Author: Alice Burton

We’ve had all sorts of Ruth Bader Ginsburg reading lists as of late, so let’s look at Supreme Court nonfiction reads:

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin. This came out in 2008 (wow, remember 2008?) and looks at the Supreme Court from Reagan and on, covering not only the Court itself and how it works, but the justices themselves. This includes Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman nominated and confirmed, as well as a frequent swing-voter for the Court, who retired in 2006. Get a view of the inner workings of the Court, as well as a snapshot from the Bush years.

My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Well we have to have at least one RBG book. Coming out as recently as 2016, this isn’t so much a straight-up memoir as a collection of RBG’s writings. Her authorized biographers introduce each chapter and add some biographical context and quotes from some of the many interviews they conducted with Justice Ginsburg. Well-known for her intellect and humor, this was a woman whose words will live on long after her passing.

My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor. Justice Sotomayor was the first Hispanic and third woman appointed to the Supreme Court. If you’re looking for a memoir, this is the memoir-iest of the bunch. She talks about growing up in the Bronx, deciding to become a lawyer, and how her career led her to the highest court in the country. She’s been on the Court now for over ten years, which, honestly, I still think of her (and Kagan!), as “new,” which is just false. Anyway. Memoir!

Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America by Wil Haygood. We don’t have a lot of Thurgood Marshall references nowadays, at least in pop culture, but he was the first Black Supreme Court Justice, serving from 1967 to 1991. He “brought down the separate-but-equal doctrine, integrated schools, and not only fought for human rights and human dignity but also made them impossible to deny in the courts and in the streets.” Haygood frames his narrative around Marshall’s nomination process, and through it, tells the story of his life. We should all probably talk more about Thurgood Marshall.

As always, 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.

Welcome to your new release nonfiction Wednesday! Got some great new picks for you here, let’s check ’em out:

Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen. Man. This book rings true. Petersen argues “that burnout is a definitional condition for the millennial generation, born out of distrust in the institutions that have failed us, the unrealistic expectations of the modern workplace, and a sharp uptick in anxiety and hopelessness exacerbated by the constant pressure to “perform” our lives online.” She shows how burnout affects the way we work, parent, and socialize. Want to put that exhausted feeling into words? Here it is.

God-Level Knowledge Darts: Life Lessons from the Bronx by Desus & Mero. Authors Desus Nice and The Kid Mero are comedians who co-host the Showtime show Desus & Mero and the podcast Bodega Boys. Here they answer the important questions of life, such as “How do I talk to my kids about drugs if I do them, too? What are the ethics of ghosting in a relationship? How do I bet on sports? How should I behave in jail? How much is too much to spend on sneakers?” Etc. Jia Tolentino thinks they’re hilarious. So does Malcolm Gladwell! There’s a pair for you.

Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery by Catherine Gildiner. How can someone overcome trauma? Therapist Gildiner has those stories. Here she recounts the stories of five patients’ struggles and paths to recovery. Each patient goes to therapy “to overcome an immediate challenge in their lives, but discover that the source of their suffering has been long buried.” Man, I love therapy.

Create Your Own Calm: A Journal for Quieting Anxiety by Meera Lee Patel. Are you possibly feeling anxious as of the last few months? Just maybe? Here is a way to help deal with that! It’s filled with exercises and spaces for you to write or draw things like what your anxiety feels like, as well as quotes from writers and thinkers to ruminate on. If there’s ever been a time to journal, now seems like it.

As always, 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.

Mysteries and crime! There are many books about them and here, I am highlighting a select five. Happy Friday, here are your picks:

The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime by Judith Flanders. The detective fiction of today owes a lot to the Victorian era. Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, etc. popularized the detective novel, and the nineteenth century’s weirdness really leaned into sensationalizing murder (much like today! #truecrime). This books talks about all these beginnings and recounts the stories of some of the most infamous crimes of that era in Great Britain.

The Golden Thread: The Cold War and the Mysterious Death of Dag Hammarskjöld by Ravi Somaiya. If you were not around yet in the 1960s, here’s the center of this story: On Sept. 17, 1961, Dag Hammarskjöld boarded a Douglas DC6 propeller plane on the sweltering tarmac of the airport in Leopoldville, the capital of the Congo. Hours later, he would be found dead in an African jungle with an Ace of Spades tucked in his collar. Do you need more info than that to read this book? Probably not.

