Fantagraphics—the Seattle-based indie comics juggernaut and publisher of Daniel Clowes, Charles Burns, and Joe Sacco (whose landmark work of graphic journalism, Palestine, was released by Fantagraphics in 1993)—has issued a forceful statement denouncing the ongoing genocide in Gaza and calling for an immediate ceasefire:

We want to state clearly and emphatically that we stand with the innocent people of Gaza. At the same time, we emphatically condemn the massacre of innocent Israeli civilians by Hamas on October 7 as a war crime and acknowledge with deep regret the grief and trauma Jewish people are enduring in its aftermath; but this barbarous act does not warrant Israel to commit its own war crime and to inflict exponentially greater grief and trauma in return.

Finally, as citizens of the United States, it is both emotionally agonizing and morally objectionable to watch our nation’s complicity in the ongoing genocide of Gaza.

With the release of this statement, Fantagraphics becomes one of the highest profile US publishers to publicly call for an end to Israel’s war on Gaza, which has so far claimed the lives of over 25,000 people, including more than 120 writers, poets, and journalists.

Here is the Fantagraphics statement in full:

In 1993, Fantagraphics began publishing Palestine, Joe Sacco’s landmark work of graphic journalism, a first-person chronicle that gave voice to the voiceless and dispossessed people who were living and suffering in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem—the Palestinian territories.

Considering that we have believed in the deeply humanistic perspective of this book, that we have considered it our responsibility to keep it available to the public continuously in 25 printings in 31 years, and that we have boundless respect for its author, we consider it a moral imperative to make our position on the current “Israel-Hamas/Gaza war” publicly known.

We want to state clearly and emphatically that we stand with the innocent people of Gaza. At the same time, we emphatically condemn the massacre of innocent Israeli civilians by Hamas on October 7 as a war crime and acknowledge with deep regret the grief and trauma Jewish people are enduring in its aftermath; but this barbarous act does not warrant Israel to commit its own war crime and to inflict exponentially greater grief and trauma in return.

Finally, as citizens of the United States, it is both emotionally agonizing and morally objectionable to watch our nation’s complicity in the ongoing genocide of Gaza. We respectfully submit that:

• There should be an immediate ceasefire

• Israel should immediately allow humanitarian aid into Gaza

• Israel must end its apartheid regime

• Israel must stop looking the other way as West Bank settlers murder Palestinians

• Israel’s illegal West Bank settlements must be dismantled

• Negotiations in good faith must begin toward a two- or single-state solution in which both Israelis and Palestinians share the same sovereign rights.

• Israeli and Hamas prisoners/hostages should be released

• Those who speak out on behalf of Palestinians should not be silenced, retaliated against, or smeared as antisemitic

• Slippery new terms like “humanitarian expulsion” and “voluntary migration” should be denounced for what they are—oxymoronic euphemisms for ethnic cleansing

• War crimes should be investigated and vigorously pursued by the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice

“Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only goal worth struggling for. This is no longer a prayer but a demand to be made by all peoples to their governments—a demand to choose definitively between hell and reason.”

— Albert Camus, Combat, 1945

[This statement does not necessarily reflect the opinions of our staff or our authors, who are entirely free to agree or disagree and to make their own beliefs known.]

Gary Groth
Publisher, Fantagraphics Books

Eric Reynolds,
Associate Publisher, Fantagraphics Books

There are hundreds of thousands of kids’ books out there. Some are classics that wind up in everyone’s homes, no matter what. Others are random—given as gifts, found on the playground, purchased in bulk from the resale shop. But which books are worth your child’s time—and (arguably) more importantly, your time?

Overwhelmed by the number of both brilliant and mediocre books I have read since becoming a parent, I asked other Lit Hub staff members with toddlers to rank a few of their most memorable reading experiences on two metrics: their child’s enthusiasm for it and their own enthusiasm for it—or let’s be real and say, their tolerance for reading it over and over and over again. The result is the graph below.

Obviously, these rankings are highly subjective, and reliant on a number of shifting factors, including exact age and mood of toddler, interests of parent, and the number of times the book in question has been read in any given week/day/hour. This is also not an exhaustive list of all the books we read to our children, or that they like, or that we like, etc. To be quite honest, the graph could have been 20 times as large, but bedtime is coming.

Click on the graph to enlarge it; you will also find a list of the books on the graph, organized by descending total score, along with comments from various Lit Hub staff members, given on the condition of anonymity (to protect the feelings of gift-givers and other interested parties).

And of course, if you are someone who loves books and also a toddler-aged child or three, feel free to rank some books of your own in the comments.

The Results:

Abby Hanlon, Dory Fantasmagory  – 25 tolerability x 25 toddler enthusiasm = 50 points

All the Dory Fantasmagory books are beloved by parents and child alike in our house. Bonus points for the audiobooks being free on Spotify now.

Jon Klassen, The Skull  – 25 x 25 = 50

We all love it.

Tomie dePaola, Strega Nona – 24 x 24 = 48

Everyone can recite it by memory at this point, which helps with eye strain.

Don Freeman, Corduroy – 21 x 22 = 43

The Lisa obsession is real.

Julia Donaldson, The Gruffalo – 20 x 22 = 42

Julia Donaldson in general is great; The Gruffalo is the best and the kids love it.

Jon Klassen, I Want My Hat Back – 24 x 17 = 41

Murder bear.

Karma Wilson, Jane Chapman, Bear Snores On  – 20 x 20 = 40

A classic.

Liz Garton Scanlon, Marla Frazee, All the World – 23 x 17 = 40

Makes Mom all teary.

Derick Wilder, K-Fai Steele, Does a Bulldozer Have a Butt? – 21 x 15 = 36

Who is more immature, me or my child?

Crockett Johnson, Harold and the Purple Crayon – 17 x 17 = 34

Always a solid pick.

Lorinda Bryan Cauley, Clap Your Hands – 14 x 20 = 34

There’s something slightly deranged about this book, but I don’t hate it.

Amy June Bates and Juniper Bates, The Big Umbrella – 15 x 15 = 30

This book is nice and we all like it.

