Green Bank, West Virginia, is known as the quietest town in America. It’s a lushly forested place where a government-owned observatory requires unimaginable levels of quiet, and therefore where locals are asked to eschew cell phones, microwaves and Wi-Fi.

Since the Green Bank Observatory was built in 1957, scientists there have quite literally listened to the universe through equipment that only works when it’s not competing with the electronic noise of modern society. Employees at the observatory have spent decades mitigating radio frequency noise, outfitting the Dollar General’s automated front door with conductive lead paint to block electromagnetic radiation and once even replacing a malfunctioning electric blanket in a local home. 

While some locals sneak in forbidden electric gadgets, Green Bank is a haven for those who seek unusual peace and quiet. When journalist Stephen Kurczy started visiting regularly in 2017, he quickly realized it’s an eclectic group. The Quiet Zone: Unraveling the Mystery of a Town Suspended in Silence is his fascinating, deeply reported and slightly eerie look at an unusual corner of America.

“Had I walked into a dream?” Kurczy wonders. “An elderly man was cohabitating with bears down the road from the world-famous clown doctor Patch Adams and just a few miles from a hippie enclave, all of them sharing a patch of Appalachia with world-renowned astronomers and secretive government operatives. The area seemed tinged with magical realism, with an impossible menagerie of eccentrics congregating in the forest.”

How had so many disparate groups found their way to the same town in West Virginia? The truth is, many of them came there to be left alone. In repeated trips to Green Bank, Kurczy gets to know these various groups, from the white nationalists who attempted to build their headquarters there to a group of electrosensitives who become ill from even the slightest electromagnetic radiation and who moved to Green Bank in a desperate attempt to quell their sickness.

Ultimately, Kurczy realizes Green Bank is not as silent as the media portrays it, but he brings to life other facets of this town that are even more intriguing. Kurczy becomes embedded in the community, and with compassion and a journalist’s eye he delivers a compelling portrait of a town where people struggle with the same issues as the rest of America, just a little more quietly.

It may not seem like CrossFit (a popular high-intensity interval training workout) and Heaven’s Gate (a cult that believed UFOs were headed to Earth on the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet) have any similarities. But as linguist Amanda Montell argues in Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, these are just two of many groups that bind their members together by employing cultish language.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Amanda Montell answers that age-old unsettling question: How susceptible am I to cults and cultish groups?

“Though ‘cult language’ comes in different varieties, all charismatic leaders—from Jim Jones and Jeff Bezos to SoulCycle instructors—use the same basic tools,” Montell writes. These tools include using insider lingo, relying on thought-terminating cliches that discourage asking questions and love-bombing with excessive flattery.

Cults may seem like a creepy relic of the past, but lots of groups successfully employ cultish language today. Simply put, a cultish group is one that promises to improve your life if you follow its regimen, buy its products or obey its leader. Such groups are common because, as Montell argues, cultish language really does bind a group together. Think of the specialized vocabulary used by Alcoholics Anonymous, for example. You can drop into any AA meeting across the world and immediately understand AA-speak.

The author’s experience as a linguist melds well with her research into the psychological underpinnings of cultish language, including interviews with several cult survivors. Montell also addresses why words like brainwashing don’t accurately describe how people come under a cultish thrall. “Language . . . reshapes a person’s reality only if they are in an ideological place where that reshaping is welcome,” she writes. According to Montell, our loved ones adopt QAnon conspiracy theories or hawk leggings/herbal supplements/skincare on Facebook for multilevel marketing (MLM) schemes not because they’re gullible or weak but because they’re idealistic, tenacious and open to these groups’ messaging.

Few of us may interact with Scientology or NXIVM directly, but that doesn’t mean we’re beyond the purview of cultish influence. Many of us participate in “cult fitness” groups, turn to Instagram influencers for self-improvement tips or sell products for MLMs. Cultish demonstrates that we are all more susceptible to joining the in-group than we may realize.

Why can’t we have nice things? Depending on your lot in life, you may ponder this from time to time. Things like easy access to health care, fair public utilities, unions that provide job security and protect worker rights—these are all societal gains that many other nations have achieved. So why can’t the United States, the wealthiest nation on the planet, provide these and other amenities to every citizen?

This is the question that Heather McGee, former director of the think tank Demos, asks in The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. She ably moves through some of the largest infrastructural deficiencies in the U.S. and explains how a zero-sum mindset, combined with the constant plague of systemic racism, have led to fewer amenities for all.

McGhee’s anecdotes about the past read like cautionary parables for the future. For instance, throughout the 1920s, the Works Progress Administration built hundreds of public swimming pools across the nation to provide relief from the summer sun. But after federal courts ruled that segregated swimming was unconstitutional, many cities opted to fill their grandest pools with concrete rather than allow Black swimmers to use them. And so no one got relief from the heat.

McGhee unpacks how this kind of thinking shows up in every sector of society. Businesses have stoked racial mistrust to divide unions in their factories, using social capital to turn workers against collective bargaining. Years of accumulated racial resentment have kneecapped attempts to provide universal healthcare coverage, from Harry Truman’s era to Barack Obama’s. State-subsidized college tuition and affordable housing were vilified as handouts for the undeserving poor, which led to absurdly high tuition rates and the housing market crash of 2008.

