Bookmark the Blog


NORMAL

One of our recommended books for 2020 is Normal by Magda Newman

A moving memoir from the mother of a child with Treacher Collins Syndrome, with a foreword by R.J. Palacio, author of Wonder.

For Magda Newman, normal was a goal—she wanted her son Nathaniel to be able to play on the playground, swim at the beach, enjoy the moments of childhood that are often taken for granted. But Nathaniel’s severe Treacher Collins syndrome—a craniofacial condition—meant that other concerns came first. Could he eat without the aid of a gastrointestinal tube? Could he hear? Would he ever be able to breathe effortlessly?

In this moving memoir,

read more

AFTER EMILY

One of our recommended books for 2019 is After Emily by Julie Dobrow

“Scandal and pathos abound” (The New Yorker) in this riveting account of the mother and daughter who brought Emily Dickinson’s genius to light.

Despite Emily Dickinson’s renown, the story of the two women most responsible for her initial posthumous publication—Mabel Loomis Todd and her daughter, Millicent Todd Bingham—has remained in the shadows of the archives. Utilizing hundreds of overlooked letters and diaries to weave together three unstoppable women, Julie Dobrow reveals the intrigue of Dickinson’s literary beginnings, including Mabel’s tumultuous affair with Emily’s brother, Austin Dickinson, controversial editorial decisions, and a battle over the right to define the so-called Belle of Amherst.

read more

SOME OF US ARE VERY HUNGRY NOW

One of our recommended books for 2019 is Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now by Andre Perry

With luminous insight and fervent prose, Andre Perry’s debut collection of personal essays, Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now, travels from Washington DC to Iowa City to Hong Kong in search of both individual and national identity. While displaying tenderness and a disarming honesty, Perry catalogs racial degradations committed on the campuses of elite universities and liberal bastions like San Francisco while coming of age in America.

The essays in Some of Us Are Very Hungry Now take the form of personal reflection, multiple choice questions, screenplays, and imagined talk-show conversations, while traversing the daily minefields of childhood schoolyards and Midwestern dive-bars.

read more

THE MUTUAL ADMIRATION SOCIETY

One of our recommended books for 2019 is The Mutual Admiration Society by Mo Moulton

A group biography of renowned crime novelist Dorothy L. Sayers and the Oxford women who stood at the vanguard of equal rights.

Dorothy L. Sayers is now famous for her Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane detective series, but she was equally well known during her life for an essay asking “Are Women Human?” Women’s rights were expanding rapidly during Sayers’s lifetime; she and her friends were some of the first women to receive degrees from Oxford. Yet, as historian Mo Moulton reveals, it was clear from the many professional and personal obstacles they faced that society was not ready to concede that women were indeed fully human.

read more

CONVERSATIONS WITH RBG

One of our recommended books for 2019 is Conversations with RBG

In her own words, Ruth Bader Ginsburg offers an intimate look at her life and career, through an extraordinary series of conversations with the head of the National Constitution Center.

This remarkable book presents a unique portrait of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, drawing on more than twenty years of conversations with Jeffrey Rosen, starting in the 1990s and continuing through the Trump era. Rosen, a veteran legal journalist, scholar, and president of the National Constitution Center, shares with us the justice’s observations on a variety of topics, and her intellect, compassion, sense of humor, and humanity shine through.

read more

GOOD THINGS HAPPEN TO PEOPLE YOU HATE

One of our recommended books for 2019 is Good Things Happen to People You Hate by Rebecca Fishbein

Former Senior Editor for Gothamist Rebecca Fishbein’s adult life has been a dramatic reflection of New York media itself—constantly evolving in unexpected ways and seemingly always on the edge of disaster. In short, Rebecca has seen it all—from 3 bedbug infestations, to being fired, to being yelled at while working at American Apparel, to losing all her stuff in a freak fire, to being bullied online by angry Taylor Swift fans.

But the real humor and meat of the collection come from Rebecca’s unwavering honesty and unflinching examination of her struggles with alcohol, anxiety, depression, compulsive lying,

read more