Roger Priddy, First 100 Words – 4 x 22 = 26

For…some reason…my child thinks this is called “Boring Book.” She loves Boring Book.

Dr. Seuss, Horton Hatches the Egg – 20 x 6 = 26

Great but the kids hated it.

Laura Joffe, Numeroff, Felicia Bond, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie – 8 x 18 = 26

I hated it.

Judith Viorst, Ray Cruz, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day – 22 x 3 = 25

Couldn’t get my kids to care about it, unfortunately.

Cori Doerrfeld, The Rabbit Listened – 22 x 3 = 25

A beautiful book. Kids hated it but it’ll make you cry.

Tarō Gomi, Everyone Poops – 18 x 6 = 24

Will it really help with potty training? Who knows, but I laugh at the camel poop every time.

Michael Rosen, Helen Oxenbury, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt – 12 x 12 = 24

It’s fine.

Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are – 21 x 2 = 23

I love Sendak, but my 2-year-old won’t tolerate this for more than a few pages. Maybe she’ll grow into it.

Margaret and H.A. Rey, Curious George Goes to the Hospital – 3 x 20 = 23

Our lack of enthusiasm due to it not having been updated since the 50s, so all the nurses are women and all the doctors are men.

Rod Campbell, Dear Zoo – 5 x 18 = 23

Kids love it, but it makes no sense. That’s not how zoos work.

Anna Dewdney, Llama Llama Red Pajama – 15 x 5 = 20

Another one we wanted her to like more than she did. There’s still time!

Mo Willems, the Elephant and Piggie books – 2 x 17 = 19

Two unpleasantly-drawn creatures on a white page, bellowing at each other about nothing.

Shel Silverstein, The Giving Tree – 2 x 15 = 17

Maybe it was meant as an allegory for humankind’s relationship with the planet, but it reads queasily like the American expectation for parenthood, and I am not a fan. (Luckily, someone has fixed it.)

Bill Martin Jr., John Archambault, Lois Ehlert, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom – 5 x 10 = 15

Parenthood is trying enough, and now you want me to convincingly declare “skit skat skoodle doot, flip flop flee”?

Marcus Pfister, The Rainbow Fish – 4 x 10 = 14

Teaching children that the way to make friends is to give away all the things about you that are unique.

Deborah Diesen, Dan Hanna, The Pout-Pout Fish – 5 x 6 = 11

Teaching children that all their problems/shitty personalities will be solved if they can only attract sexual attention from a stranger.

Jimmy Fallon, Everything is Mama – -2 x 10 = 8

Nakedly capitalist.

Today, the National Book Critics Circle announced its 30 finalists for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle Awards, which celebrate the best books of the year in six categories: autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, general nonfiction, and poetry. The finalists for the John Leonard Prize for best first book and the inaugural Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize were also announced.

The NBCC Service Award was awarded to Marion Winik, and the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing was awarded to Becca Rothfeld. The recipient of the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award is Judy Blume, and the recipient of the Toni Morrison Achievement Award is the American Library Association.

“This year’s remarkable and uncompromising finalists delve into subjects as diverse as adoption, authorial identity, cultural disruption, mythmaking, and the banal,” said NBCC President Heather Scott Partington, in a press release. “Many tell stories that have previously been silenced or ignored. Our Sandrof Life Achievement Award and Morrison Achievement Award winners Judy Blume and the ALA exemplify how literacy and literary access lead to liberation. What a beautiful year for books.”

The 2023 awards will be presented on March 21, 2024 at the New School in New York City. Until then, here are the finalists:

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Susan Ito, I Would Meet You Anywhere: A Memoir (The Ohio State University Press)

David Mas Masumoto, with artwork by Patricia Wakida, Secret Harvests: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm (Red Hen Press)

Ahmed Naji, Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in an Egyptian Prison, translated by Katharine Halls (McSweeney’s)

Safiya Sinclair, How to Say Babylon: A Memoir (Simon & Schuster)

Matthew Zapruder, Story of a Poem: A Memoir (Unnamed Press)

*

BIOGRAPHY

Jonathan Eig, King: A Life (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Gregg Hecimovich, The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of the Bondwoman’s Narrative (Ecco)

Yunte Huang, Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong’s Rendezvous with American History (Liveright)

Rachel Shteir, Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disruptor (Yale University Press)

Jonny Steinberg, Winnie and Nelson: Portrait of a Marriage (Knopf)

*

CRITICISM

Nicholas Dames, The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press)

Myriam Gurba, Creep: Accusations and Confessions (Avid Reader Press)

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Grace E. Lavery, Pleasure and Efficacy: Of Pen Names, Cover Versions, and Other Trans Techniques (Princeton University Press)

Tina Post, Deadpan: The Aesthetics of Black Inexpression (NYU Press)

*

FICTION

Teju Cole, Tremor (Random House)

Daniel Mason, North Woods (Random House)

Lorrie Moore, I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home (Knopf)

Marie NDiaye, Vengeance Is Mine, translated by Jordan Stump (Knopf)

Justin Torres, Blackouts (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

*

NONFICTION

Roxanna Asgarian, We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Kerry Howley, Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs (Knopf)

Christina Sharpe, Ordinary Notes (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Jeff Sharlet, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War (W. W. Norton)

Dina Nayeri, Who Gets Believed? When the Truth Isn’t Enough (Catapult Books)

*

POETRY

Saskia Hamilton, All Souls (Graywolf Press)

Kim Hyesoon, Phantom Pain Wings, translated by Don Mee Choi (New Directions)

Romeo Oriogun, The Gathering of Bastards (University of Nebraska Press)

Robyn Schiff, Information Desk (Penguin Books)

Charif Shanahan, Trace Evidence (Tin House)

*

GREGG BARRIOS BOOK IN TRANSLATION PRIZE

Kareem Abdulrahman’s translation of The Last Pomegranate Tree by Bachtyar Ali (Archipelago Books)

Natascha Bruce’s translation of Owlish by Dorothy Tse (Graywolf Press)

