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When our relationships falter under the pressure of political or religious demands, when ambiguity more than certainty guides our lives, we may be tempted to succumb to our malaise. However, there is another option: We can stumble through the shadows, searching for some thread of meaning that will guide us out of the darkness. The authors of these books have chosen the latter path, peeling away the detritus of life to discover meaning—personal and political—and plumbing the spiritual depths that accompany their searches.


★ Thin Places

With humor and razor-sharp insight, Jordan Kisner’s Thin Places: Essays From in Between captures the visceral, palpable feeling of loss. The ways we inhabit space occupy many of these evocative essays, such as in a piece on an art installation at New York City’s spacious Park Avenue Armory, in which Kisner encourages readers to find someplace “big and empty” when they are “stuck somewhere small . . . somewhere unhappy or afraid or paralyzed or heartbroken.” In her celebrated essay “Thin Places,” she discovers the age-old concept of the space between the spiritual and physical world. This “thin place” is porous, a space where distinctions between “you and not-you, real and unreal, worldly and otherworldly, fall away.” It’s in these thin places that we can find ourselves, absorb glimpses of new meaning from another world and live in the moment. Kisner weaves together reflections on Kierkegaard, her early Christian conversion (and later “unconversion”) and waiting for the subway to gracefully guide us through our own emptiness in search of fullness.

The Great Blue Hills of God

Kreis Beall’s The Great Blue Hills of God explores in lyrical prose what happens when her life falls apart. Beall, who helped create Blackberry Farm, one of the South’s most heavenly resorts, appears to have it all: a loving marriage, great wealth, a beautiful family and a satisfying career. But the demands of building up several properties slowly erode her marriage, and she finds that her and her husband’s financial bank is full but their “emotional bank” is being emptied. As her marriage fades away, Beall falls, and suddenly her health is compromised, and she temporarily loses her hearing. She experiences further devastation when her son, Sam, dies in a skiing accident. Despite the loss of her family, health and wealth, she discovers glimpses of grace in her reading of the Bible, discussions with her pastor and friends and meditations on the nature of home. Throughout the book, Beall sprinkles in fruitful bits of wisdom, embracing the conclusion that, “to me, home is God, family, friends, and legacy. . . . A home is a heart. It is love, people, relationships, and the life you live in it.”

Scandalous Witness

Lee C. Camp’s Scandalous Witness: A Little Political Manifesto for Christians offers a brilliant summary and exposition of the ways that Christianity is a politic, not a religion. Camp (Mere Discipleship) asks a series of questions that frames Christianity as not just a private spiritual practice but a guide for our life together: “How do we live together? Where is human history headed? What does it mean to be human? And what does it look like to live in a rightly ordered human community that engenders flourishing, justice, and the peace of God?” In the end, the Christian community embraces its mission when it “sets captives free, demolishes strongholds, and . . . [sows] the seeds of the peaceable reign of God.” Camp’s manifesto is a must-read in a world in which Christianity has become either a bedfellow of political parties or an isolated, private practice.

I Am Not Your Enemy

Michael T. McRay’s I Am Not Your Enemy takes Camp’s idea to the personal level. We create meaning in the stories we tell each other, and if we tell a good enough story, we can convince others that certain individuals are our enemies. But just as stories have the power to cultivate hate, they also have the power to reconcile and redeem. Throughout his travels across Israel and Palestine, Northern Ireland and South Africa, and through his work as a conflict and resolution counselor, McRay hears violence-filled narratives with shattered endings. Yet, as he illustrates, not every story needs to end this way. McRay shares stories of a mother who refuses to seek vengeance for her son’s death, a community theater director who helps people who are marginalized find their voices and discover beauty in their lives and a woman who forgives the man who murdered her father. With the verve of a great storyteller, McRay regales us with spellbinding narratives that illustrate the power of words to change our lives and bring meaning to the world.

When our relationships falter under the pressure of political or religious demands, when ambiguity more than certainty guides our lives, we may be tempted to succumb to our malaise. However, there is another option: We can stumble through the shadows, searching for some thread of…

As technology disrupts and defines how we live our lives, two nonfiction books explore how it has shaped society up to this point and how it will affect what it means to be human in the future.

In a nondescript building in an office park in Southern California lies the future of human relationships. Or that’s what Abyss Creations founder Matthew McMullen would have us believe. In Sex Robots and Vegan Meat: Adventures at the Frontier of Birth, Food, Sex, and Death, journalist Jenny Kleeman speaks to CEOs like McMullen, as well as scientists, professors and ethicists, to investigate new technologies that are poised to change essential industries and human interactions.