Forensics: What Bugs, Burns, Prints, DNA and More Tell Us About Crime by Val McDermid. As someone who watches a whole lot of Forensic Files, I was relieved to see this came out as recently as 2014, as various branches of forensic science have basically been declared a lot of bunk over the years. Crime writer McDermid delves into the world of forensics and “discovers how maggots collected from a corpse can help determine one’s time of death; how a DNA trace a millionth the size of a grain of salt can be used to convict a killer; and how a team of young Argentine scientists led by a maverick American anthropologist were able to uncover the victims of a genocide.”

A Massacre in Mexico: The True Story Behind the Missing 43 Students by Anabel Hernández. In September, 2014, 43 male students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College went missing in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico (about a three hour drive south of Mexico City). In the wake of the students’ disappearances, protestors in Mexico took up the slogan “Fue el estado”–“It was the state.” Author Hernández backs this up with her research, which points to a massive governmental cover-up.

Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident by Donnie Eichar. If you’re familiar with the Dyatlov Pass Incident, you know it was deeply weird. In 1959, a group of nine experienced hikers in the Russian Ural Mountains died mysteriously on an elevation known as Dead Mountain. Incidents such as “unexplained violent injuries, signs that they cut open and fled the tent without proper clothing or shoes, a strange final photograph taken by one of the hikers, and elevated levels of radiation found on some of their clothes—have led to decades of speculation over what really happened.” Check this out to learn more.

Have a truly amazing weekend! As always, 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.

Welcome to new release nonfiction highlights, including home organization, weird animals, and JUSTICE.

The Home Edit Life: The No-Guilt Guide to Owning What You Want and Organizing Everything by Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin. YES, these are the people from that Netflix show. Most of us are stuck at home, so why not figure out a system that works for you. That seems to be this book’s organizational philosophy, and it focuses on things from your office space and holiday storage to luggage and pet supplies. Maybe you want to organize your things in rainbow-fashion like this book cover, I don’t know your life.

Great Adaptations: Star-Nosed Moles, Electric Eels, and Other Tales of Evolution’s Mysteries Solved by Kenneth Catania. Have you SEEN a star-nosed mole? It’s wild. Their nose has 22 “tendrils”! Like an alien, but a mole. Anyway, this book looks at that weird animal and others like it, like how eels use electricity to control other animals, and why emerald jewel wasps make zombies out of cockroaches. If you’d like to distract yourself from 2020 with strange things in nature and how they work, here y’go.

Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America by Maria Hinojosa. Recommended by Kim on For Real! Hinojosa is a journalist and the anchor of NPR’s Latino USA. In her memoir, she “shares her intimate experience growing up Mexican American on the south side of Chicago and documenting the existential wasteland of immigration detention camps for news outlets that often challenged her work.” Check this out, and check out Latino USA, the longest running Latino-focused program on U.S. public media, having started in 1993.

A Knock at Midnight: A Story of Hope, Justice, and Freedom by Brittany K. Barnett. Are you interested in the reformation of the criminal justice system? So is Brittany K. Barnett! Barnett is an attorney committed to social impact investing. While still a law student, she became deeply involved in freeing a woman whose story she identified with and who she saw as unjustly punished. In her day job, she “moved billion-dollar deals, and by night she worked pro bono to free clients in near-hopeless legal battles.” Her book is about what it takes to bring hope and justice to a system built to resist them both.

As always, 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.

Happy Friday! Let’s talk about spaaaaaaace.

Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach. How do you negotiate daily life without gravity? What happens when you throw up? How do you do hygiene in space? Mary Roach is curious as ever, but this time, about space, and she’s here to ask all the semi-awkward questions you might be too polite to ask astronauts should you ever encounter them. Pick this up if you’ve got some real specific, real practical questions about a potential trip to Mars.

Hidden Figures by Margo Lee Shetterly. Sure, people go to space, but what about the MATH. If you’re unfamiliar with the stellar (ha!) movie based on this book, they’re both about the Black women mathematicians who worked at NASA during the Space Race of the 1950s and ’60s (although the book starts in the ’30s) and did things like calculate space shuttle trajectories. Fun fact: Shetterly’s father was a research scientist at NASA and worked with some of the women she writes about here.

The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars by Dava Sobel. It’s the 19th century. Vassar, Wellesley, and other women’s colleges have sprung into being. And their graduates begin “studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates.” This means that Harvard’s half a million plates could be used to discover things like what stars are made of and how you measure the distance between stars.

