear that, if we want to advance our understanding and medical treatment of the human body, it’s going to take a village—one filled with people who are curious, compassionate and persistent. She’s certainly identified lots of them in Vagina Obscura, a book that is impressive in its scope and thrilling in the hope it offers to those whose bodies have previously been overlooked.

Vagina Obscura is impressive in its scope and thrilling in the hope it offers to those whose bodies have been overlooked by the medical establishment.
NonfictionAudioMemoir

All About Me!

Review by G. Robert Frazier

How can anyone take this man seriously? Answer: You can’t. Nor should you. And nor does he, for that matter. Mel Brooks—the multiple Tony, Academy Award and Emmy Award-winning comedian, writer, filmmaker and Broadway showman—has found reasons to laugh all his life and, thankfully, has shared that laughter with the public. Now he’s doing it again, this time with his memoir, All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business (15 hours).

In his raspy, unmistakable voice, Brooks reveals his enduring passion for such comedy classics as Young Frankenstein, Spaceballs and History of the World, Part I, as well as his respect for his relationships with showbiz luminaries Sid Caesar, Gene Wilder, Anne Bancroft and more. Even Brooks’ most personal memories of growing up in Brooklyn are peppered with his trademark sense of humor.

It’s easy to hear that Brooks had fun telling these stories, which clearly hold a distinct place in his heart. They’ll find a way into yours, too.

Mel Brooks has found reasons to laugh all his life and has shared that laughter with the public. Now he’s doing it again, this time with his memoir.
Nonfiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

here are now 1.3 million Americans in state or federal prisons, a record, Joseph T. Hallinan reports. Each week the rolls swell by another 1,000 inmates enough to fill two brand-new prisons. Reading Going Up the River is a bone-chilling experience less so for its depiction of the brutality rampant inside America’s prisons than for its documentation of the public’s enthusiasm for building and filling them. So common is the prison experience in America today, Hallinan writes, that the federal government predicts that one of every eleven men will be imprisoned during his lifetime. For black men, the figure is even higher more than one of every four. With Texas as his starting point, Hallinan crisscrossed the country to visit prisons old and new, public and private, to interview wardens, inmates, guards, social workers and others whose lives are directly affected by our national compulsion to punish. Hallinan is no bleeding heart. The Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter makes it quite clear that many who are in prison should be there. But he questions a system that is built on fear, anger, political opportunism and private-sector profiteering. (A single prison pay phone, Hallinan points out, can turn a profit of $12,000 a year.) Hallinan also looks at recent laws that mandate long minimum sentences for relatively minor crimes. While such draconian terms may be popular with the public, they are enormously costly to carry out. In spite of his grim subject matter, Hallinan is at times a lyrical writer. Here’s how he describes a night scene outside the prison community of Beeville, Texas: There are no towns for miles around, and come sundown the world goes inky black, and the only way you can tell the earth from the sky is that the sky is where the stars begin. It is questionable how loudly Hallinan’s voice will be heard by people who have just elected a president first made famous for being tough on criminals. Still, Going Up the River is so well-documented, reasonably argued and eloquently written that it may do for penal reform what Silent Spring did for environmental awareness and what The American Way of Death did for curbing depredations by the funeral industry.

Edward Morris is a Nashville-based writer.

here are now 1.3 million Americans in state or federal prisons, a record, Joseph T. Hallinan reports. Each week the rolls swell by another 1,000 inmates enough to fill two brand-new prisons. Reading Going Up the River is a bone-chilling experience less so for its depiction of the brutality rampant inside America’s prisons than for […]
LifestylesCrafts, Hobbies & Home