Don Mee Choi’s translation of Phantom Pain Wings by Kim Hyesoon (New Directions)

Todd Fredson’s translation of Zakwato & Loglêdou’s Peril by Azo Vauguy (Action Books)

Maureen Freely’s translation of Cold Nights of Childhood by Tezer Özlü (Transit Books)

Tiffany Tsao’s translation of Happy Stories, Mostly by Norman Erikson Pasaribu (Feminist Press)

*

JOHN LEONARD PRIZE

Ariana Benson, Black Pastoral (University of Georgia Press)

Emilie Boone, A Nimble Arc: James Van Der Zee and Photography (Duke University Press)

Victor Heringer, The Love of Singular Men, translated by James Young (New Directions)

Tahir Hamut Izgil, Waiting to Be Arrested at Night: a Uyghur Poet’s Memoir of China’s Genocide, translated by Joshua L. Freeman (Penguin Press)

Donovan X. Ramsey, When Crack Was King (One World)

Martin J. Siegel, Judgment and Mercy: The Turbulent Life and Times of the Judge Who Condemned the Rosenbergs (Cornell University Press)

Today, Chicago-based arts organization United States Artists announced their 50 2024 USA Fellows, a group that includes six Writing Fellows, each of whom will receive an unrestricted cash award of $50,000, intended to allow each writer “to deepen their respective practices and devote themselves rigorously to the art of writing.”

Here are the 2024 USA Writing Fellows, along with their bios:

Dantiel W. Moniz

Dantiel W. Moniz is the recipient of a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award, a Pushcart Prize, the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction, and fellowships from Yaddo, Lighthouse Works, MacDowell, among others. Moniz’s debut collection, Milk Blood Heat was a finalist for the PEN/ Jean Stein Book Award, the PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Prize, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and The Story Prize. Her writing has appeared in the Paris Review, Harper’s Bazaar, American Short Fiction, Tin House, and elsewhere. Moniz is an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison where she teaches fiction.

Nafissa Thompson-Spires

Nafissa Thompson-Spires is the author of Heads of the Colored People, which won the PEN Open Book Award, the Hurston/Wright Award for Fiction, and The Los Angeles Times’ Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Thompson-Spires’ collection was longlisted for the National Book Award, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award, and several other prizes including an NAACP Image Award. She is also the recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award.

She earned a doctorate in English from ­­­­Vanderbilt University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from ­­­­­­the University of Illinois. With dark humor and covering topics from identity to chronic illness, her short fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review Daily, The Cut, The Root, The White Review, Ploughshares, 400 Souls: A Community History of African America 1619–2019, The 1619 Project, among other publications. In addition to a novel under contract with Scribner, she has new writing forthcoming in Fourteen Days: A Community Gathering, edited by Margaret Atwood.

Thompson–Spires is currently the Richards Family Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Cornell University, teaching both in the MFA and undergraduate programs.

Farid Matuk

Born in Lima, Peru to a Peruvian father and Syrian mother, and preemptively kidnapped to escape his father’s violence, Farid Matuk has lived in the US since the age of six as an undocumented person, then a “legal” resident, and eventually as a “naturalized” citizen. Matuk is the author of the poetry collections This Isa Nice Neighborhood and The Real Horse. Their poems have appeared in BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, Lana Turner, The Paris Review, and Poetry, among others. Matuk’s work has been supported with residencies and grants from the Headlands Center for the Arts and with a Holloway Visiting Professorship at UC Berkeley. Redolent, their book-arts collaboration with artist Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez, won the 2023 Anna Rabinowitz Prize from the Poetry Society of America. Matuk’s translation of Peruvian poet Tilsa Otta’s The Hormone of Darkness is forthcoming in 2024 from Graywolf Press.

Jeffery U. Darensbourg

Born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana of Creole and Indigenous ancestry, Jeffery Darensbourg’s work explores culture and language in the lives of mixed-ethnicity people in Louisiana and the ways in which various categories, attitudes, and histories regionally intersect with his own life. He has published essays, zines, and poems and has had a play produced. He is known for his lecture performances and also as a regular guest on broadcasts and podcasts. He holds a PhD in cognitive science and is an advocate for Indigenous languages, especially Ishakkoy, and Indigenous place names, especially the original name for where he lives, Bulbancha (known to many as New Orleans). His recent work has focused on family trauma, mental illness, and the experience of passing (much of the time) for white. Darensbourg is an enrolled member of the Atakapa-Ishak Nation of Indians and a Fellow of the Center for Louisiana Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Monica Ong

Monica Ong is the author of Silent Anatomies (Kore Press). Ong’s work has been published in Poetry, Scientific American, The Asian American Literary Review, and is forthcoming in the anthology The Mouth Holds Many Things: A De-Canon Hybrid Lit Collection (Fonograf Editions). A Kundiman Poetry Fellow and graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, Ong’s visual poetry innovates on text+image to surface hidden narratives of women and diaspora. Planetaria, her recent series of astronomy-inspired visual poems was exhibited at the Poetry Foundation (2022) and the Hunterdon Art Museum (2023). In 2021, Ong founded Proxima Vera, a micropress specializing in fine press visual poetry editions and literary art objects, many of which have been acquired by institutional collections and museums worldwide.

Danielle Evans

Danielle Evans is the author of the story collections The Office of Historical Corrections and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. Evans’ first collection won the PEN America Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Hurston-Wright Award for fiction, and the Paterson Prize for fiction. Her second won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and was a finalist for the Aspen Prize, The Story Prize, The Chautauqua Prize, and The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction. She has been awarded the New Literary Project Joyce Carol Oates Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and was selected as one of the National Book Foundation’s annual 5 under 35. Evans’ stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies including Best American Short Stories. She is an Associate Professor in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.

As the end of January creeps nearer and—depending where you are—the weeks of wintry weather may be keeping you in, you may be finding yourself in search of something bright, warm, and charming to peer at. A well-lit fireplace, perhaps, or the ineffable swirls of steam from a cup as hot water alchemizes into air. No matter your preferences, you’ll find it better with a book by your side, and what better than something brand-new, its contours unknown, its memories with you yet to be made. Below, you’ll find a whopping twenty-six new ones out today to consider.

