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US Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins (04/25)
Becoming Madam Secretary by Stephanie Dray narrates the life of Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the first woman to serve in the US Cabinet. Perkins was a tireless supporter of workers' rights and is credited with drafting and lobbying support for some of the most critical parts of the New ...
Icarus and Helios in Greek Mythology (04/25)
The titular protagonist of K. Ancrum's young adult novel Icarus denies that his name is an allusion to the famous character from Greek mythology and reveals that his mother christened him after the scientific name of a beloved fern, Icarus filiformis. Nonetheless, Icarus's denial of this reference only draws more attention to the ...
The Tangled History of "Strange Fruit" (04/25)
In February 1959, Billie Holiday sang the anti-lynching song she popularized, 'Strange Fruit,' on the London television show Chelsea at Nine. She was battling liver disease because of a prodigious vodka and gin addiction. It was rare for Billie to sing 'Strange Fruit' when she was this physically fragile.
'She just needed a reason to ...
Notable Female Boxers (04/25)
Rita Bullwinkel's novel Headshot depicts the intensity and intimacy of a girl's boxing tournament. Although women's boxing was only officially introduced to the Olympics in 2012 and was banned by the USA Boxing organization before 1993, accounts of women boxing date back to the 1700s. Here are just a few of the trailblazing women boxers ...
Artificial Intelligence and Brain Science (04/25)
In The Last Murder at the End of the World, a small group of people have survived the deadly fog that destroyed mankind. These survivors have managed to create a peaceful, productive society on their small island, benefiting from the sense of community bestowed by Abi. Abi is a mysterious intelligence that is part of the minds of all the ...
Facebook's Early Days (04/25)
Sarah Wynn-Williams' book, Careless People, details her experiences at Facebook from 2011 to 2017. The company had been around for seven years before her chronicle begins, however, and its earliest history is fascinating.
Born May 14, 1984, Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg was a wunderkind. He displayed a talent for computer ...
In Sickness and In Health: Illness and Marriage (04/25)
While planning her wedding at the age of twenty-four, after seven years of dating her fiancé, Erin Fortin was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder. Paroxysmal Nocturnal Hemoglobinuria, or PNH, involves the damage of red blood cells by the immune system. Because Erin and her future husband John both had a healthy sense of humor and ...
Climate Change Mitigation Strategies (04/25)
In The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue, author Mike Tidwell offers an overview of strategies being researched and implemented to mitigate climate change. Overall, the main strategies are decarbonization and the drastic cutting of greenhouse gas emissions by switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Geoengineering technologies also aim ...
The "Moon Is Made of Cheese" Trope (04/25)
While the central conceit of John Scalzi's When the Moon Hits Your Eye is that the Moon has turned to cheese, the book is not overly concerned with how this has happened. Instead, it's more interested in how the world — specifically America — reacts to such a sudden, inexplicable event, as well as what happens when science ...
The Devastating Earthquake Predicted to Hit Portland (04/25)
Emma Pattee's debut novel
Tilt follows one woman's journey across Portland after the city is hit by a devastating earthquake. Though fictional, the disaster is based on research that suggests such an event could take place in the not-so-distant future. Readers may recognize this future earthquake as 'The Big One' from
Kathryn Schulz's ...
Spring-Heeled Jack (04/25)
Judge Dee Ren Jie, the protagonist of the Dee and Lao mystery series, frequently masquerades as Spring-heeled Jack, a legendary figure out of Victorian London. Sometimes Dee uses the costume to intimidate suspects into divulging information, but more often, he uses it to disguise his true identity while interacting with London's police ...
The Silent Generation in The Usual Desire to Kill (04/25)
In 1951, Time magazine described the youth of the era in the following terms: 'The most startling fact about the younger generation is its silence. With some rare exceptions, youth is nowhere near the rostrum. By comparison with the Flaming Youth of their fathers & mothers, today's younger generation is a still, small flame. It does not ...
Objectum Sexuality (04/25)
Linda, the narrator of Sky Daddy, is sexually and romantically attracted to commercial airplanes. This phenomenon could be viewed as a subset of objectum sexuality (OS) — defined as romantic or sexual attraction to an object — although Linda insists that her interest in planes is different from 'the woman who married the ...
