Category: True Story

Books on the History of Reproductive Rights

Post author By Kim Ukura
Post date May 12, 2022

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Hello and happy Friday, nonfiction friends. Like many of you, I am sure, I’m grappling with news from the Supreme Court, in which a leaked draft of an upcoming opinion suggests that the Court is preparing to strike down Roe v. Wade. I was also disappointed, but not surprised, by this week’s failed Senate vote to put abortion protection into law.

This is a huge and complicated issue that, I have to admit, I don’t know nearly as much about as I wish that I did. In that spirit, here are four books about abortion access and reproductive justice that I’ve added to my TBR:

When Abortion Was a Crime: Women, Medicine and Law in the United States by Leslie Reagan

This book, originally published in 1998, gives a comprehensive look at the history of abortion, examining the entire period in which abortion was illegal in the United States. It explores “how abortion was criminalized and policed” and how women sought care outside the law. A reissue in February 2022 includes a new preface looking at contemporary threats to abortion access. From what I can tell, this is a widely-regarded and comprehensive overview of the topic.

Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy Roberts

This book, also a bit on the older side, “exposed America’s systemic abuse of Black women’s bodies.” It begins all the way back with how slave owners exercised an economic stake in Black women’s fertility. It also covers forced (or coerced) sterilizations as recently as the 1970s, as well as how the reproductive needs of Black women have been excluded from mainstream political agendas. Again, this seems like a necessary and useful primer on this subject.

Life’s Work: A Moral Argument for Choice by Dr. Willie Parker

Dr. Willie Parker grew up in a fundamentalist Christian household in the South. A practicing obstetrician, Parker eventually quit his practice to focus exclusively on providing safe abortions for women who needed his help the most in his community. In this memoir, he shares both his experiences and the complex stories of women seeking access to reproductive care. At the same time, he makes a Christian case in support of reproductive rights and pushes back against many of the rules and regulations being placed on abortion access. This seems like an extremely useful perspective.

Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights by Katha Pollitt

In this book, feminist Katha Pollitt argues against abortion being presented as bad or agonizing, and against turning it, a normal medical procedure, into “something shameful and secretive.” Instead, she makes the case that it’s “a moral right and a social good.” I added this one to my list because I think it provides an important reframe of abortion as just one piece of a larger need for women to have access to safe, effective, and personal reproductive care no matter their circumstances.

If none of these seem like what you’re looking for, here are several other book lists I looked at while putting together my TBR:

Angry About Anti-Choice Legislation? Read These Books. [Book Riot]
#ShoutYourAbortion and 9 Other Nonfiction Books About Abortion [Book Riot]
25 Reproductive Rights Books Literally Everyone Should Read [Cosmopolitan]
Reproductive Justice: A Reading List [Black Women Radicals]
7 Books About Why We Need to Normalize Abortion [Electric Lit]

Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!

One Thing I Like

I don’t necessarily think of myself as someone who gossips… but I have to admit I do love feeling on the inside of groups and stories. In that spirit, I was delighted to discover the Normal Gossip podcast, hosted by Kelsey McKinney. Each week, McKinney and a guest recount and debate a juicy, anonymous, and true story submitted by a real person. It’s very silly and very satisfying, all at the same time, which feels like just what I need right now.

For more nonfiction reads, head over to the podcast service of your choice and download For Real, which I co-host with my dear friend Alice. If you have any questions/comments/book suggestions, you can find me on social media @kimthedork. Happy weekend!

True Story

New Releases: Country Music and a Revolution

Post author By Alice Burton
Post date May 10, 2022

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Hello and happy Wednesday to you! I have just finished my seventh Lincoln audiobook for the year, and am now on one called Lincoln’s Lieutenants, and I’m like. Does that one count? It’s about the Army of the Potomac, so now ABOUT Lincoln, but he’s definitely in it. And he’s in the title. I don’t know. Maybe it’s partial credit.

We’ve got more good books out this week! What an exciting but also incredibly stressful and exhausting time to be alive.

Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands by Kelly Lytle Hernández

Historian Hernández tells the story of the magonistas and their rebellion against Mexico’s dictator in the early twentieth century. Said dictator was being helped by the U.S., whose capitalist robber barons wanted to continue taking resources from Mexico. The magonistas were made up of “journalists, miners, migrant workers, and more, who organized thousands of Mexican workers.” Super interesting history.

Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change by Angela Garbes

After Garbes’s previous book, Like a Mother, comes her exploration of caregiving in America. In her follow-up, she says that “while the labor of raising children is devalued in America, the act of mothering offers the radical potential to create a more equitable society.” This has all been brought to the foreground by the pandemic and the drastically increased caregiving demanded of women, many of whom are also working full-time jobs and selected to be caregivers for no reason other than their gender. Love reading theories of motherhood.

Her Country: How the Women of Country Music Became the Success They Were Never Supposed to Be by Marissa R. Moss

Dangit, I love the women of country music. This covers the last twenty years, a time when women have been noticeably missing from country music due to radio stations choosing not to play them. At the 2019 CMAs, Sugarland lead singer Jennifer Nettles wore a cape emblazoned with the words “Play Our F*@#!n’ Records.” Despite this and the fight for equal play, singers like Kacey Musgraves and Mickey Guyton have become extremely successful. Nashville journalist Moss compares country of the ’90s, which felt almost dominated by women, to 2021, “when women are only played on country radio 16% of the time, on a good day, and when only men have won Entertainer of the Year at the CMA Awards for a decade.”

Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!

For more nonfiction reads, check out the For Real podcast which I co-host with the excellent Kim here at Book Riot. If you have any questions/comments/book suggestions, you can find me on social media @itsalicetime. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.

True Story

Brains, Lip Service, and the Weather Machine

Post author By Kim Ukura
Post date May 5, 2022

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Happy Friday, nonfiction fans! It really has been A WEEK, has it not? I was trying to put together a reading list to help make sense of the Supreme Court, but my brain just isn’t working in peak condition right now.

Instead, I want to catch up on some nonfiction news that’s been building for a few weeks – everything from some book announcements to a powerful excerpt I urge you to read!

Actress Betty Gilpin is writing a book! All the Women in My Brain: And Other Concerns, out September 6, is described as “a hilarious, intimate, and candid collection of essays.” In an interview, Gilpin said that the book won’t be a “tell all” about her TV and film roles, but rather how those experiences connect to being a woman in the world and managing all of the voices that try to tell you what to do and how to act. I love this cover!

The winners of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize have been announced. This particular prize has a lot of great nonfiction selections to highlight:

Biography – Burning Boy: The Life and Work of Stephen Crane by Paul Auster
Autobiographical Prose – Real Estate: A Living Autobiography by Deborah Levy
Current Interest – Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could by Adam Schiff
History – Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer
Science and Technology – The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred by Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

LitHub ran a great excerpt from Tajja Isen’s new book Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service. In the piece, she writes about how “the failure of progressive change in contemporary book publishing is so total that there is now a whole string of books about the failure of progressive change in contemporary book publishing.” She specifically writes about a few recent fiction titles, but I think her commentary is more broadly applicable. This excerpt definitely got the book on my radar!

Biographer Walter Isaacson is working on a book about Elon Musk. Isaacson, who has written about Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, and Steve Jobs, said he was interested in profiling Musk because he is “interested in innovators and people who push boundaries.” I can’t really bring myself to get excited about this one, but I did think the interview linked above was an interesting peek into why Isaacson wants to write this book and what we might read in the future.

Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!

One Thing I Like

One of the books I picked up during my independent bookstore shopping spree was The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast by Andrew Blum. It’s a slim little book that manages to give a comprehensive and entertaining overview of how weather forecasting actually works… and how fragile the whole system could turn out to be.

To explore the forecast, Blum shares a brief history of weather forecasting, visits remote weather observation stations, watches weather satellites blast off, and visits the site of one of forecasting’s biggest and most accurate computation systems. This book, which I read in just a few hours, gave me a much deeper appreciation about everything it takes so I can turn on my phone in the morning to find out if it’s going to rain. Highly recommended!

True Story

New Releases: Girl Groups and Trilobites

Post author By Alice Burton
Post date May 3, 2022

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Hello! It’s May and yet it’s 45 degrees in Chicago. We just had all our cherry blossom trees bloom here (as I think they did basically everywhere in the last couple weeks?), but they’ve already started turning green (bah!), which is all the more reason to seize the day, cherry blossom-wise, and gather your photos while ye may.

I’ve been audiobooking Endurance by Alfred Lansing about the Shackleton expedition, and wow, I feel like I would have just laid myself right down on the ice and told them to abandon me. So cold! So much eating of seal blubber! But they all lived, which is bananacrackers. Well done, all those people.