There’s a poignant novel from acclaimed poet Kaveh Akbar, Calvino-esque literary fables from C.D. Rose, an expansive Jamaican-Canadian queer debut novel from Christina Cooke; a collection of poems by Keith Taylor that breathe life into the everyday; powerful reflections on the Holocaust, including a never-before-published firsthand account from survivor József Debreczeni and a critique of historical shortsightedness about the Holocaust’s atrocities in a provocative new book by Dan Stone; a new biography of the revolutionary writer Frantz Fanon; a blunt revelation of racism in the medical field; Crystal Hefner’s memoir of escaping from the shadow of Playboy; and much, much more.

No matter what you’re in the mood for, I hope you’ll find somewhere warm and cozy to curl up with one of these. It’ll be worth it.

*

Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!
(Knopf)

“Kaveh Akbar is a radiant soul, a poet so agile and largehearted it comes as no surprise that his first leap into fiction is elegant, dizzying, playful. Martyr! is the best novel you’ll ever read about the joy of language, addiction, displacement, martyrdom, belonging, homesickness for people longed for but forever unknown, the way art as eruption of life gazes back into death, and the ecstasy that sometimes arrives—like grace—when we find ourselves teetering on the knife-edge of despair.”
–Lauren Groff

Yvette Christiansë, Unconfessed
(Other Press)

“Christiansë’s novel isn’t just a stunningly intimate, heart-wrenching history of slave life in Africa. Her protagonist’s furious yearning for freedom (‘Wishes are sometimes just stories that have nowhere to go’) becomes a haunting meditation on love, loss and the stories we choose to tell in order to survive. Gorgeous and tragic, Unconfessed ultimately reveals a confession almost too terrible to bear and impossible to forget.”
–People

C.D. Rose, Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea
(Melville House)

“A book [of literary fables] that belongs on the same shelf as Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, Nabokov’s Pale Fire, and several works by Zoran Zivkovic, Stanislaw Lem and David Markson.”
–The Washington Post

Adam Shatz, The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon
(FSG)

“[A] perceptive biography….Elucidating the ideas and figures that animated Fanon’s thinking…the nuanced narrative skillfully illuminates how the disparate threads of Fanon’s life fit together….Shatz also provides discerning commentary on Fanon’s two masterworks….A striking appraisal of a towering thinker.”
–Publishers Weekly

Dan Stone, The Holocaust: An Unfinished Story
(Mariner)

“A holocaust history for our times, passionate as well as scholarly, and written with a sharp eye to the growing threat of the radical right in the present. Stone is not afraid to question the verities that have become attached to this most catastrophic epoch of modern history, and he challenges readers to confront its scope and enormity anew.”
–Jane Caplan

József Debreczeni, Cold Crematorium: Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz (trans. Paul Olchváry)
(St. Martin’s Press)

“Devastating in the simplicity of its language, Debreczeni’s book is of immense eyewitness historical value and one of the greatest pieces of lost Holocaust literature from behind the newly descending Iron Curtain.”
–Stephen L. Ossad

Keith Taylor, All the Time You Want: Selected Poems 1977 – 2017
(Dzanc Books)

“Publication of Keith Taylor’s All the Time You Want is an important event. Everyone who has been listening for years to this essential poetic voice has reason to rejoice anew. Taylor’s arguments in favor of the ordinary communal life…introduce us to a deep and quiet understanding of how life works….And in his poems about the natural world, he has created a space one enters gladl….Reading this book is like opening a door outward into a realm whose refreshment we find we are badly in need of.”
–Richard Tillinghast

Alexander Sammartino, Last Acts
(Scribner)

“What a taut, energetic, tender, and wholly original debut novel Alexander Sammartino has written. He knows something deep about the dark heart of America that somehow doesn’t stop him from writing about it with genuine, goofy love. Somewhere, Denis Johnson and Saul Bellow are smiling because their lineage—that of honest, highwire, virtuosic writing that summons up the world with all its charms and hazards, has found a worthy heir.”
–George Saunders

Christina Cooke, Broughtupsy
(Catapult)

“After her younger brother dies of sickle cell anemia, Akúa returns home to her native Jamaica with his ashes in hopes of reconnecting with their estranged older sister, discovering both love and violence along the way. Christina Cooke’s Broughtupsy is a searing, touching, and often funny meditation on family fault lines drawn by migration, homophobia, cultural difference, and sibling order, from a talented new writer among us.”
–Emily Raboteau

Laurie Frankel, Family Family
(Holt)

“Frankel’s back! Without giving away too much of her dizzying plot, which is supercharged with cliffhanger chapter endings and parallel reveals, the novel is dedicated to the premise that not every adoption story is one of trauma—along the way we will enjoy many fine young characters (Kevin Wilson fans who haven’t yet tried Frankel should) and classic Frankelisms….Full of warmth, humor, and sound advice.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Lee Gutkind, The Fine Art of Literary Fist-Fighting: How a Bunch of Rabble-Rousers, Outsiders, and Ne’er-Do-Wells Concocted Creative Nonfiction
(Yale University Press)

“he Fine Art of Literary Fist-Fighting offers an insightful overview of the recent history of creative nonfiction and the struggles that early practitioners faced in legitimizing the genre. This is a must-read for all writers.”
–Jennifer Anderson

Jacqueline Alnes, The Fruit Cure: The Story of Extreme Wellness Turned Sour
(Melville House)

“Like an episode of Maintenance Phase meets the essay collection The Empathy Exams, The Fruit Cure brings both rigorous reporting and fearless self-examination to bear on questions far beyond health, athletics, wellness, and food. What Alnes is interested in here is nothing less than the mysterious relationship between our thinking minds and our physical selves and the essential joyful horror that is having a human body.”
–Emma Copley Eisenberg

Kate Kennedy, One in a Millennial: On Friendship, Feelings, Fangirls, and Fitting In
(St. Martin’s Press)