Review

Review by bookpagedev

eathering your nest for spring The nesting spirit is contagious. Who can sit still with a backyard full of birds zipping around collecting twigs and bits of string to weave into proper places for raising a family? The “get busy” signal comes through loud and clear. The rest of the animal kingdom groundhogs, grizzlies and grownups alike, some just waking up from their somnolent state and rubbing their sleepy eyes see all this frenetic activity and figure they too had better get busy. Even Sydney, our ever-industrious though misguided blue heeler puppy, has caught the nesting spirit this spring. With the tenacity of a bluejay and the work ethic of a robin, she is tireless in her efforts to improve her territory. For weeks she has been proudly carting in assorted bottles and cans, pieces of rubber hose, rug remnants, socks, plastic toy parts and other items too numerous to mention, to enhance her eclectic “nest.” (She even smuggled in a baby a soft-bodied doll from the two-year-old across the road which we made her return, of course, much to her chagrin.) If you’ve also caught spring fever, and your thoughts have turned to building, refurbishing or repairing your own nest, here are four books to help you keep pace with the woodpeckers. A warm and inviting place to start is with Creating the Not So Big House: Insights and Ideas for the New American Home, by Sarah Susanka. If you need inspiration before actually picking up a paintbrush or hammer, this visually impressive book with its sumptuous and soothing photographs will give you a good excuse to do a little more research from the couch before undertaking any projects. The follow-up text to Susanka’s influential book, The Not So Big House: A Blueprint for the Way We Really Live, Creating the Not So Big House showcases 25 very different, small to moderate-sized homes from across the country, from a tiny apartment in New York City to a hillside home in California, each sharing a combination of beautiful design and innovative use of space. If you’re interested in designing a dwelling that meets, not exceeds, your needs, this volume fits the bill. Floor plans for these homes are included, so you can visualize the whole layout. Creating the Not So Big House makes a great coffee-table book keep it in easy reach for inspiration, motivation or just to feed your artistic sensibilities.

If you’re already well ensconced in a house of 2,500 square feet or less, Better Homes ∧ Gardens Small House, Big Style, offers sound advice on decorating and remodeling to get the maximum from minimum space. Beginning with the basics, Small House opens with chapters on understanding space and identifying a style that’s right for your home. Then it’s on to bigger, hands-on issues like adding space and arranging furniture all to help you make the most of those precious square feet. With more than 200 photographs of beautiful interiors, Small House offers tips on everything from choosing the right colors and textures for rooms to working within a decorating budget. Examples of successfully remodeled homes are featured, including a 1930s cottage, a 1940s Cape Cod and a 1950s ranch, accompanied by detailed how-tos. Rich visuals and great organization complement Small House‘s clear text. The book is a must-have for anyone looking to give their small space a spring makeover.

If you’d rather live with clothes draped around the house than even look inside your dryer, if the only thing you know about air conditioning is that, come July, you’ve got to have it, or if the words, “the sink’s clogged” make your eyes glaze over and your knees knock, Home ∧ Garden Television’s Complete Fix-It will give you newfound confidence. Each section begins with an easy-to-grasp explanation of how the appliance or system works. There are plenty of realistic yet uncluttered illustrations, and the bulleted text is clear and concise. The book covers everything in a home from the sub-floor to the roof ridge and all the “fix-it” problems (replacing ceramic tile, lighting a pilot-light, weatherstripping windows and doors, etc.) between them. The volume opens with a chapter on tools and ends with one on home safety, making Complete Fix-It a great selection for the novice repair person, whether he or she owns their own home, rents or lives in an apartment. True to its name, Home Book: The Ultimate Guide to Repairs, Improvements ∧ Maintenance is the most exhaustive text in the group; it includes detailed sections about almost anything you can think of relating to the home foundations, furniture, cabinetry, lawns. Even fences and gates are covered in this ultimate home “encyclopedia.” It contains over 300 do-it-yourself projects with step-by-step instructions and over 3,000 sharp, pertinent photos or drawings to help illustrate the steps along the way. The Home Book even includes ways of “expanding your nest” converting unused space like a garage, attic or basement into usable storage areas or additional living quarters. With any or all of these books in your toolbox, you’ll find it easier to make your home into a more enjoyable haven this spring and for many springs to come.

A former realtor, Linda Stankard has built, renovated and remodeled several homes.

eathering your nest for spring The nesting spirit is contagious. Who can sit still with a backyard full of birds zipping around collecting twigs and bits of string to weave into proper places for raising a family? The “get busy” signal comes through loud and clear. The rest of the animal kingdom groundhogs, grizzlies and […]

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