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Many remember the 1980s as the era of Ronald Reagan, a conservative decade populated by preppies and yuppies dancing to a soundtrack of electronic synth pop music. However, the decade also produced some of the most creative works of punk culture, from the music of bands like the Minutemen and the Dead Kennedys to avant-garde visual arts, literature, poetry, and film. Throughout We’re Not Here to Entertain, Kevin Mattson puts the punk movement into a wider context, locating it in a culture war that pitted a blossoming punk scene against the new president.
Welcome to the end of August! We can’t know what the future holds, but we CAN know what new books are coming out. Here’s a select few of some A+ new releases from the nonfiction world:
Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary, Resilient, Disabled Body by Rebekah Taussig. It’s a memoir in essays! Taussig created the Instagram account @sitting_pretty, which narrates life from “my ordinary, resilient disabled body.” In her memoir, she looks at the disability images she grew up with (Forrest Gump, Quasimodo, Helen Keller), and instead wanted stories that “allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling.” Make the thing you want to be out there in the world! That’s this book.
Rising Heart by Aminata Conteh-Biger, with Juliet Rieden. As a child in Sierra Leone, Conteh-Biger was kidnapped, but eventually returned. Still in danger, as a teenager, she was sent on her own to Australia. After a traumatic childbirth experience, she looked at the dangers of childbirth in Sierra Leone, where maternal fatalities are 200x more likely than in Australia. She then set up the Aminata Maternal Foundation, which was established to improve maternal mortality outcomes for women and babies in Sierra Leone.
Enchanting Embroidery Designs: Whimsical Animal and Plant Motifs to Stitch by MiW Morita. Crafts! Whimsical ones! If you’re into embroidery, or wanting to get into it, Morita teaches you how to make microbes, trees, sheep, and fun animals.
His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope by Jon Meacham. A timely biography of John Lewis, with an afterword by him included. Pulitzer Prize–winning Meacham tells the story of Lewis’s long involvement with nonviolent protest, his teachers, his youthful hope to become a minister, and his lifelong commitment to standing up for the powerless. Lewis and others led the Selma March in 1965, but the work he did stretched long before and long, long after.
Superman’s Not Coming: Our National Water Crisis and What We the People Can Do About It by Erin Brokovich. The average American uses nearly one hundred gallons of water each day, for everything from drinking to cooking to bathing. In classic Brokovich style, she reports on unreported cancer clusters, of plastic pollutants in our tap water, and what we can do to hold governments and corporations accountable. In a time when everything seems out of control, she offers small steps that can lead to big change.
That’s it for this week! You can find me on social media @itsalicetime and co-hosting the nonfiction For Real podcast with Kim here at Book Riot. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.