As McMullen competes with other robotics companies to bring the first fully functional, lifelike sex robot to market, the world must contend with the ethical implications of subservient sex robots that are designed to look and act human but that consist of artificial intelligence, silicone and complex circuitry instead of warm flesh and blood. In other chapters, Kleeman investigates the new industry of plant-based, vegan “meat,” which tastes like a burger or steak without the abattoir, animal suffering or impact on global climate change. She then moves on to the future of childbirth (which involves artificial wombs called “biobags”) and a 3D-printed device that could make euthanasia more accessible. Thoroughly entertaining and written with humor and sly intuition, Sex Robots and Vegan Meat is an account of the future that will have you questioning whether technology is helping or hindering human progress.

As current technologies, especially artificial intelligence and robotics, continue to develop, they will force changes in how we structure our work and family lives. One example from history is the plow. It changed humans from egalitarian, freewheeling hunters and gatherers into a society of small families with strict gender roles and private land to cultivate. In Work Mate Marry Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny, Harvard Business School professor Debora L. Spar examines historical links between technology, gender, work and family to imagine what the future might look like.

Starting in 8,000 B.C. and writing all the way into the present, Spar argues that nearly all the decisions we make in our intimate lives, including sex and marriage, are driven by technology. This detailed and deeply researched book lands at the intersection of history, feminist theory and futurism and will enrich your understanding of humanity’s pliant adaptability. Most of all, Work Mate Marry Love lends insight into whether technology can help us live more equal, fulfilling lives in the future.

 

As technology disrupts and defines how we live our lives, two nonfiction books explore how it has shaped society up to this point and how it will affect what it means to be human in the future.

In a nondescript building in an office park…

One in four adults, or 61 million people, are disabled in the United States, yet the myth of the able body persists. The fact is, all bodies have different needs and abilities over their lifetimes. As these books show, creating an imaginative and accessible world helps everyone.

In Sitting Pretty: The View From My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body, Rebekah Taussig shares her experiences of disability in eight provoking and lyrical essays. As a child, Taussig moved her body with joy and confidence. But as she grew older, her environment told her a different story about her body. She noticed how many spaces weren’t made for her needs, saw the pitying looks strangers gave her and heard ableist narratives from the media, in which disabled bodies like hers were either weak or objects for other people’s inspiration. Gradually, she stopped feeling comfortable in her body. In her book, Taussig discusses everything from how the disabled body is left out of feminist conversations, to uncomfortable experiences with kindness, to love, sex and marriage as a disabled person. This collection is essential reading, and its intimate writing style will help readers see disabled folks as the human beings they have always been.

In “More Than a Defect,” Taussig describes teaching her high school students two models of disability: the medical model and the social model. The medical model is the most common way of viewing disability; it views the disabled body as an object to be fixed. In the social model, the environment that surrounds a disabled body is the object that needs to be fixed. When we use the social model, we begin to see how our culture stereotypes disabled bodies and creates inaccessible environments.

What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World by Sara Hendren focuses on these created environments through seven essays that look at specific objects of design. In the chapter titled “Chair,” she tells the story of a cardboard chair created by the Adaptive Design Association and how it benefits Niko, a toddler with a rare genetic condition called STXBP1. The chair is sustainable, affordable and adaptable to individual needs.

Through stories like Niko’s, Hendren shows that the purpose of accessible design should not be to fix a body, but rather to meet the body where it is. Reshaping and expanding the built world can accommodate many ways of being human. For example, sidewalk curb cuts were created for wheelchair access, but parents with strollers and travelers with rolling suitcases also benefit from their implementation. By applying “what if” questions to practical design, we can build spaces that accommodate every body. What Can a Body Do? is a fascinating look at the ingenuity behind these accessible designs.

One in four adults, or 61 million people, are disabled in the United States, yet the myth of the able body persists. The fact is, all bodies have different needs and abilities over their lifetimes. As these books show, creating an imaginative and accessible world…

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Find romance, intrigue and insight into human nature in three new audiobooks.

★ Humankind

In Humankind: A Hopeful History (11.5 hours), Dutch historian Rutger Bregman posits that people are basically good and that our assumptions about humankind’s tendencies toward violence and selfishness are wrong. Bregman supports his theory of humanity’s innate kindness with tangible proof. He tracks down the real-life kids from Lord of the Flies, teenagers who were marooned in the 1960s and worked together to form a just society. Bregman also shares studies that disprove Philip Zimbardo’s famed Stanford Prison Experiment and the “broken windows” theory of policing, which asserts that visible signs of petty crime encourage more serious criminal activity. He makes some bold claims, but if we listen, his theories just might make the world a better place. Bregman narrates the book’s introduction, but as a non-native English speaker, he hands the bulk of the book over to Thomas Judd, who clearly finds joy in Bregman’s revelations, making the audiobook a pleasure to listen to.