“A perceptive personal meditation on the late 1990s and early 2000s pop culture that shaped her childhood….Kennedy provides memoir by way of cultural commentary, cleverly using her hybrid approach to highlight the ways in which trends and media popular during one’s formative years profoundly influence one’s identity. Told with wit and candor, this will strike a chord with Gen Yers.”
–Publishers Weekly

Balsam Karam, The Singularity
(Feminist Press)

“The Singularity by Balsam Karam is a novel about loss and longing–a mother who misses her child, children who miss their mother, and all of those who miss their country as they try to feel the new earth in their new land. A deeply moving work of fiction from a true voice of Scandinavia.”
–Shahrnush Parsipur,

Daisy Goodwin, Diva
(St. Martin’s Press)

“Daisy Goodwin’s richly imagined world makes Diva an irresistible page-turner. Blending high drama with an artist’s eye for detail, Goodwin breathes life into [Maria Callas,] one of the greatest and most tragic stars of the twentieth century. Whether you’re an opera aficionado or simply love an epic tale of love and ambition, Diva is a pure delight.”
–Amanda Foreman

Crystal Hefner, Only Say Good Things: Surviving Playboy and Finding Myself
(Grand Central Publishing)

“[Hefner’s] frank memoir scratches some of the glitter off Playboy’s notorious legacy of sexual freedom, luxury, and excess. An illuminating tell-all.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Zachary Pace, I Sing to Use the Waiting: A Collection of Essays about the Women Singers Who’ve Made Me Who I Am
(Two Dollar Radio)

“Zachary Pace’s I Sing to Use the Waiting is an exhilarating mix, part memoir, part examination of queer identity, part investigation into corporate heteronormativity and the internalized homophobia it produces in children and others who are still growing into who they are–and so much more, all of it approached via the lenses of the singers (and their lives) whom Pace encountered at pivotal moments in their own growing up….[A] beautifully provocative, smart, and tender book indeed.”
–Carl Phillips

Brian Klaas, Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters
(Scribner)

“Fluke is the intellectual equivalent of a slap across the face….Klaas’s beautifully written application of chaos theory to human experience won’t just shift your paradigm, it’ll detonate it.”
–Jonathan Gottschall

Benjamin Herold, Disillusioned: Five Families and the Unraveling of America’s Suburbs
(Penguin Press)

“Disillusioned breaks open the quiet racial injustice eating away at the heart of American suburbs. Shattering the myth of upward class mobility through meritocracy, Disillusioned shows us how white supremacy disenfranchises POCs even as they fulfill the requirements of the American suburban middle class dream—and how even…the intended beneficiaries of that dream…are starting to wonder if it’s a dream they can still afford to believe in. A necessary read for everyone in an American suburb today.”
–Michael Eric Dyson

Brian Allen Carter, Bad Foundations
(Clash Books)

“Bad Foundations by Brian Allen Carr is a raw and ferocious journey into the heart of the working class. It bleeds desperation and devours hope. Brian Carr is a blue-collar Raymond Carver, a Midwest Philip Roth who opens the pulsating wound that is the myth of the American Dream.”
–S. A. Cosby

Tanja Maljartschuk, Forgottenness (trans. Zenia Tompkins)
(Liveright)

“It’s no coincidence that time and memory are the big topic today, feeding off the anxieties of the world. [The Ukrainian writer] Tanja Maljartschuk’s novel is about the giant blue whale of time swallowing everything living on its way. What she is interested in is not even disappearance but tracelessness. Both personal and political, this book rages against time and oblivion as all true literature does.”
–Georgi Gospodinov

Antonia Hylton, Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum
(Legacy Lit)

“Antonia Hylton expertly weaves together a moving personal narrative, in-depth reporting, and illuminating archival research to produce a book that left me breathless. Madness is a haunting and revelatory examination of the way that America’s history of racism is deeply entangled in our mental health system. A profoundly important book that helps us make sense of an underexamined aspect of our country’s history.”
–Clint Smith

Uché Blackstock, Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine
(Viking)

“Uché Blackstock has made something abundantly clear: If you want to understand a society, look at its hospitals. Dr. Blackstock, one of the most insightful and impactful public voices in medicine, shares her remarkable personal story and her profound insight regarding race, gender, and health inequality….However, this book is so much more than a compelling memoir….Armed with concrete steps for addressing inequality, readers will be inspired to become better stewards of our communities and society.”
–Imani Perry

Jenn M. Jackson, Black Women Taught Us: An Intimate History of Black Feminism
(Random House)

“In their enlightening new book, Black Women Taught Us, Jenn M. Jackson celebrates the iconic Black feminists who built a movement, and also shares their own personal story of growing and learning with these brilliant canonical thinkers. It is intimate and essential reading, a beautiful bridge connecting ancestral and contemporary Black women activists.”
–Deesha Philyaw

David Reynolds, Mirrors of Greatness: Churchill and the Leaders Who Shaped Him
(Basic Books)

“Who inspired Churchill as he rose to the pinnacle of power? And how did he himself seek to mold how history would view him? No one is better placed to address these deceptively simple questions than David Reynolds, and he succeeds splendidly in this magnificent book. A fresh and captivating study of the nature and crux of political leadership.”
–Fredrik Logevall

Simon Shuster, The Showman: Inside the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky
(William Morrow)

“Shuster’s book is a narrative tour de force that takes us deep behind the scenes of the Ukrainian president’s bunker during the tensest days of Russia’s war against Ukraine. An astonishingly intimate portrayal of the former comedian turned wartime leader battling to save his nation–and Europe–that nevertheless keeps a doggedly honest and critical balance. This is the Zelensky book we’ve been waiting for.”
–Catherine Belton

Over 2,500 members of the KidLit publishing community have signed an impassioned open letter to President Biden, highlighting the disproportionately large toll Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has taken on the children of the region, and calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.

Over 2,500 people have signed the #KidLit4Ceasefire letter to @POTUS !!!