Be My Baby: A Memoir by Ronnie Spector

“But Alice,” you say, “hasn’t this been out for thirty years?” Yes! But now, this 1990 music memoir has a new postscript by the late Ronnie Spector. Spector’s book covers her time as lead singer of the Ronettes (who sing the eponymous excellent song) and her emotionally abusive marriage to music producer Phil Spector. Rolling Stone named this one of the best rock memoirs of all time, and there are so many of those!

Travels with Trilobites: Adventures in the Paleozoic by Andy Secher

Trilobites!! So many of them in the past. So weird. They lived from over 500 million years ago (again, Neanderthals were around like…35,000 years ago) to over 250 million years ago. They were alive so long ago but also alive for so long! You can find their fossils in Siberia, Morocco, Australia. This tells their history and has hundreds of photos of them. The author is a “field associate in paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History” and personally owns more than 4,000 trilobite fossils. Again — there’s someone for every interest.

You’ve Changed: Fake Accents, Feminism, and Other Comedies from Myanmar by Pyae Moe Thet War

Ooo this is all about what it’s like to be a Myanmar person, in yet another interesting release from Catapult. Pyae looks at the “knots and complications of immigration status, eating habits, Western feminism in an Asian home, and more, guiding us toward an expansive idea of what it means to be a Myanmar woman today.” Also things like “the patriarchal Myanmar concept of hpone which governs how laundry is done,” and just, dang. Catapult is definitely a newer press and they keep publishing things I want to read.

Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!

True Story

True Stories for Autism Acceptance Month

Post author By Kim Ukura
Post date April 28, 2022

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We’re nearly at the end of April, which means I am just squeaking in a book list in recognition of Autism Acceptance Month.

According to the Autism Society, the prevalence of autism has risen from 1 in 125 children in 2010 to 1 in 54 in 2020. This means we’re seeing even more opportunities to learn about autism and how it affects people in different ways.

For this book list, I tried to highlight writing by autistic women, families, and people of color. Check them out:

I Overcame My Autism and All I Got Was This Lousy Anxiety Disorder by Sarah Kurchak

Sarah Kurchak, who grew up in a small town in Ontario, always seemed to know that she was different from the people around her. To fit in, she adopted behaviors so she could perform being like everyone else, but these coping mechanisms caused her significant challenges. When she was finally diagnosed with autism at 27, she realized that these same coping mechanisms contributed to her anxiety and depression. In this memoir she challenges stereotypes and ideas about autism and shares what she believes will help “make the lives of autistic people healthier, happier and more fulfilling.”

We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation by Eric Garcia

Journalist Eric Garcia started to write more about what it’s like being autistic in America after growing frustrated with the way the media wrote about autistic people. In the book, he uses his own experiences as an autistic person to look at the social and policy gaps that exist when trying to support autistic people. He also shared the stories of a range of autistic people, including people of color and those in the LGBTQ community.

Autism in Heels: The Untold Story of a Female Life on the Spectrum by Jennifer Cook O’Toole

At 35 years old, Jennifer O’Toole was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome which, for the first time, helped her life make sense. In this book she writes about “the constant struggle between carefully crafted persona and authentic existence” while specifically calling out the experiences of women with an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis. In addition to autism, she writes about everything from body image to self-esteem and more.

Same But Different: Teen Life on the Autism Express by Holly Robinson Peete

In this book, activist Holly Robinson Peete partners with her twins, R.J. Peete and Ryan Elizabeth Peete, to share stories about what it is like to be an autistic teen. Through this family perspective, they’re able to share what it’s like to have autism (R.J.), support an autistic sibling (Ryan Elizabeth) or support an autistic child (Holly). The book covers everything from family vacations, playdates, body changes, high school drama, and more.

Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!

One Thing I Like

Tomorrow, Saturday, April 30, is Indie Bookstore Day! In the Twin Cities we celebrate all week, so my sister and I spent last weekend visiting independent bookstores across the area, several of which we’d never visited before. Buying books at independent stories isn’t always feasible, but if you have a chance to buy at least one this weekend, your local indie is always worth the trip!

True Story

New Releases: Forest Detectives and Two-Spirits

Post author By Alice Burton
Post date April 26, 2022

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I wonder if there’ll ever be a world where people release short biographies of famous white men. I’ve been looking for a decent biography of Ulysses S. Grant and the audiobooks at the library are all about 40 hours long, because sure. Why not do that. I need like 200 pages, MAYBE 250. When I was in college, I picked up a slim volume about George Gordon, Lord Byron that started in his famous years. It was great. I don’t need to read about where he was born or other things he wouldn’t remember!