Devolution

Come for the horror and survival story, stay for the incredible voice cast. Max Brooks’ latest speculative thriller, Devolution (10 hours), is narrated by the author as well as by Judy Greer, Jeff Daniels, Nathan Fillion, Mira Furlan, Terry Gross, Kimberly Guerrero, Kate Mulgrew, Kai Ryssdal and Steven Weber. When the idyllic community of Greenloop is cut off from society after the eruption of Mount Rainier, the residents are on their own as they struggle to defend themselves against a clan of sasquatch. In the aftermath, Kate Holland’s journal, voiced by Greer, aids investigators as they put the pieces together. As Kate goes from worrying about her marriage to struggling to survive, Greer’s performance becomes more urgent, capturing Kate’s devolution from perky California girl to bloodthirsty warrior.

Take a Hint, Dani Brown 

In Take a Hint, Dani Brown (10 hours), written by Talia Hibbert and narrated by Ione Butler, Dani Brown is a witchy Ph.D. student who dreams of the perfect friend with benefits. Her incantation points her toward Zaf, the flirty Pakistani British security guard at her university. After Zaf carries Dani out of the building during a fire drill, a picture of the rescue goes viral, and Zaf asks Dani to help him use their fame to raise awareness for his nonprofit. As one of the few Black women in her field, Dani is very work-focused, but her no-strings-attached policy may not be able to withstand her smoking-hot chemistry with Zaf. Butler does a wonderful job narrating Dani’s brash quirkiness and Zaf’s lovestruck sweetness.

This autumn, find romance, intrigue and insight into human nature in three new audiobooks.

Although we’re now living through a time of all-access Zoom weddings, marriage throughout history wasn’t always so easily achieved. For some, it was celebrated; for others, it was withheld. These books explore the complicated history of marriage in two very distinct ways.

Access to marriage means access to equality. Dianne M. Stewart, professor of African American studies at Emory University, investigates the complex conditions that have led to low marriage rates among Black heterosexual women in the United States in Black Women, Black Love: America’s War on African American Marriage.

Stewart notes that 70% of Black American women are not married—many not by choice but because of centuries of injustices that continue into the present day. She begins this powerful and wholly original work by discussing how slavery made it impossible for Black women to control their own bodies, much less their families and relationships. Even after emancipation, lynching, terror and the stress of poverty continued to threaten the stability of Black communities. In the 20th century, the scars of Reconstruction still controlled Black women’s upward mobility through systemic restrictions like federal “man-in-the-house” policies, which stripped Black women of public assistance if they lived with a boyfriend or husband. Combined with a lack of access to well-paid jobs, these polices caused marriage rates to decline in Black communities. But the most devastating barrier to Black marriage is modern-day mass incarceration, which continues to pull families apart.

Scholarly and moving, with deeply personal notes and references to pop culture, Stewart’s eye-opening analysis reveals how marriage is an enduring civil rights issue for Black women in the United States.

Matrimony, Inc.: From Personal Ads to Swiping Right, a Story of America Looking for Love explores a very different type of relationship history. In this book, Francesca Beauman delves into the quirky history of the romantic personal advertisement and reveals how it has aided Americans’ never-ending search for love and companionship throughout the centuries.

This entertaining and well-researched account begins with the very first known personal ad, placed in a Boston newspaper in 1759. Beauman, a bookseller and historian, curates the archival materials in a witty and accessible way, and both history buffs and readers of romance will find her to be a dependable yet amusing guide. She writes authoritatively on American courtship through a historical lens, touching on different examples of the personal ad over the past 250 years.

Advertisements written by soldiers in the middle of the Civil War were circulated through “penny presses” designed for a middle-class public who was becoming more literate and refined. As the popularity of personal ads flourished in the 19th century, so did scams, deceptions and danger. Behind the ads were faceless strangers who might be bigamists, or worse. At the turn of the 20th century, Belle Gunness, one of the most prolific serial killers of all time, lured more than 40 men to her farm in Indiana by promising marriage though personal ads in newspapers. The threat of meeting a similar end, however, has never stopped the public from searching for love through the personals.

Primary source materials play a prominent role in Matrimony, Inc. As readers see antiquated, sexist language in action, they will laugh at how far we’ve come, and sigh at how far we still have to go.

Although we’re now living through a time of all-access Zoom weddings, marriage throughout history wasn’t always so easily achieved. For some, it was celebrated; for others, it was withheld. These books explore the complicated history of marriage in two very distinct ways.

Access to marriage…

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Calling all runners, crafters, road warriors and vigorous house-cleaners: If you’re in need of a new audiobook, read on for some of the best new nonfiction productions. All true stories, all extraordinary listens.