Supported by remarkable data-driven research and thoughtful interviews with those directly affected by these issues, McGhee paints a powerful picture of the societal shortfalls all around us. There is a greater, more just America available to us, and McGhee brings its potential to light.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: The Sum of Us is excellent on audiobook, read by the author.

Something was wrong in Lowndes County, Alabama. Sewage was backing up into people’s yards, and the county was threatening to arrest residents who lacked a proper septic system. But buying and installing a new septic system was cost prohibitive for many residents of this rural county, where the systems are prone to failure because of the soil’s high clay content.

Environmental activist Catherine Coleman Flowers brought senators, activists, media and other public figures to her home county to show them the conditions people lived in. She wanted to bring awareness and funding to people who couldn’t “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” because they didn’t have any boots to begin with, she writes in Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret. Flowers pressured the state to stop criminalizing poverty, and as awareness grew, she was able to coordinate new septic systems and sometimes even new homes for people in need.

In Waste, Flowers recounts a lifetime of advocacy that has culminated in the battle for one Alabama county. Flowers was raised by Civil Rights activists, with others in and out of her home, and so advocacy has been a theme throughout her life. And though Lowndes County is at the heart of her work, Flowers writes about similar conditions across the United States.

Known as “the Erin Brockovich of sewage,” Flowers shares many insights into America’s need for environmental justice. “I believe we will find solutions if we can direct the energies of academics, business, government, and philanthropy toward finding them," she writes, "and that’s where public policy comes in: to make this issue a priority, set standards for how we will live in the United States, and provide incentives for innovative solutions.”

Her direct, easy-to-follow prose offers a plain look at the challenges that face many people in poverty and the value of activism. The lessons she takes from seeking wastewater solutions may inspire advocates nationwide. 

Ijeoma Oluo, author of the bestselling book So You Want to Talk About Race, offers a historical and sociological view of the toxic white male identity in her new book, Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America. Oluo persuasively argues that American society is structured to preserve the power (and tastes) of white men and outlines how we got here.

Our now-ingrained power structure wasn't inevitable but was purposely designed to center white men. Looking back at centuries of American history, Oluo shows how white male entitlement took hold from the early beginnings of this country—from slavery to westward expansion to the genocide and displacement of Indigenous Americans; from cowboy mythology glamorizing the violence of “Buffalo Bill” Cody to the modern-day obsession with spoiled but dangerous white men like Ammon Bundy.

Americans are taught that the United States is a meritocracy and that anyone who tries to get ahead will be rewarded with opportunities. However, the evidence doesn’t bear this out. With example after example—the male feminists of the early 20th century, NFL owners, presidential candidates and even their supporters—Oluo deftly shows how the society that white men built now rewards mediocre white men, regardless of their skills or talent, while punishing women and people of color for anything less than perfection. Unfortunately, when ordinary white men do not receive the unmitigated success they feel is their right, they turn their disappointments and anger on these women and people of color instead of on the elite white men who hoard opportunities and power for themselves. Because of this, disaffected white men are now the biggest domestic terror threat in the United States.

Oluo expertly shows how inequality, toxic masculinity and an unequal power structure deeply hurt all Americans, including white men. Through careful research and scholarship, she breaks down the system that sustains the status quo while shedding light on the ways others can also dismantle this system to ensure a more equitable future for all. It’s an essential read during times of political upheaval and unsure futures.

It is my sincere hope that millennials will read Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, Anne Helen Petersen’s new book about the professional zeitgeist—that is, if they’re not too burned out to do so.

In nine well-researched chapters, Can’t Even feistily fleshes out Petersen’s viral 2019 BuzzFeed article about millennial burnout. Interviews with a diverse array of millennials and deep analyses of labor history, class and sociology illustrate just how bad life has gotten for many members of this age group. What was called “workaholism” in the 1980s is called “hustle” in the 2020s—and if you can’t hack it, that’s on you. The result for too many Americans is insurmountable student debt, an erosion of job security, the rise of the gig economy, the fetishization of freelance work, a lack of leisure time and a trend toward “competitive martyrdom” in parenting.

Woven throughout Can’t Even is a sharp critique of boomer parents and employers. White, middle-class boomers in particular inculcated high expectations for the future in their children while tearing down the safety net beneath them. Petersen drives home the point that our current problems are not personal but societal—and yet, when a millennial cannot afford health insurance or a down payment on a house, it’s judged as laziness. No wonder so many people experience life as constant busyness and feel guilt for relaxing. “Burnout . . . is more than just an addiction to work,” she writes. “It’s an alienation from the self, and from desire. If you subtract your ability to work, who are you?”

However, readers don’t need to be personally burnt out for Can’t Even to resonate. If social media or the gig economy touch your life in any way, there’s something to chew on here. Fortunately, Petersen doesn’t offer any “hacks” or “tips” to pare back our busy lives. Instead, she advocates for societal self-reflection and an assessment of our values to spur change: Do we really want to live this way?