Join the 883 authors, 197 illustrators, 32 agents, 61 editors, 40 librarians, 85 teachers, 35 reviewers, 168 publishing talent, and 821 readers in calling for an immediate #CeasefireNOW https://t.co/Pw3baNipCZ pic.twitter.com/QXZDNOtbY6

— Sandra Proudman (PREORDER RELIT!) (@SandraProudman) January 22, 2024

As well as a forceful plea for an end to the bloodshed, the KidLit4Ceasefire letter serves as a stark accounting of the myriad horrors suffered by the children of Gaza since October 7:

Dear President Biden,

We’ve come together as children’s authors, illustrators, agents, editors, and other publishing professionals across the U.S. and beyond who have witnessed the indiscriminate bombing and ground invasions of Gaza by Israeli forces over the last 100+ days. These attacks have resulted in more than 31,000 Palestinians killed. 12,000 of these victims are children of a median reported age of five years old. Thousands more Palestinian children still remain buried in rubble and are unaccounted for. This is an impossible number to comprehend for anyone who honors the sanctity of life.

It is estimated that Israeli forces have destroyed 70% of homes and displaced 85% of the population in Gaza. Approximately one million children are without shelter, food, and safety as a result of Israel’s military dropping over 65,000 tons of bombs in Gaza, targeting civilian homes, hospitals, holy places, and educational facilities. The U.S. government has provided 15,000 bombs to Israel, along with $3.8 billion a year in military funding paid with our tax dollars.

Thousands of Palestinian children have been permanently disfigured, with over 1,000 suffering the amputation of one or more limbs, in an area half the size of Austin. It is estimated that 10 more children undergo amputations without anesthesia with every passing day. In addition, Israeli forces have used white phosphorus, an internationally banned chemical weapon, to inflict burns so severe that doctors have not been able to treat them properly given the scarcity of medicine under the Israeli blockade on Gaza. As a group of Palestinian kids shared in their own press conference held outside Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Nov. 7, 2023, “The occupation is starving us. We don’t find water, food, and we drink from the unusable water. We come now to shout and invite you to protect us … We want to live as the other children live.” It is likely that at least some of these children pleading for their lives have been killed in the attacks since, as the Israeli military kills a Palestinian child every 10 minutes.

…

As children’s publishing professionals, we create our work for the sake of all the children in the world—without exception. Our collective conscience compels us to call for our leaders to protect the most vulnerable and precious members of our global society. We oppose Israel’s mass killings, with the vastly documented intent to destroy all Palestinian people.

…

You can read the entire letter, and add your name to the list of signatories, here.

Names will be added to the letter until EOD January 28, after which point it will be sent to President Biden as well as select members of Congress and media outlets.

On Sunday, the Danish monarch, Queen Margrethe, abdicated her throne after 52 years (which makes her the longest-reigning monarch in Danish history), in favor of her son, Frederik X.

Monday was the new king’s first formal day on the job (he visited Parliament), but it wasn’t until today, his third day as king, that he got around to publishing a book. What restraint! It’s called Kongeord (The King’s Word) and according to the BBC it “promises Frederik’s thoughts on topics including Denmark’s place in the world and his relationship with his wife, Queen Mary.”

On the latter subject, the book includes this bit: “I have learned a lot from having a wife who, from time to time, reminds me that of course I am not always right, and that my words are not automatically believed, just because I am a man in the house.” Well…good.

The book, which runs about 110 pages, was written with Jens Andersen, who published a 2017 biography of Frederik’s 2017 biography, and is reportedly based on interviews conducted over the last eighteen months.

It’s safe to say that we were awash in adaptations of The Great Gatsby even before the copyright expired at the end of 2020—from opera to ballet to stage to film to video games to radio, not to mention television and er, film. But since then, the re-envisionings (or at least the announcements thereof) have come in a deluge, as we are, shall we say, borne back ceaselessly into the past, with a prequel, a graphic novel, an animated feature, a “diverse, inclusive” miniseries, a fanfic written by a college class (and then optioned for film), a Florence Welch musical, and also a totally different musical, which producers have announced is coming to Broadway this spring, starring Jeremy Jordan as Gatsby and Eva Noblezada as Daisy.

“The lavish production will join a spring Broadway season packed with new musicals at a moment when many industry leaders are concerned that there do not seem to be enough patrons to keep most of the shows afloat,” writes Michael Paulson in The New York Times. But the show, which premiered at the Paper Mill Playhouse last fall, was the highest grossing show in the venue’s history. Which at least suggests that—despite widespread grumbling about our current state of global IP purgatory and my strong personal feeling that the answer to the question posed by this headline is no, after all the novel is unfortunately perfect and you almost certainly have a copy in your house already—people are still interested in new versions of Fitzgerald’s classic American story. Maybe it will . . . save Broadway?

So we beat on, etc.

In just over 100 days of near-unrelenting bombardment and inescapable terror, in a campaign that has claimed the lives of over 24,000 people, Israel has killed more than 120 writers, poets, and journalists.

Many of these men and women were slain in targeted airstrikes, or shot by IDF snipers while wearing press insignia. Some were killed in their homes, alongside their parents and siblings, their children and grandchildren.

Haba Abu Nada (poet and novelist), Hamzah Al-Dahdouh (journalist), Refaat Alareer (poet and professor), Heba al-Abdallah (journalist), Inas al-Saqa (playwright), Mohammad Al-Salhi (photojournalist), Saleem Al-Naffar (poet), Muhammed Abu Hweidy (journalist), Nour al-Din Hajjaj (novelist and playwright), Belal Jadallah (journalist), Omar Abu Shaweesh (poet and novelist), Ala Atallah (journalist)—these are just a few names on a list that grows longer with every passing day.

No conflict in modern history has inflicted such a heavy toll on the literary and journalistic communities of a nation, and yet so many prominent Western journalists and writers have remained silent as their peers in Gaza are systematically slaughtered.

The murdered writers and journalists of Gaza deserve to have their lives, and their work, remembered, especially by those of us whose governments have funded, armed, and provided unconditional diplomatic cover to their killers. Thankfully, despite the bleak and dispiriting political landscape, there are institutions and individuals in this country committed to that idea.

Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG)—an ad hoc coalition of writers, editors, and other culture workers “committed to solidarity and the horizon of liberation for the Palestinian people”—has been instrumental in building the resistance movement to Israel’s war on Gaza among writers and journalists here in the U.S. In October, the group published a powerful statement of solidarity that has so far been signed by over 10,000 writers and culture workers. In the weeks since, they have organized numerous protests and demonstrations, including a vigil for Palestinian journalists on the steps of the New York Public Library last month.

On January 18 in Los Angeles and January 24 in New York City, WAWOG will stage candlelight vigils “in memory of all the writers, poets, and journalists killed in the ongoing genocide in Palestine.”

The vigils will feature readings from the work of Gaza’s martyred writers, poets, and journalists. Attendees are being encouraged to bring flowers, candles, and kuffiyehs to honor the dead.

The LA vigil will be held at Our Lady of the Lake at Echo Park Lake at 6:30 PM PST on Jan 18
The New York vigil will be held in Washington Square Park at 6PM EST on Jan 24

Update: The New York vigil, originally scheduled for January 18, will now take place on January 24 due to expected inclement weather.

It’s the middle of January already, and, depending where you are, that can mean a lot of things: snowstorms (or yearning for snow if you’re in certain Northeast cities), a chill in otherwise balmy temperatures, thoughts of fleeing to somewhere with those balmy temperatures. No matter which of these describes you, they all go better with a book in hand, and I’ve got twenty-three new ones to recommend below.

You’ll find new Palestinian fiction from Susan Muaddi Darraj and a queer Jewish novel from Temim Fruchter; nonfiction about polyamory and intimacy after brain injuries; life and love lessons from Hannah Arendt; a look behind the curtain at all things Mean Girls; a history of witchcraft in thirteen witch trials; poetry from Caroline Harper New, Irma Peneda, and Liliane Giraudon; and much, much.

I hope you’ll curl up this January, wherever you may be, with one (or ideally many) of these exciting new options.

*

Susan Muaddi Darraj, Behind You Is the Sea
(Harpervia)

“[Behind You Is the Sea] fearlessly confronts stereotypes about Palestinian culture, weaving a remarkable portrait of life’s intricate moments….This is a story that challenges perceptions, offering a heartfelt glimpse into the interior lives of those who call this community home. A must read novel with unforgettable characters and an unwavering, fresh voice—I couldn’t put it down until the very last page! Darraj delivers an instant, necessary, and authentic classic to the cannon of Arab-American literature.”
–Etaf Rum

Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland
(FSG)

“In Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino’s Adina (maybe an alien, maybe a troubled human, always both) takes the tired old world and describes it so perfectly that we see it as if for the first time. Sparkling and alive, funny and magnificently true, this book woke me up. It made me weep with appreciation for the hard, strange, small-but-huge lives we lead. It made me fall back in love with this universe.”
–Ramona Ausubel

Temim Fruchter, City of Laughter
(Grove Press)

“A wondrous intergenerational story of queerness and Jewish folklore….Fruchter draws on folk tales both real and imagined to create a tender and unforgettable portrait of Jewish culture, faith, and community. This dazzling and hopeful novel is not to be missed.”
–Publishers Weekly

Molly Roden Winter, More: A Memoir of Open Marriage
(Doubleday)

“An intimate portrait of a woman on an earnest search to reclaim her passion and her body from the quotidian obligations of her various roles. This story is a balm for those with unmet yearnings and a triumph for those who have made their own first steps toward getting more out of life.”
–Christie Tate

Lyndsey Stonebridge, We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience
(Hogarth Press)

“In this extraordinary book, Lyndsey Stonebridge details the life and thought of Hannah Arendt in ways that speak to our troublesome times. We get a sense of the expansiveness of Arendt’s thought—her vulnerabilities and her complexity—with stories and intimate details that reveal Stonebridge’s love of her. Beautifully written, this is biography at its best.”
–Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.

Matthew R. Morris, Black Boys Like Me: Confrontations with Race, Identity, and Belonging
(Viking)

“Black Boys Like Me is a wonder. It manages to evoke the realness of growing up Black and male in Toronto while stoking a profound discussion of the ways in which we Black boys ‘perform’ our Blackness to navigate an often hostile society. It is by turns insightful, revealing, and funny, but its greatest strength is that it is always real—authentic, brave, and vulnerable….This is a book with powerful ramifications that go beyond race and masculinity and touch the humanity of all our becomings.”
–Antonio Michael Downing

Caroline Harper New, A History of Half-Birds: Poems
(Milkweed Editions)

“A History of Half-Birds, an inventive and impressively wide-ranging collection, has me considering…the connections between…poetry and science…[and] between history and myth, precision and ambiguity, the known and the unknown. In the Anthropocene, we may be tempted to ask what poetry can do for us when what we need are tools for survival. I’d argue that these poems are just that—expertly crafted, satisfying to hold and behold, and sharp enough to dissect what needs dissecting.”
–Maggie Smith

Irma Pineda, Nostalgia Doesn’t Flow Away Like Riverwater (trans. Wendy Call)
(Deep Vellum)

“Poetry is what cannot be silenced. Irma Pineda’s extraordinary collection—in resonant Isthmus Zapotec and Spanish, lucidly translated into precise English by Wendy Call—surveys the echoes of a universal journey across space, time, and language. We are in the hands of a consummate poet through whose vision an entire civilization comes alive. Her protagonists follow the path of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Neruda. An artistic triumph!”
–Ilan Stavans

Liliane Giraudon, Love Is Colder Than the Lake (trans. Sarah Riggs and Lindsay Turner)
(Nightboat Books)

“For half a century, Giraudon’s incisive brilliance has driven French poetry forward. Here, she investigates the work of art in an age of global deperdition. Banalities stumble into horror. Text, collage, and film bottom out into their constitutive unknowns. And ghosts including Fassbinder, Niedecker, and Maier compel us to look the Real in the eye. Riggs and Turner match Giraudon’s pace and polyphony and affirm that poetry is the mode of perception we need now.”
–Teresa Villa-Ignacio