All Creatures Great and Small (15.5 hours)

It’s been more than 50 years since James Herriot’s beloved stories were published, stealing hearts with his humorous tales about the 1930s Yorkshire Dales, where he served the memorable townsfolk as a young country veterinarian. This January, fans will settle in for PBS Masterpiece’s adaptation of the series, but this tie-in, read by star Nicholas Ralph, will transport you while you wait. Is there anything better than cozy stories told in a Scottish accent? Don’t be surprised if, while walking your dog, for example, you’re stopped by a stranger across the street who asks what you’re listening to because you just look so dang happy.

Be Water, My Friend: The Teachings of Bruce Lee (7.5 hours)

Shannon Lee, daughter of kung fu master Bruce Lee, shares the stories behind her father’s guiding philosophy to “be water,” to accept oneself rather than try to go against one’s nature. As Lee explains, water is “soft yet strong, natural yet able to be directed, detached yet powerful, and above all, essential to life.” Lee’s book entertains as it inspires, and she sounds like an old pro as its narrator, confidently inviting us to join in this philosophy of self-acceptance.

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (14.5 hours)

Robin Miles narrated Isabel Wilkerson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Warmth of Other Suns, and she delivers another smooth, energetic performance for Caste, Wilkerson’s latest masterpiece. In Caste, Wilkerson spins years of research into an accessible yet profound case for an unacknowledged caste system within the United States. More than race, more than class, Wilkerson believes that the language of caste best describes the hierarchy of power in our country, and she thoroughly demonstrates this claim through insights about the similar caste systems in India and Nazi Germany and through personable anecdotes from her own personal experience. These stories, brought to life by Miles’ trademark clarity, warmth and gravitas, provide readers with a new lens on the world that, once peered through, will change the way they see things forever.


ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Discover more of our most highly recommended audiobooks.


The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X (18 hours)

For a listener seeking a full immersion in history, we recommend you download this monumental, National Book Award-winning biography from Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Les Payne, a 30-year project completed after Payne’s death by his daughter, Tamara Payne. This book embroiders the full canvas surrounding the story of Malcolm X, providing a total sense of context, complete with corrected historical records and rewind-that-back-and-listen-again revelations. Award-winning narrator Dion Graham is one of the finest in the business, and he commands your attention, warmly but firmly demanding, Listen up—this is the story of Macolm X like you’ve never heard before.

I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are (5 hours)

Funny woman and TV genius Rachel Bloom (you know her from “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”) narrates her own memoir about awkwardness and fame, and it’s everything you could hope for. Her writing runneth over with personality, and her audiobook nearly explodes with it. She does hilarious voices, she makes audio-related asides to translate a text-only quip, and she cannonballs through her most irreverent jokes with such glee such that you have no choice but to laugh till it hurts.

Memorial Drive (5 hours)

Former U.S. poet laureate Natasha Trethewey narrates her debut memoir, Memorial Drive, with both steady skill and heart-wrenching tenderness. As a poet, she understands the subtle power of phrasing, emphasis and a well-timed pause. Yet as she tells the story of her mother’s murder by Trethewey’s ex-stepfather when Trethewey was 19, there is an understandable rawness just below the surface. Her voice catches with deep emotion as she recounts the story of why it took her 35 years to turn this harrowing story of fear, loneliness and loss into a memoir. The content is tragic, but Trethewey’s lingering Mississippi inflection is soothing as she lays out her tale, and listeners will feel totally at ease as they tune in to hear a master at work.

Notes on a Silencing (11 hours)

How do you talk about something that you’ve been forced to stay silent about? Lacy Crawford does the seemingly impossible in her memoir: She tells the full story of her rape by two boys while at a New England boarding school, and then narrates it for the audiobook. Her clear voice provides her younger self with a level of truth that has too long been withheld and offers moments of levity amid the darkness. The younger Lacy is likable and bold as she navigates her trauma and the cruelty of her school. This memoir is a masterful depiction of how to tell a story, especially the hardest one you could ever think to write.

★ Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America (12 hours)

The history of immigration in America gets a personal and, through author Maria Hinojosa’s narration, supremely entertaining and moving treatment in this part memoir, part work of social science. Hinojosa’s family immigrated to the United States from Mexico when she was an infant, and she tangles her history with the nation’s to offer one of the finest audiobooks of the year.

Hinojosa is the anchor and executive producer of "Latino USA" on NPR, and she knows how to spin a story, boldly capturing moments of triumph and pain, and performing voices that conjure the unexpected strength of her mother, that mock the unjust or the racist and that transport the listener to each and every event she recounts here. She understands exactly what America offers and how it has failed immigrants, and she packages the story in journalistic objectivity and an arresting, honest performance.


ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Maria Hinojosa reveals what it was like to narrate her memoir: “I am the character, she is me!”