Books Featuring Actors as Characters (04/25)
The protagonist of Katie Kitamura's Audition is an actress, and sections of the novel reflect her thought process on performance, from the creation of her character to her considerations of a play's rhythms and structures. This plot device allows author Kitamura to contemplate themes that she and all novelists must also explore, ...
The Highland Clearances (03/25)
In Clear, the third novel from Carys Davies, an impoverished presbyterian minister reluctantly takes part in the Highland Clearances, a series of mass evictions that took place in the north of Scotland between 1750 and 1850, driven in part by the restructuring of British society during the Industrial Revolution and the collapse of the ...
The Signs and Effects of Emotional Abuse (03/25)
Ciara Fay, the protagonist of Roisín O'Donnell's novel, Nesting, is the victim of emotional abuse, although she remains unaware of this for most of the book. Also referred to as psychological abuse or psychological aggression, this behavior erodes another person's sense of self-worth until they develop a psychological dependency on ...
Emily J. Taylor's Inspirations (03/25)
Emily J. Taylor's sophomore novel,
The Otherwhere Post, is an academic young adult fantasy filled with haunting secrets, a fascinating magic system, and a sweet slow-burn romance. Taylor has
shared that the idea for the story struck in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Between quarantining and the sleep deprivation that ...
Oliver Twist Adaptations (03/25)
Charles Dickens' works have been adapted and retold in countless forms. In the case of Oliver Twist, the most notable adaptations have been straightforward retellings of the original storyline. For example, the West End musical adaptation Oliver! largely adheres to Dickens' plot, although it omits the events before Oliver ends up at the ...
"Pre-Crime" in The Dream Hotel and Real Life (03/25)
Laila Lalami's The Dream Hotel takes place in a dystopian future in which government surveillance extends to dreams, and people can be arrested for being deemed a risk to society based on their supposed likelihood of committing a crime. The concept of 'pre-crime,' or the idea that crimes can be anticipated before they occur, was also ...
Spotlight on a Banned Author: Maia Kobabe (03/25)
When speaking about book bans, it rarely takes long for the 2019 graphic memoir
Gender Queer to enter the conversation. Its author Maia Kobabe, who is also the first contributing author to
Banned Together, never imagined that writing a memoir about eir experience growing up and coming out as nonbinary and asexual would lead to national ...
The Blue Mosque (03/25)
In Abdulrazak Gurnah's novel Theft, multiple characters dream of seeing the world, but only some have the privilege of doing so in reality. Badar, whose economic situation puts travel out of reach, keeps a photograph of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul on the wall of his rented room as a symbol of that dream. The Blue Mosque is one of the most...
How to Become a Professional Clown (03/25)
In Stop Me If You've Heard This One, the main character, Cherry, chases her dreams of becoming a successful clown. The unusual career path actually requires a lot more work—and financial investment—than one might assume. If you're considering trading in your 9-to-5 for a bright red nose, here are some steps you might ...
Transgender Support Organizations Serving Rural America (03/25)
In Emily St. James's debut novel, Woodworking, the protagonist, Erica, must travel more than an hour each way, from Mitchell to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, to attend a support group for transgender people. The group is small—seven people is 'a good turnout'—but it's there, and over the course of the book, the group's existence ...
Fish and Chip Shops (03/25)
In Colm Tóibín's novel Long Island, one of the main characters owns a chip shop in Enniscorthy, Ireland – a carryout restaurant that sells fish and chips (french fries in the United States). The dish is a staple of the British Isles, and hundreds of chip shops (aka 'chippies') can be found in the Republic of Ireland, where...
Puccini's Opera Tosca (03/25)
Roxana Robinson's novel Leaving begins with the protagonists meeting at the Metropolitan Opera House during a production of Tosca. This opera is a tragedy, set in Rome in 1800, during the Napoleonic Wars.
The drama centers around three main characters: Mario Cavaradossi, a painter and Napoleon supporter; Baron Vitellio Scarpia, the ...