Asteroid Hunters by Carrie Nugent. It’s that classic “what happens if an asteroid is headed towards earth” problem. Or it WAS, but scientists now think we have a solution. And Carrie Nugent is here to walk you through it. And what asteroids are! And how they work. And who the only person in U.S. history is to have been hit by an asteroid (can you IMAGINE?). This is a less-than-200-page quick dive into asteroids, why they’re cool, and how we can stop them from hitting us.

The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality and Our Destiny Beyond Earth by Michio Kaku. Ok, so we’ve been to the moon, but what about in the FUTURE. Futurist Kaku “shows us how science fiction is becoming reality: mind-boggling developments in robotics, nanotechnology, and biotechnology could enable us to build habitable cities on Mars; nearby stars might be reached by microscopic spaceships sailing through space on laser beams; and technology might one day allow us to transcend our physical bodies entirely.” Futurism!

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.

September releaseeees! What a time. So many books coming out; better get crackin’ with that reading. Start hoarding books up for winter like some very literary squirrels.

Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine. If you’ve read Rankine’s Citizen, you’re familiar with the poet’s juxtaposition of essays, images, and poetry to create a powerful message. In her newest book (out now!), she asks you to look at “what it takes to stay in the room together, even and especially in breaching the silence, guilt, and violence that follow direct addresses of whiteness.” An extremely timely new release from an extremely acclaimed author.

Good Blood: A Doctor, a Donor, and the Incredible Breakthrough that Saved Millions of Babies by Julian Guthrie. This is “a tale of discovery and invention, the progress and pitfalls of medicine, and the everyday heroics that fundamentally changed the health of women and babies.” It centers around Rh disease, a type of anemia that impacts pregnant women and fetuses. The doctor, John Gorman, made “one of the most important medical discoveries of our generation” with the help of a single donor.

Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All by Martha S. Jones. It’s finally here!! I have recommended this book I don’t know how many times on For Real, in suffragist book lists, and here. Jones is “Professor of History at The Johns Hopkins University” and here offers the story of Black women’s fight for the vote, going from the beginning of the nation to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The fight didn’t end in 1920! And you can read about it here.

What Can I Do?: My Path from Climate Despair to Action by Jane Fonda. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by climate change news. So what does this have to do with Jane Fonda? She got overwhelmed by climate change news and decided to find out what she could do. And she passes it on! She offers protest tools “so that everyone can work to combat the climate crisis,” and talks about her history as an activist. I’m early into reading this one, but she credits a LOT of other people and I’m very impressed with how she handles not making it all about her.

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.

With history, you usually want to drill down a bit, subject-wise, since, let’s admit it, it’s a pretty vast subject. But it’s Friday! There are no rules! Let’s look at some history from across the vast sweep of time and space. Exciting.

From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture by Koritha Mitchell. I follow Prof. Mitchell on Twitter and this book just came out. Love an academic press book. “Instead of the respectability and safety granted white homemakers, black women endure pejorative labels, racist governmental policies, attacks on their citizenship, and aggression meant to keep them in ‘their place.’ This looks at “the links between African American women’s homemaking and citizenship in history and across literature.” Yesss. More! academic! books! about! Black! history! not! by! white people!

Class War, USA: Dispatches from Workers’ Struggles in American History by Brandon Weber. Want to know about Black Wall Street in Tulsa? The Ludlow miners’ strike? How we got the eight-hour work day? This is a series of essays focusing on ordinary people making a difference in labor history, and how those changes still impact us today. It’s under 200 pages, so if you’re looking to dip your toe into some workers’ rights knowledge, this is a good option.

Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 by Stephen Puleo. In 1919, as if the world hadn’t been dealing with enough (lots of 2020 vibes about 1914-1919), a 50-foot-tall steel tank filled with 2.3 million gallons of molasses broke open and flooded the streets of Boston, killing more than twenty people. It’s a really weird chapter of history, and this is the only adult nonfiction book to cover it.

Bolivar: American Liberator by Marie Arana. Who DOESN’T want to learn more about Simón Bolívar? He freed SIX countries from Spanish colonial rule and he died before age fifty. He was a “fearless general, brilliant strategist, consummate diplomat, dedicated abolitionist, gifted writer, and flawed politician.” This biography is kind of giant, so I’m thinking perfect 2021 reading project? You’ve got to strategize that TBR now so you can start with a bang in January.

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.