Oscar Hijuelos, Beautiful Maria of My Soul (foreword by Lori Marie Carlson-Hijuelos)
(Grand Central Publishing)

“An affecting portrait of broken dreams and regret, hope and despair, rediscovery and renewal, Beautiful María ties up the loose ends of a love story that died with Nestor in The Mambo Kings, but is still very much alive in the heart and soul of his song, Beautiful María.”
––Bookpage

Amina Gautier, The Best That You Can Do: Stories
(Soft Skull)

“Amina Gautier’s The Best That You Can Do adds even more luster to her award-winning artistry. Sharp emotional focus offsets the blur afflicting people who ‘wisp into memory’ and jump from Puerto Rico to Bed Stuy to Lisbon to Chicago. The threat to Black lives staggers the souls of characters—and of readers. ‘Tears on Tap’ is a masterpiece, and the touching final stories blend with kaleidoscopic power, where intense love can rupture by the next page.”
–Katherine Vaz

Abbott Kahler, Where You End
(Holt)

“Where You End is haunting, suspenseful and beautifully written—a modern-day gothic that explores the peculiar bond between twin sisters and the twisted power of cults; the mysteries of memory and the ineluctable pull of the past. It unnerves and beguiles in ways reminiscent of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks”—but it’s a true original.”
–Margaret Talbot

Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls (and Why We’re Still So Obsessed with It)
(Dey Street Books)

“Get in, loser. On Wednesdays, we read Jennifer Keishin Armstrong’s So Fetch, which tells the story of the making of Mean Girls, one of the last great big-screen comedies, while offering so much more. Touching on everything from Y2K-era misogyny to meme culture to the long tail of Mean Girls‘ impact, Armstrong’s book is funny, clear-eyed, full of unexpected insights and superb reporting, and a must for any comedy fan.”
–Saul Austerlitz

Marion Gibson, Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials
(Scribner)

“These stories of witchcraft, true and vividly told, demonstrate the potent reality of belief in evil and how in any era or place fear can be weaponised and marginal people, mostly women, labelled as wicked and dangerous. Together they comprise not just a history of witchcraft but a cautionary tale of the uncomfortably human habits of paranoia and persecution.”
–Malcolm Gaskill

Annie Liontas, Sex with a Brain Injury: On Concussion and Recovery
(Scribner)

“A riveting book about embodiment, pain, identity, and intimacy. Sex with a Brain Injury rings with the honesty, humor, and intelligence of all my favorite books and is among the best examples of ethical personal writing that I’ve ever encountered. Annie Liontas is a treasure and this book is a stunning achievement.”
–Melissa Febos

Monika Helfer, Library for the War-Wounded
(Bloomsbury)

“Beautifully rendered in English by Davidson, Helfer’s novel stirringly blurs the line between memoir and fiction, concluding with painful honesty, confiding her doubts about how well she knew her father. Fans of family sagas will appreciate Helfer’s multifaceted tribute to the father who inspired her love of reading.”
–Booklist

Tina Nguyen, The Maga Diaries: My Surreal Adventures Inside the Right-Wing (and How I Got Out)
(Atria / One Signal)

“Delightfully witty, self-deprecating, and deeply perceptive, Tina Nguyen provides an expertly guided tour through the dark corners of the young far right movement that has shaped much of the last decade of American politics. The MAGA Diaries is a necessary read for anyone hoping to understand the insanity that we’ve spent the last decade living through, the depravity of many of the characters who’ve thrust themselves upon our politics, and the…stakes of our coming presidential contest.”
–Wesley Lowery

Michele Norris, Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity
(Simon & Schuster)

“When ordinary people, talk, extraordinary truths are revealed. Michele Norris has an extraordinary gift – she is able to coax people into revealing their profound beliefs about race. This book is a safe space where difficult conversations become healing exchanges.”
–Tayari Jones

Kyle Chayka, Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture
(Doubleday)

“Necessary reading for anyone who has wondered just how, in expanding our world, the internet has ended up emptying our experience of it. Chayka’s wide-ranging anatomy of algorithmic curation—which, he argues, is increasingly the cultural substitute for human choice itself—makes a bracing case not only for creativity exercised beyond the confines of digital constriction, but also against the dehumanizing sameness algorithms have introduced into our societies and lives. Timely, erudite, important.”
–Ayad Akhtar

Manjula Martin, The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History
(Pantheon)

“The Last Fire Season is a gorgeous, soulfully written, intricately layered meditation on a region, a state, a body and a planet. Manjula Martin brings deep research, love, and attention to her exploration of northern California in polycrisis and weaves her findings with profound personal reflections on chronic pain and bodily harm. This is a work of memoir, ecology, physiology, political economy, horticulture, and history, and a profoundly moving work about humanity and home.”
–Lydia Kiesling

Rebecca Boyle, Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are
(Random House)

“An excellent exploration of how the moon has shaped life on Earth….[Rebecca] Boyle’s dexterous blend of science and cultural history is elevated by her spry prose. This illuminates.”
–Publishers Weekly

Benjamin Breen, Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science
(Grand Central Publishing)

“Historian Breen…blends fleet-footed biography with an accessible analysis of mid-twentieth-century research into ‘psychedelic’ experiences as pioneered by anthropologist Margaret Mead, her husband and fellow anthropologist Gregory Bateson, and the Macy Foundation, a scientific group that became a CIA clearinghouse during the Cold War….Breen artfully weaves Mead’s biography with fascinating details….The result is a riveting exploration of a shadowy episode in twentieth-century history.”
–Publishers Weekly

Robert Cwiklik, Sheridan’s Secret Mission: How the South Won the War After the Civil War
(Harper)

“In Sheridan’s Secret Mission Robert Cwiklik describes in often chilling detail how the South may have lost the Civil War, but it won the next one, a guerrilla war to derail Reconstruction and hold blacks back another hundred years. It’s as enlightening as it is appalling.”
–John Strausbaugh