Anyway, I’m on my seventh Lincoln audiobook and after this, I’m gonna have to start buying them, because I have run out at the library. It’s fine. We’ll all get through this.

Let’s look at new releases!

Forest Walking: Discovering the Trees and Woodlands of North America by Peter Wohlleben and Jane Billinghurst

From the author of The Hidden Life of Trees comes another book about trees. Hurray! As the title says, this is about walking in the forest and learning “how to be a forest detective.” Forest detective! It tells you how to understand the nature around you and awaken to “the ancient past and thrilling present of the ecosystem around you.” I love it.

Finding Me: A Memoir by Viola Davis

Extremely acclaimed actress Viola Davis tells her story of growing up in poverty with an abusive and alcoholic father, being inspired by Cicely Tyson, finding her feet in acting, and fighting against the harmful, stereotypical roles offered her by Hollywood. We talked about this on For Real and can you believe the breadth of Davis’s work? As Kim suggested, this is probably going to be great on audio.

Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong by Louisa Lim

Author Lim was raised in Hong Kong with Chinese and English parents. After being a reporter there for over ten years, she writes a history of the city, including “the British takeover in 1842, the negotiations over the 1997 return to China, and the future Beijing seeks to impose.” Also she talks about guerrilla calligraphers? Which is so cool.

Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America by Gregory D. Smithers, Raven E. Heavy Runner (Foreword by)

A history of gender and sexuality in Native North America! “Two-Spirits” is “an umbrella term denoting feminine and masculine qualities in one person.” When Europeans came to America and forced changes to the Indigenous ways of life, this cultural understanding was at risk of disappearing. Smithers traces its history from early Spanish invasion to the present day. Another excellent release from Beacon Press!

Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!

True Story

Tom Hiddleston is Heading to the Antarctic

Post author By Kim Ukura
Post date April 21, 2022

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Happiest of Fridays, nonfiction friends! I feel like I’m in the middle of a time loop, where spring is constantly promised for “next week,” but then when next week arrives it’s more of the same… cold and snow in some disgusting combination. It’s very demoralizing when all I want to do is read books on my patio in the sun!

This week’s nonfiction news is heavy on celebrity, with a couple of other interesting developments thrown in for added flavor. Let’s dive in!

Jeannette McCurdy, former Nickelodeon child star, has written a memoir. I’m Glad My Mom Died, out August 9, tells the story of how her mother pushed McCurdy into acting as a child, a decision that she says led to anxiety, shame, and self-loathing. McCurdy played Sam Puckett on iCarly and starred in Sam & Cat. That cover is giving me real Sweet Valley High vibes, which I’m definitely into.

Britney Spears has confirmed she’s writing a book! This affirmation from the star comes weeks after rumors circulated that she had a multimillion dollar deal for a memoir. In a post that’s since been taken down from Instagram, Spears said writing the book is “healing and therapeutic.” I remain excited to read this one.

Tom Hiddleson will be starring in an adaptation of David Grann’s book The White Darkness. The book tells the story of Henry Worsley, a devoted family man and former soldier, who becomes obsessed with traversing Antarctica on foot (you can see where this is going, I assume). The series on Apple will “explore courage, love, family and the extremes of human endurance.” The White Darkness started as a magazine article in The New Yorker and was turned into a book.

Here’s a story that’s a bit meta – an attempt to ban the graphic novel Persepolis is being turned into a graphic novel. Back in 2013, a library science graduate student discovered that the Chicago Public School district had tried to remove Persepolis from school libraries and classrooms without following the district’s formal book challenge process. The student, Jarrett Dapier, is now turning his experience fighting the book removal into a graphic novel – Wake Now In the Fire. Fascinating! Look for this one in 2023.

And here’s one that is just a real head scratcher – a publisher is removing the book Bad and Boujee: Toward a Trap Feminist Theology from publication after critics noted that the author is white. The book purports to explore the “Black Experience, hip-hop music, ethics, and feminism.” The Black woman credited with coining the concept of trap feminism, Sesali Bowen, said the white author, Jennifer Buck, didn’t approach her while writing the book. Others have criticized Buck and her publisher, Wipf and Stock Publishers, over the idea that a white woman could write deeply about a concept so tied to Black women’s experiences in the world. Uff.