Have you done the crafts you bought at the start of quarantine? Because I literally just started on mine. That tiny bookshop won’t build itself. I assume. But who has time for crafts when we’ve got these new BOOKS? Here are your new nonfiction releases for this week:

Mad and Bad: Real Heroines of the Regency by Bea Koch. If you’re at all into the Regency, you know about Byron, the Duke of Wellington, and so forth, but what about the women like “Dido Elizabeth Belle, whose mother was a slave but was raised by her white father’s family in England, Caroline Herschel, who acted as her brother’s assistant as he hunted the heavens for comets, and ended up discovering eight on her own, Anne Lister, who lived on her own terms with her common-law wife,” and more? If you’re interested in learning more about this fascinating period in English history, this acts as a primer on some of the notable women of the period.

The Art of Drag by Jake Hall, Sofie Birkin, Helen Li, Jasjyot Singh Hans. Drag is still in the middle of its prime in pop culture, but it’s been around for millennia. This book looks at its history (accompanied by some gorgeous illustrations) and covers everything from mime to Kabuki theatre to Stonewall and the New York ballroom scene. Wanted to learn why all the queens talk about Amanda Lepore? Why Lady Bunny and Wigstock are a thing? Here you go.

Who We’re Reading When We’re Reading Murakami by David Karashima. The publisher puts this succinctly: “Thirty years ago, when Haruki Murakami’s works were first being translated, they were part of a series of pocket-size English-learning guides released only in Japan. Today his books can be read in fifty languages and have won prizes and sold millions of copies globally. How did a loner destined for a niche domestic audience become one of the most famous writers alive?” Ever wondered that? Or wondering now that you’ve read that question? David Karashima is here to answer it.

You’re the Only One I’ve Told: Stories Behind Abortion by Dr. Meera Shah. This collection contains 17 true stories by people who had abortions, but faced barriers to accessing them. These stories span fifty years, from when Roe v. Wade was decided and abortion was no longer a backroom horror, to now, when people are faced with sometimes insurmountable financial or access barriers to what can be a life-saving procedure. Shah works to humanize abortion and combat the myths about it that persist to this day.

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.

Wow, we are almost 3/4 through 2020 and I haven’t done any kind of “here’s some great releases from the year!” email. Dang. I’m gonna focus on the first half of the year, but some later ones might sneak in. If you didn’t catch these the first time around, here’s your chance!

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker. I mention this because Kim, formerly of this newsletter and still of For Real, read it and LOVED it. It’s about a family with 12 children, half of whom were diagnosed with schizophrenia. “Their story—and samples of their DNA—would prove invaluable to quest to understand and hopefully cure schizophrenia.” This was also an Oprah’s Book Club pick, if that has any sway with you.

American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, and the Birth of American CSI by Kate Winkler Dawson. Not only is it true crime, but it is STILL everywhere on my #bookstagram wanderings. It’s the story of Edward Oscar Heinrich, the American Sherlock Holmes, a crime science investigator who worked in both the field and in the lab. One of his particularly Holmesian feats was finding literally dozens of clues from ONE pair of overalls left at a crime scene. Amazing.

Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla Saad. I can’t believe this only came out this year. Saad’s sold-out-this-summer book “challenges you to do the essential work of unpacking your biases, and helps white people take action and dismantle the privilege within themselves so that you can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of color.” This is all about being more aware, learning, and doing better.

Uncanny Valley: A Memoir by Anna Wiener. We’ve heard the male story of Silicon Valley for quite some time, so how about another perspective? Wiener moved from a New York job in book publishing (hello!) to tech in San Francisco. This highlights the time when “the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivaling Wall Street” and looks at its changing role from “self-appointed world savior to democracy-endangering liability.” It’s both nostalgia-inducing and relevant!

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall. It’s a story going back to at least the suffragists of the nineteenth century — middle and upper class white women in the women’s rights movement tend to ignore the needs of others as necessary to achieving equality. Or, as Kendall says, mainstream feminists “rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue.” I love the description of this book as “a ferocious clarion call to all would-be feminists to live out the true mandate of the movement in thought and in deed.”

There are a TON more great books that have come out this year, so I’ll try to do a few more of these in the months to come. If you’ve read any particular great 2020 nonfiction releases, let me know @itsalicetime. You can also find me co-hosting the nonfiction For Real podcast with Kim here at Book Riot every two weeks (subscribe!). Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.

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.