Vesper Flights (10.5 hours)

Helen Macdonald’s collection of nature essays offers a balance of comfort and clear-eyed concern, Some of the essays are short and sweet (a vignette on her father and a goat is laughably brief), but her pieces that connect her love of nature to the wider world are when this book really shines. She draws threads between migraines and climate change, between nostalgia for the natural world and Brexit, and between flocks of birds and our own relationship to the changing environment. With deep affection and a frank yet gentle tone, she shares her wide knowledge and unique perspective like the gifts that they are.

Where I Come From: Stories From the Deep South (7.5 hours)

For Southern listeners, to hear Rick Bragg narrate his own missives from the Deep South is to be transported to a porch on a summer evening. This collection combines some of his finest columns from Southern Living and Garden & Gun, in which he explores down-home topics such as Tupperware, trucks and the importance of a good knife. There’s nothing quite so calming as a rhythmic Southern drawl, capturing the most romantic bits of a rural life.

Calling all runners, crafters, road warriors and vigorous house-cleaners: If you’re in need of a new audiobook, read on for some of the best new nonfiction productions. All true stories, all extraordinary listens.
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The books in this month’s lifestyles column will deepen your understanding of the world and broaden your compassion for the humans you share it with. 

How to Suffer Outside

“If you can walk, put stuff in a bag, and remember to eat, you can backpack,” declares Diana Helmuth in the perfectly titled How to Suffer Outside: A Beginner’s Guide to Hiking and Backpacking. I’m not entirely sure I buy this statement, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the heck out of Helmuth’s funny, frank writing. Her perspective is a breath of fresh air on the whole fresh-air-and-nature thing. While she claims to be no expert backpacker herself, she drops all kinds of useful, earned wisdom in these pages, spinning tales from her own hiking adventures along the way. A random sample: “One of the saddest things about backpacking is that no matter how clean the water looks, you probably can’t drink it. Even deep in the wilderness, tiny dregs of civilization are there to ruin your good time.” Were I a bookseller, I would press this book on customers regardless of their interest in backpacking. I would recommend it for the voice and storytelling: Here, stay inside if you want. Turn off Netflix, and read this.

Demystifying Disability

The disabled community is vast and diverse, and society is due for a paradigm shift in thinking and talking about its members. With Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally, activist and writer Emily Ladau is a responsible guide and advocate for change, and her book is one that everyone could benefit from reading. Ladau recognizes that just as there are multitudes of disabilities, there is room for all of us to learn more about disabled people’s varied experiences and make our world more inclusive and accessible. Changes in vocabulary—like opting for disabled instead of euphemistic words like handi-capable (a particular peeve of Ladau’s), or avoiding words like lame and idiot as common pejoratives—help shift mindsets one word at a time. Changes in media norms are necessary as well. Landau explains how feel-good stories about disabled people “overcoming” their disabilities actually reinforce the bias toward able-bodied people. Right now, ableist beliefs and behaviors still fly under the radar, and Ladau’s careful treatment of this subject is a corrective that can help us all be better humans.

Forget Prayers, Bring Cake

While the title is pleasingly cheeky, Forget Prayers, Bring Cake: A Single Woman’s Guide to Grieving never loses sight of the fact that there’s nothing funny about the death of a loved one. Grieving is always difficult, but it can be immeasurably more painful if you’re a single woman, argues Merissa Nathan Gerson—on top of all the ways our culture is ill-suited, period, for allowing us the time and space and voice that grief demands. After learning that in other cultures there’s an individual known as a moirologist—“a non-married woman hired . . . to strike the earth, tear at her hair, scream and wail and provoke others to grieve for the dead”—Gerson offers herself, with this book, as a compassionate, experienced voice for those who have suffered a loss. Her advice and personal stories offer solace and insight for any mourner but are shared with a keen eye toward the unique experience of losing a loved one when you are young and single. 

The books in this month’s lifestyles column will deepen your understanding of the world and broaden your compassion for the humans you share it with.
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The range of comic book storytelling is vast, and this selection of 2021’s best graphic novels, memoirs and histories runs the gamut in terms of artistic style and narrative approach, yet all of them have two things in common: a mastery of the form and a unique sense of expression.

Bubble

The stakes of the gig economy have never been higher than in Bubble, a graphic novel by Jordan Morris and Sarah Morgan with illustrations from Tony Cliff and colors by Natalie Riess. Adapted from the scripted podcast of the same name, Bubble is set in a world where corporate-funded cities have sprung up as domes of safety, walling off humanity from a monster-ridden wilderness known as the Brush. Morgan was born in the Brush, and though she’s grown accustomed to life in the bubble, she’s retained a few of her more useful Brush skills, including the ability to kill pesky mutated imps. Naturally, her employers have just the thing to help her monetize that ability.

