Tag: nonfiction

Black AF History by Michael Harriot

- Bill Leave a comment

History is written by the victors.  For U.S. History, “written” equals selectively curated and glossed-over before mass dissemination.

Hindsight of an 80’s grade school being 20-20, this fact-laden and exhaustively-researched audiobook is more than a little illuminating.  Christopher Columbus came here….for SPICES?  Did we honestly believe that?    Don’t get me started on the Pilgrims.

Take, for example, Mansa Musa who ruled the Mali Empire 1312 – 1337.  It would be easier to just call him the richest person in the history of planet Earth.  Comparatively, like, Jeff Bezos taking his empties back to Hy-Vee.  Mansa Musa handed out his gold bar milk money on his hajj to Mecca and crashed the Middle East gold economy.  Heard of him?

Then there is Juan Garrido the black conquistador and first known African in the future United States.  He helped discover Florida with Ponce DeLeon and he certainly didn’t get here on a slave ship.  Those came a century later.  Heard of him?

And then there is Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the godmother of rock and roll who fused gospel and blues and sick guitar licks in the 1940’s, long before influencing some kids named Little Richard, Elvis, and Johnny Cash.  She shredded and was the first to use heavy distortion.  Does her name ring a bell?

I’ll admit all these names were new as the freshly driven snow to my insular ears.  Clocking fifteen hours, there is plenty of grist for the mill in Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot.

Monstrous : A Transracial Adoption Story by Sarah Myer

- Stephanie Leave a comment

My latest graphic novel nonfiction read came from the young adult section! Monstrous : A Transracial Adoption Story by Sarah Myer is a new graphic memoir published in June 2023. This title dives deep into the life of the author Sarah Myer, a Korean American, from the time of her adoption to the day she moves away to college. Sarah currently uses the pronouns they/them, but during this graphic memoir they refer to themselves as she, so I will be using she/her pronouns while talking about this book.

Sarah and her sister were both adopted from Korea by a white couple. She and her sister are not biologically related, which provides more fodder for her bullies later in life. Sarah grew up in a rural community with few Asian neighbors. Looking back, Sarah was able to recognize that she was struggling with anxiety before she even started school. Once she started school, the bullying, racism, and taunts became increasingly worse. Sarah found escape from the racist bullying by throwing herself into art and fandoms. She struggled to contain her anger, sometimes letting it explode at her bullies, friends, and family. Sarah’s escapes into drawing and cosplay can only help her so far when the bullying becomes even worse once she starts high school. How she reacts will define her future.

Monstrous is a graphic memoir that I wish I would have had growing up. I am not adopted, but Sarah discusses her struggles with mental health and anxiety throughout the book to which I related.

Grandmothers, Our Grandmothers: Remembering the “Comfort Women” of World War II by Han Seong-won

- Stephanie Leave a comment

When looking for a nonfiction book to read, I typically look for a topic of which I know very little. My latest nonfiction read was the graphic nonfiction, Grandmothers, Our Grandmothers: Remembering the “Comfort Women” of World War II by Han Seong-won. This book tells the story of the “comfort women” of the Japanese Imperial Army. I’ll admit here that I didn’t know anything about “comfort women” and based on the cover, I thought that these women were positive comforters. How incredibly and devastatingly wrong I was.

Between 1932 to 1945, the Japanese Imperial Army set up “comfort stations” wherever there was a war zone. The people that worked these “comfort stations” were women and girls they either kidnapped or lured under false promises of actual work. These women and girls were forced into sexual slavery in occupied countries and territories before and during World War II. This is government-sponsored sexual slavery and human trafficking that Japan did not even acknowledge occurred until 1991.

This book tells the story of the grandmothers who have chosen to speak about their lives as “comfort women”. It shares their stories, speaks their testimonies, and pays respect to the many others who will never come forward to talk about what happened to them. Also present in this book are members of younger generations who advocate alongside the grandmothers, protesting every Wednesday for years demanding justice. These women are victims of war whose human rights were violated. Han Seong-won shines light on their stories and helps advocate for honesty about what happened to them only eighty years ago.

Need to finish your reading goal? Try these short books!

- Stephanie Leave a comment

As it nears the end of 2023, the pressure is mounting for those of us who set lofty reading goals at the beginning of the year. Do you need to finish your reading goal, but you’re worried you might not make it? As someone who always believes that she can read more books than she usually has time for, I frequently find myself reaching for short books to hit my goal at the end of the year. Since I was looking for short books for myself, I figured making a list to share would be beneficial for all.

Many more short books can be found at the library, but I focused on titles owned by the Davenport Public Library that were published from 2021 to 2023. Below is a list of fiction and nonfiction titles that have less than 200 pages. The descriptions are provided by the publisher. Want more suggestions or have a favorite short book? Drop a comment below.