One Thing I Like

This week was the week where I learned about the social media phenomenon of the Coastal Grandmother. Coined on TikTok, a coastal grandmother channels the vibe of Meryl Streep in It’s Complicated or Diane Keaton in Something’s Gotta Give, wearing white button downs, decorating with fresh flowers, and drinking white wine along the beach.

Turns out, you don’t need to be coastal or a grandmother to take in this vibe… which is delightful, because I think this is what I want to be. My favorite coastal grandmother discovery is this related Spotify playlist with bangers like “This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)” by Natalie Cole, “New Shoes” by Paolo Nutini, and “Save the Last Dance for Me” by Michael Bublé. Now you’ll have to excuse me while I do some online shopping for a matching pajama set, neutral turtleneck, and something pointless from Williams Sonoma.

Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!

True Story

New Releases: Peanuts and Empire

Post author By Alice Burton
Post date April 19, 2022

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Are you ever faced with construction at your local library? It’s nice to be in a city with many library branches, but at my wife’s and my old apartment, the library was closed for a year for remodeling, then we moved, and now the branch near our new place is about to close down for an undetermined amount of time. I’m glad it’s getting attention, but also my physical HOLDS. Where will I get them? Somewhere I have to take a bus to? Booooo.

In related news, boy, do I love ebooks. Also new books! Sometimes these coincide. Here are the nonfiction new release highlights for this week:

Slaves for Peanuts: A Story of Conquest, Liberation, and a Crop That Changed History by Jori Lewis

Is the only peanut fact you know about George Washington Carver? Ok, well in Jori Lewis’s super interesting book, she looks at how the demand from the European soap industry for peanut oil extended slavery in West Africa into the twentieth (yes, twentieth) century. It’s about enslavement and imperialism and plants and I love this cover v much.

¡Andale, Prieta!: A Love Letter to My Family by Yasmín Ramírez

Ok, I have to use a quote from the author for this: “When I tell people who don’t speak Spanish what prieta means–dark or the dark one–their eyes pop open and a small gasp escapes … How do I tell them that now, even after the cruelty of children, Prieta means love? That each time Prieta fell from my grandmother’s lips, I learned to love my dark skin.” This is a memoir that covers Ramírez’s return home to Texas and mourning of her grandmother. What I’ve read of it, I love.

Black Ghost of Empire: The Long Death of Slavery and the Failure of Emancipation by Kris Manjapra

Historian Manjapra studies transnationalism, race, and colonialism. His latest focuses on emancipation, detailing five types, starting in the 1770s and going through the 1880s. These include “the Gradual Emancipations of North America, the Revolutionary Emancipation of Haiti, the Compensated Emancipations of European overseas empires, the War Emancipation of the American South, and the Conquest Emancipations that swept across Sub-Saharan Africa.” However, none of these “required atonement for wrongs committed, or restorative justice for the people harmed.” Sometimes you can see the solution or even just the failings of something by looking at historical patterns, and Manjapra lays the pattern out here.

Mutinous Women: How French Convicts Became Founding Mothers of the Gulf Coast by Joan DeJean

This is one those me picks. It starts in 1719! 132 women (called “cassette girls”) were sent from France to towns and villages bordering the Mississippi River. These women were “falsely accused of sex crimes” and sent as prisoners to provide women for the new colonies after being pulled from orphanages, workhouses, and prisons. Of 132 women, 62 survived, or only 47%. This is the story of how they got to America and what they did when they got there.

Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!

True Story

Amazing Memoirs by Poets

Post author By Kim Ukura
Post date April 14, 2022

Sponsored by

Happy Friday, nonfiction friends! While it’s my Midwest inclination to open every conversion with the weather, this week I will resist. The less said about Mother Nature this week, the better.

In honor of National Poetry Month, in this edition I want to write about a few great memoirs by poets. I love reading memoirs, but I’ve always thought that memoirs by poets are particularly special. I’m consistently in awe of the way they can string together perfect sentence after perfect sentence, articulating feelings and experiences in ways that are both specific and universal.

It’s a real treat to pick up a memoir by a poet – here are three I recommend:

How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones

This book is a coming-of-age memoir about a young, Black, gay man from the South. Throughout his life, Saeed Jones had to fight for his place among his family and his community, as well as fight for the dreams and ambitions that drove his life. In addition to his story, Jones also explores race, queerness, vulnerability, and much more. It’s a beautiful and challenging book!