Bubble crackles with wit and biting commentary on piecing together a living one app at a time. Cliff’s art enriches the whole wild affair, lending a grounding sense of reality to the reading experience despite the fantastical setting. He’s as adept at depicting action-packed scenes as he is at homing in on a character’s eyes at a key moment of personal discovery. There’s tremendous glee to be found in Bubble, but also tremendous heart.

Ballad for Sophie

A young woman talks her way into the mansion of one of the world’s most reclusive musicians and convinces him to give her an interview. That’s the premise from which Ballad for Sophie springs, and with a sense of adversarial yet whimsical tension, we are propelled into a world of bittersweet wonders, tragedy and music.

Written by jazz composer Filipe Melo, illustrated by Juan Cavia and translated from the original Spanish by Gabriela Soares, Ballad for Sophie unfolds as the aging pianist tells his story. We meet a lifelong rival, a lost love, a tormented mother, a devilish piano teacher and more, their rich narrative tapestry unfolding against backdrops that range from World War II to the luxury of 1960s Paris. 

Through it all, Melo’s characters are either constantly growing or constantly resisting growth, while Cavia’s art sweeps across the page with lithe figures and elegant depictions of bygone eras. When the story dips into the past, his art grows slightly more magical, turning piano teachers into great horned creatures and piano recitals into dramatically lit clashes of titans.

Emotionally dense, texturally rich and humming with humanity, Ballad for Sophie is a moving portrait of the ways in which art can both save and doom us.

Interior image from Ballad for Sophie
From Ballad for Sophie. Used with permission from Top Shelf.

Lore Olympus

Some elements of Greek mythology are simply timeless. In Lore Olympus: Volume One, Rachel Smythe reminds us of this using her acclaimed artistic magic. This is the first volume of her webcomic “Lore Olympus,” and it’s striking to see her work collected in such a lavish tome after its celebrated web release.

As Smythe unveils her retelling of the Hades and Persephone myth, her gorgeous art elevates each scene. She uses precise color and shading to bathe the Greek gods in neon hues of purple and blue, like they’re perpetually in some mythic nightclub. Readers will revel in how seamlessly Smythe has adapted this classic story, and in no time at all, they’ll find themselves utterly lost in her beautifully dark, often startlingly timely world of sex, lies and immortality. 

The Middle Ages

You’ve probably heard that the Middle Ages wasn’t really the period of darkness and ignorance that popular culture has made it out to be, but you’ve never seen that truth demonstrated quite like in The Middle Ages: A Graphic History. Medieval historian Eleanor Janega and illustrator Neil Max Emmanuel set out to reveal how this period took shape and why it became so consequential, and they never miss in that mission. 

Rather than attempting a strictly linear dissection of centuries of human history, The Middle Ages unfolds almost as an illustrated textbook, with sections devoted to everything from the fall of Rome to the rise of Charlemagne to the growth of major European cities. Janega’s prose is precise, informative, digestible and witty. Emmanuel’s simple but effective black-and-white art carries that same wit through to the visuals, alternating between modern compositions and homages to medieval aesthetics, with amusing revisions to the Bayeux Tapestry and clever representations of church schisms.

It all adds up to an utterly essential volume for history buffs, whether they’re diving into the medieval period for the first time or just brushing up on a few things. 

★ Run

The follow-up to Congressman John Lewis’ monumental, award-winning March series, Run: Book One kicks off a new graphic trilogy that further establishes Lewis as a fundamental, undeniable force in the mid-1960s American civil rights movement.

Lewis completed work on the script for Run before his death in 2020, and illustrator L. Fury joins writer Andrew Aydin and illustrator Nate Powell (both of whom collaborated on the March trilogy) in carefully layering Lewis’ recollections with vivid depictions of celebrations and violence, hope and heartbreak, despair and determination. The story picks up after the 1965 passage of the Voting Rights Act, as Lewis encountered new roadblocks and hurdles in the wake of that legislative victory. Through dramatic composition and movement, Powell and Fury’s illustrations capture the same energy as the March trilogy, while also conveying Lewis’ maturation as he grows out of his student organizing era and enters the realm of American statesmanship.

Run is another indispensable chronicle of the life and work of one of 20th-century America’s most exceptional figures, but it’s also a mission statement for the work yet to come.

Interior image from Run: Book One
From Run: Book One. Used with permission from Abrams ComicArts.

★ Seek You

It might sound like a cliche to say that a book delving into America’s loneliness epidemic will make you feel more connected to the world around you, but that’s exactly what writer and illustrator Kristen Radtke achieves in this ambitious book. 