Artist Ana Mendieta (03/25)
The title character in Xochitl Gonzalez's Anita de Monte Laughs Last is closely based on the artist Ana Mendieta. Although Mendieta's shocking death at the age of thirty-five has overshadowed her artistic legacy in the public imagination, Mendieta was a rising star at the time of her death, and her creative work continues to hold ...
Hertha Ayrton (03/25)
The friendship between Hertha Ayrton and Marie Curie is explored in Anne Michaels's multigenerational novel Held. Although Marie Curie is a household name, Aryton's fascinating life is likely unfamiliar to most readers.
Born in 1854 in Portsea, England, Hertha Ayrton was born as Phoebe Sarah Marks. Levi Marks, a clockmaker from...
A World Not Built for Women: Gender Bias in Medicine & Science (03/25)
In March 2019, NASA was due to launch the first all-women spacewalk from the International Space Station. It was to be a milestone in space exploration. Astronauts Christina Koch and Anne McClain were to walk outside the ISS to replace lithium-ion batteries; Mary Lawrence and Kristen Facciol were to be lead flight director and lead ...
Thomas Gainsborough (03/25)
Emily Howes' enthralling debut novel, The Painter's Daughters, features a fictionalized version of the lives of Molly and Peggy Gainsborough. Their father, Thomas Gainsborough, was one of the most influential British painters of the 18th century.
Gainsborough, born in 1727, was the youngest of John and Mary Gainsborough's nine ...
Cape Horn (03/25)
David Grann's The Wager is a nonfiction book about events surrounding the 1741 wreck of the British ship the HMS Wager, which met its doom while rounding Cape Horn, a rocky headland at the southernmost tip of the Chilean archipelago Tierra del Fuego, where the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans meet. With this book, Grann sheds light on one ...
The Erasure of Eileen Blair from Orwell's Homage to Catalonia (03/25)
Readers might be forgiven if, in reading George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, they miss the fact that his first wife, Eileen Blair, was in Spain with him, working for the Republican resistance against Franco's fascist forces. As Anna Funder points out in Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell's Invisible Life, when George does refer to her, he does not ...
Virginia Woolf's The Years, British Empire, and Narrative Form (03/25)
The Years is the last of Virginia Woolf's novels to be published during her lifetime, in 1937. Beginning in 1880 and following three generations of the Pargiter family across five decades to the 'present day,' it captures intimate moments between characters and internal monologues against the backdrop of historical events and changes in ...
What's a Hare? Isn't It Just a Rabbit? Actually, No (03/25)
While commenting on Chloe Dalton's memoir Raising Hare, about her experience rescuing a wild baby hare, some of our First Impressions reviewers mentioned the common misperception that a hare is a kind of a rabbit. So what exactly is a hare?
Hares and rabbits are related, but not the same. The hare is in the genus Lepus and falls into ...
New Journalism (03/25)
In 1963, Jimmy Breslin chronicled the death of John F. Kennedy from the point of view of the man who dug his grave. Instead of joining the big names in journalism in awaiting statements of grief from world leaders, he went to the cemetery where the US president was to be buried in order to write '
It's an Honor,' a piece that told the ...
The Plow That Broke the Plains: A Dust Bowl Documentary (03/25)
One of the protagonists in The Antidote is Cleo Allfrey, a photographer dispatched by the Resettlement Administration to document life in Nebraska's Dust Bowl. She and others in the book mention a similar, real-world project: a documentary titled The Plow That Broke the Plains.
The Plow That Broke the Plains was a controversial, ...
The Social Impact of COVID-19 on Young Adults (03/25)
COVID-19 has had an immense impact on people of all ages, in all stages of life, and in all parts of the world. Mahogany L. Browne's novel A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe focuses on the various effects on young people's lives, which are still being felt and studied today. Along with the widespread death, disability, and ...
Mariah Carey's The Emancipation of Mimi (03/25)
In Sarah Harman's All the Other Mothers Hate Me, Florence, an ex-pop star, clings to a notion: that one day, just like Mariah Carey, she will have what she calls her Emancipation of Mimi moment. I immediately knew what she meant, because The Emancipation of Mimi was one of my most impactful musical albums; it was the first CD I remember ...