Ordinary Light by Tracy K. Smith

Tracy K. Smith is the former U.S. Poet Laureate and winner of a Pulitzer Prize for her poetry collection Life on Mars. In this book, Smith writes about her childhood and her mother, who was diagnosed with cancer just when Smith was preparing to leave home for college. This forces Smith to reckon with independence, faith, loss, and race at the same time she is trying to make it as a student at Harvard. Again, I can’t say enough about the beautiful prose in this one!

The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander

In this book, Elizabeth Alexander finds herself at a turning point following the sudden death of her husband. The book is both a story of love and loss in which she reflects on her marriage, the trauma of her husband’s death, the connection she found in community, and what it meant to raise two teenage sons after loss. I read this book while I was in my own period of deep loss and found it both difficult and comforting to read – pick it up if you need a good cry!

To close, I want to point you to a couple of related articles over at Book Riot:

Why I Love Reading Memoirs by Poets by Neha Patel
5 Moving Memoirs in Verse by Amazing Women by Yashvi Peeti

Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!

One Thing I Like

My reading for the year has remained on the slow side, but I’m excited to have finished one of my most anticipated new titles of 2022 – Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation by Maud Newton.

In the book, Newton writes about her vexing and fascinating search to better understand her family and family history, which was full of strange stories and complicated people. The book is broadly about the different ways we can be connected to our families – family trees, genetics, physicality, temperament, and more. It’s also a very specific deep dive into Newton’s own family, and the complex questions that came up the deeper and further she dug into their stories.

The book was just a smidge long for me, but I still really enjoyed the time I spent with it. Newton has used her story to offer a wide-ranging and curious look at genealogy, family history, and the ways in which we are and are not products of the people we come from.

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New Releases: Real Housewives and DDT

Post author By Alice Burton
Post date April 12, 2022

Sponsored by

I don’t know about you, but I just finished my fifth Lincoln audiobook and I am not much closer to figuring out that man. So COMPLicated. House of Abraham by Stephen Berry was better than I expected, and Berry writes with an actual personality, which I always appreciate in nonfiction. It’s all about Lincoln’s relationship with the Todd (his wife Mary’s) family.

What I DIDN’T like was H.W. Brands’s The Zealot and the Emancipator, which was a kind of dual biography themed on abolition about John Brown and Lincoln. Brands was much, much more favorable to Brown, which is a Take.

Ok! New nonfiction for this week:

How to Sell a Poison: The Rise, Fall, and Toxic Return of DDT by Elena Conis

DDT! Originally it was meant to save lives during WWII by killing the insects that spread disease. When its harmful effects were widely publicized by Rachel Carson and others, it was banned in 1972. Now it seems to be back? Conis tells the story of this harmful 20th century chemical in her book with its excellent, excellent cover.

Sisters of Mokama: The Pioneering Women Who Brought Hope and Healing to India by Jyoti Thottam

New York Times Opinion editor Thottam tells the story of six Kentucky nuns who traveled to India in 1947 and built a hospital in Bihar, “an impoverished and isolated state in northern India that had been one of the bloodiest regions of Partition.” Thottam’s mother was trained by these women to become a nurse in the 1960s. This is the story of the women whose lives were changed by Nazareth Hospital.

Quake Chasers: 15 Women Rocking Earthquake Science by Lori Polydoros

This is so specific that I love it? Like, wow, they find 15 diverse women scientists who study earthquakes. This is just under 200 pages and for ages 12 and up (excellent). Check out stories like: “Dr. Debbie Weiser travels to communities post-disaster, such as Japan and China, to evaluate earthquake damage in ways that might help save lives during the next Big One. Geologist Edith Carolina Rojas climbs to the top of volcanoes or searches barren deserts for volcanic evidence to measure seismic activity. Geophysicist Lori Dengler works with governments to provide guidance and protection against future tsunamis.” We frequently talk on For Real about how there is someone who is interested in everything, and this not only highlights that super cool fact, but also shows young people potential careers in earthquake science. Hurray!

Love Me As I Am by Garcelle Beauvais

Apparently this person is on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and costar Erika Jayne (who is someone?) threw Beauvais’s book in the trash, which, if you do this on a reality show, might actually be a kind friendship thing to do since it results in book publicity like the above. Apparently her book is about being born in Haiti, immigrating to Boston, and eventually embarking on an acting career that included NYPD Blue (the ’90s!) and, now, “RHOBH.” This seems very fun if you watch this franchise! I asked my two friends who do to describe her and they said “icon” and “she’s perfect and probably too good and smart for the Real Housewives machine, but I’m thankful she’s a part of it.”

Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!