Part memoir, part sociological study and part cultural history, Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness digs deep into the many ways that loneliness affects our daily lives. Through incisive, often disarmingly confessional writing, Radtke gets to the core of what loneliness is and what it does to our bodies and minds, exploring everything from its neurological roots to the impact of the sitcom studio audience laugh track. 

Throughout Seek You, we are guided by Radtke’s beautifully muted art. Some pages are powerful in their simplicity, such as a wide view of a massive apartment complex with a single lit window, while others are effective in their complexity, such as a spread showing a lone figure amid a fog of words describing their most alienating experiences. 

Seek You is a captivating combination of raw emotional exploration and thoughtful, sophisticated imagination.

The Waiting

A chance encounter with a dog on a city street pulls a character back through decades of memories and serves as the launching point for a stirring graphic novel by author-illustrator Keum Suk Gendry-Kim.

Translated from the Korean by Janet Hong, The Waiting explores a very particular kind of loss on the Korean peninsula. In bold, fluid black-and-white imagery, Gendry-Kim tells a story inspired by her own mother, who lived under Japanese occupation in Korea before World War II, then was forced to migrate during the Korean War and the permanent division of Korea along the 38th parallel. Many Koreans fled their homes amid the fighting, causing a surge of family separations that led to lifetimes of waiting and hoping. 

Though The Waiting is set amid some of the most consequential events of the 20th century, Gendry-Kim never makes the book’s scope wider than it needs to be. The Waiting is better for it, succeeding as a deeply intimate portrayal of one woman’s struggle to not only survive but also keep some measure of hope and determination alive. It’s also about the broader goal of an entire culture to somehow come back together after war, through individual efforts and massive group reunions. 

In depicting a people’s efforts to find each other, The Waiting is one of the most moving graphic novels of the year.

★ Wake

Writer and activist Rebecca Hall and illustrator Hugo Martínez present a powerful meditation on hidden history that transforms into a haunting, necessary statement on exactly why that history has been hidden, and how much of it still lives with us.

In Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts, Hall, whose grandparents were enslaved, recounts her process of researching several 18th-century revolts that were led by enslaved women. Though some of the book’s most affecting sequences re-create these revolts, much of Wake is a memoir of Hall’s search for the brave, rebellious women who led them, the punishments they suffered and what, if anything, they managed to leave behind. In the process of constructing their stories, Hall tells much of her own, laying bare how the echoes of enslavement inform our political world as well as her own daily interactions.

Hall’s prose is stunning, and Martínez’s art takes it to another level, delivering expressive representations of the history Hall carries with her and of the reminders of slavery’s cruelty that are etched into the landscapes we walk now. His artwork bleeds past and present together, depicting the city streets around Hall as shadowy memorials of the slave markets that once stood there. When he projects the images of enslaved men and women onto the facades of skyscrapers, he transforms these feats of architecture into monuments to atrocities.

Wake is as poetic as it is powerful. Readers who adored the March trilogy and the graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred will find it to be an essential addition to their shelves.

A sampling of the year’s best graphics and comics includes a neon-bright retelling of a Greek myth and the continued memoirs of a civil rights legend.

In The Right to Sex, Amia Srinivasan, a professor of social and political theory at All Souls College at the University of Oxford, engages with some of the most complex hot-button cultural issues to emerge around sex and consent in the 21st century. With intelligence and clarity, Srinivasan unpacks the moral and philosophical underpinnings of such topics as false rape accusations, pornography and teacher-student relationships, making her book an invaluable companion for readers interested in nuanced analysis rather than hasty clickbait. 

The book emerged from Srinivasan’s 2018 essay “The Right to Sex,” which considered the case of Elliot Rodger, the killer whose deadly rampage at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2014 was supposedly motivated by his status as an “incel,” or involuntary celibate. Rodger’s assumption that he was somehow “owed” sex from women has proven to be a toxic influence on some social media platforms. In considering this case, Srinivasan moves her argument in unexpected directions to ask ever larger and harder philosophical questions: While there is no “right” to demand sex from other people, how should we think about desirability as a concept? Why are some bodies seen as desirable and others aren’t? How is desirability a political concept, shaped by popular culture?

In other essays, Srinivasan provides a helpful survey of the history of feminist responses to pornography, which range widely from the anti-porn feminism of Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon in the 1970s and ’80s to the more pro-sex pleasure activists of the 1990s. Here, as elsewhere in the book, Srinivasan opens up these issues beyond their original contexts to engage with them in a contemporary setting. To this end, Srinivasan’s classroom of undergraduates at Oxford becomes a kind of testing ground for how young people think about pornography and the influence it has had on them as the first fully digital generation.

With articulate precision, Srinivasan’s timely book offers readers a lucid and compelling guide to thinking philosophically about sex and power.