Madame Sosostris in T.S. Eliot's Poetry (03/25)
In Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Brokenhearted, Londoner Viv meets the infamous clairvoyant Madame Sosostris while she is giving readings at the Cholmondeley Room of the House of Lords. Guests are frightened and awed by the accuracy of her gift, calling her "the most dependable clairvoyant in the country," as she has...
The Preppy Killer (03/25)
A crime that occurred in the summer of 1986 in New York City inspired Cynthia Weiner's A Gorgeous Excitement. On August 26, a cyclist discovered 18-year-old Jennifer Levin in New York City's Central Park, dead due to strangulation and half naked behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art, badly bruised and with cuts on her face. She had been ...
No-Fault Divorce in the US (03/25)
The title of Haley Mlotek's debut No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce is a reference to 'no-fault' divorce, which is a divorce granted without needing to prove wrongdoing by either spouse. For Mlotek, the legalization of no-fault divorce is an important moment in the history of marriage, as it raises questions about the significance...
Dala Horses (03/25)
In Shelby Van Pelt's novel
Remarkably Bright Creatures, Tova Sullivan treasures her collection of Dala horses brought to the United States from Sweden decades ago by her mother.
A Dala horse, also known as a Dalecarlian horse (or 'Dalahäst' in Swedish), is a type of hand-carved, painted statuette in Swedish culture. According to
...
The Photography of Spencer Ostrander (02/25)
Thanks to the numerous photographs that accompany Paul Auster's prose, Bloodbath Nation reads like an extended photo essay, the combination of words and pictures creating a truly indelible work. The images were recorded by New York City–based photographer Spencer Ostrander, for whom this work is deeply personal.
Ostrander, who ...
Popular Dances of the 1960s-70s and Ballet (02/25)
In The Swans of Harlem, Karen Valby explains how Arthur Mitchell sought to make ballet appealing and relevant to a Black audience. He and his dancers regularly visited schools to give talks and performances. Mitchell loved to point out how ballet could help the students in their daily lives. He'd tell the boys how much higher they could ...
No-Tech Time Travel Books (02/25)
Exploring alternate realities through time travel is a familiar subject across fiction. Traditionally, the mechanism for making such a feat possible is the invention of a new technology: a time machine, a spaceship that can go faster than the speed of light, etc. Yet books built around these high-tech means often come with a mind-bending ...
From Stagecraft to Spy Craft: Celebrity Spies (02/25)
The history of celebrities dabbling in espionage is a fascinating one. As Ronald Drabkin illustrates in Beverly Hills Spy, famous people often have opportunities to gather intelligence from high-value sources. Who would not want to socialize with a beautiful or handsome star?
One of the most audacious celebrity spies during World War ...
A Brief History of Events Leading Up to the Russia-Ukraine War (02/25)
Victoria Amelina (1986–2023) was a Ukrainian novelist. She spent the last months of her life researching war crimes committed by Russian soldiers during their invasion of her country.
Those of us in the United States probably think of the Russia-Ukraine War as beginning on February 24, 2022, when Russian president Vladimir Putin ...
Cats in Japanese Literature (02/25)
Japanese people have been writing about cats for a long time. In 889, Japanese Emperor Uda wrote in his journal: 'Taking a moment of my free time, I wish to express my joy of the cat.' He proceeded to then describe the animal in thoughtful detail, including a humorous remark that will resonate all too well with cat owners: 'I affixed a ...
Is Tunisian Female Independence Slipping Away? (02/25)
The Republic of Tunisia is a small country in Northern Africa. It was the birthplace of the 2010-11 Arab Spring movement, which saw uprisings due to economic hardship and corruption. Though much of the world was taken off guard by the unrest, Tunisia has always been forward-facing. Once a protectorate of France, it gained its independence...
Gravesend, Brooklyn Over the Years (02/25)
Gravesend is only an hour from New York City's Grand Central Station by subway, but Manhattan 'might as well be Mars' to the characters of Saint of the Narrows Street. It is a small neighborhood in south Brooklyn, just north of the better-known Coney Island and Brighton Beach.
The name 'Gravesend' sounds macabre, but its roots are...
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