Amia Srinivasan’s book about sex and consent is invaluable for readers interested in intelligent, clear and nuanced analysis rather than hasty clickbait.
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The structure destined to become the Midnight Sun Mosque in Canada’s Northwest Territories had to be transported 2,800 miles from Winnipeg to Inuvik, much of it by barge. It’s now the worship house for some 100 Muslims, mostly men who were displaced from conflict zones and now drive taxis among the Inuit. They spend their spare time operating a much-needed community food bank.

On the other end of the North American continent is the Ahmadiyya mosque in Chiapas, Mexico. It’s run by a Mayan Indian, a former evangelical Christian and Zapatista leftist who got involved in Islam via a Sufi imam from an offbeat mosque in Spain founded by a Scottish hippie.

Neither fits the stereotype of a mosque that so many non-Muslim North Americans have. That’s exactly the point of Omar Mouallem’s absorbing Praying to the West: How Muslims Shaped the Americas, which explores the Muslim population of the Americas in all its staggering diversity.

Mouallem, a Canadian of Lebanese descent who grew up in a Muslim family but whose personal feelings about Islam became complicated as an adult, examines his own inner turmoil as he visits 13 mosques. They’re incredibly varied but fall roughly into two groups: communities founded by Muslim immigrants, like the Islamic Society of Greater Houston, and more idiosyncratic movements begun by non-Muslims, like the Nation of Islam.

The immigrant experience described by Mouallem will sound familiar to many Americans: the desire by the first generation to assimilate, followed by a rediscovery of roots by their children, then a more eclectic approach by grandchildren. The mosques he visits reflect these different relationships to assimilation. One early Muslim community, founded by Lebanese peddlers in North Dakota, for example, is now nearly indistinguishable from its Christian neighbors. Other, newer mosques have experienced more turbulence as they’ve acclimatized to their communities, such as a Quebec mosque that was the scene of a horrific massacre by a white man in 2017 and still has to employ tight security measures to protect itself.

Mouallem seems most attracted to Unity Mosque, which is open to all traditions and welcomes gay people and female faith leaders. He suspects North America will lead the way as Islam evolves, but regardless of whether that happens, his book has made it impossible not to see this faith tradition’s rich complexity.

Praying to the West explores the Muslim population of the Americas in all its staggering diversity and makes it impossible not to see Islam’s rich complexity.
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Before she was the world-famous creator of #MeToo, the movement that sparked a reckoning with the mistreatment of women, especially women of color, Tarana Burke was a community organizer and journalist. Her experience as a reporter will be no surprise to anyone who reads Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement, her unflinching, open-hearted, beautifully told account of becoming one of the most consequential activists in America.

Burke was molested by a neighborhood boy in the Bronx when she was 7. Over the years, despite the presence of several loving adults in her life, Burke was repeatedly sexually assaulted. “I was a grown woman before I truly understood the word rape and was able to relate it to my experience,” she writes. “Language like rape, molestation, and abuse were foreign to me as a child. I had no definitions and no context. Nobody around me talked like that.”

In spite of her trauma, Burke writes with humor and gratitude about her experiences. She delves into the rich history of her family, led by a granddaddy who “believed in celebrating Blackness in as many ways as possible” and a mother who was a devout Catholic. In school, Burke was both academically gifted and an agitator who spent time in the principal’s office. A high school leadership program led Burke to Selma, Alabama, where she laid the groundwork for #MeToo after realizing there was an utter lack of programs to support and protect young women as they spoke their truth about sexual abuse.

Burke also writes honestly about her reaction to #MeToo becoming a viral phenomenon on social media in 2017, initially without her knowledge or participation. After spending more than a decade traveling around the country, conducting workshops and speaking on panels about surviving sexual assault, she worried social media would water down or misuse her work.

Ultimately Burke realized that “all the folks who were using the #metoo hashtag, and all the Hollywood actresses who came forward with their allegations, needed the same thing that the little Black girls in Selma, Alabama, needed—space to be seen and heard. They needed empathy and compassion and a path to healing.”

Unbound is not just a thoroughly engrossing read. It’s also an important book that helps us understand the woman who has been so influential as our country struggles to acknowledge women’s trauma.

In the audio edition of ‘Unbound,’ Tarana Burke’s story is rendered all the more potent by her confident voice.

Unbound is Tarana Burke’s unflinching, beautifully told account of founding the #MeToo movement and becoming one of the most consequential activists in America.
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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.

The Quiet Zone is Stephen Kurczy’s fascinating, deeply reported and slightly eerie look at a town in West Virginia with no cell phones, microwaves or Wi-Fi.
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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.

Amanda Montell demonstrates that we are all more susceptible to joining cultish groups than we may realize.

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