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Fiction:

The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson

New York Times bestselling author Peter Swanson pens a spectacularly spine-chilling novella in which an American art student in London is invited to join a classmate for the holidays at Starvewood Hall, her family’s Cotswold manor house. But behind the holly and pine boughs, secrets are about to unravel, revealing this seemingly charming English village’s grim history.

Ashley Smith, an American art student in London for her junior year, was planning on spending Christmas alone, but a last-minute invitation from fellow student Emma Chapman brings her to Starvewood Hall, country residence of the Chapman family. The Cotswold manor house, festooned in pine boughs and crammed with guests for Christmas week, is a dream come true for Ashley. She is mesmerized by the cozy, firelit house, the large family, and the charming village of Clevemoor, but also by Adam Chapman, Emma’s aloof and handsome brother.

But Adam is being investigated by the local police over the recent brutal slaying of a girl from the village, and there is a mysterious stranger who haunts the woodland path between Starvewood Hall and the local pub. Ashley begins to wonder what kind of story she is actually inhabiting. Is she in a grand romance? A gothic tale? Or has she wandered into something far more sinister and terrifying than she’d ever imagined?

Over thirty years later the events of that horrific week are revisited, along with a diary from that time. What began in a small English village in 1989 reaches its ghostly conclusion in modern-day New York, many Christmas seasons later. – William Morrow

This title is 96 pages.

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Blue Hour by Tiffany Clarke Harrison

What is motherhood in the midst of uncertainty, buried trauma, and an unraveling America? What it’s always been—a love song.

Our narrator is a gifted photographer, an uncertain wife, an infertile mother, a biracial woman in an unraveling America. As she grapples with a lifetime of ambivalence about motherhood, yet another act of police brutality makes headlines, and this time the victim is Noah, a boy in her photography class. Unmoored by the grief of a recent devastating miscarriage and Noah’s fight for his life, she worries she can no longer chase the hope of having a child, no longer wants to bring a Black body into the world. Yet her husband Asher—contributing white, Jewish genes alongside her Black-Japanese ones for any potential child—is just as desperate to keep trying.

Throwing herself into a new documentary on motherhood, and making secret visits to Noah in the hospital, this when she learns she is, impossibly, pregnant. As the future shifts once again, she must decide yet again what she dares hope for the shape of her future to be. Fearless, timely, blazing with voice, Blue Hour is a fragmentary novel with unignorable storytelling power. – Soft Skull Press

This title is 140 pages.

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Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

There’s a princess trapped in a tower. This isn’t her story.

Meet Toadling. On the day of her birth, she was stolen from her family by the fairies, but she grew up safe and loved in the warm waters of faerieland. Once an adult though, the fae ask a favor of Toadling: return to the human world and offer a blessing of protection to a newborn child. Simple, right?

But nothing with fairies is ever simple.

Centuries later, a knight approaches a towering wall of brambles, where the thorns are as thick as your arm and as sharp as swords. He’s heard there’s a curse here that needs breaking, but it’s a curse Toadling will do anything to uphold… – Tor Books, imprint of MacMillan Publishers

This title is 116 pages.

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If An Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, an Egyptian American woman and a man from the village of Shobrakheit meet at a café in Cairo. He was a photographer of the revolution, but now finds himself unemployed and addicted to cocaine, living in a rooftop shack. She is a nostalgic daughter of immigrants “returning” to a country she’s never been to before, teaching English and living in a light-filled flat with balconies on all sides. They fall in love and he moves in. But soon their desire—for one another, for the selves they want to become through the other—takes a violent turn that neither of them expected.

A dark romance exposing the gaps in American identity politics, especially when exported overseas, If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English is at once ravishing and wry, scathing and tender. Told in alternating perspectives, Noor Naga’s experimental debut examines the ethics of fetishizing the homeland and punishing the beloved . . . and vice versa. In our globalized twenty-first-century world, what are the new faces (and races) of empire? When the revolution fails, how long can someone survive the disappointment? Who suffers and, more crucially, who gets to tell about it? – Graywolf Press

This title is 186 pages.

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And Then I Woke Up by Malcolm Devlin

In the tradition of Mira Grant and Stephen Graham Jones, Malcolm Devlin’s And Then I Woke Up is a creepy, layered, literary story about false narratives and their ability to divide us.

In a world reeling from an unusual plague, monsters lurk in the streets while terrified survivors arm themselves and roam the countryside in packs. Or perhaps something very different is happening. When a disease affects how reality is perceived, it’s hard to be certain of anything…

Spence is one of the “cured” living at the Ironside rehabilitation facility. Haunted by guilt, he refuses to face the changed world until a new inmate challenges him to help her find her old crew. But if he can’t tell the truth from the lies, how will he know if he has earned the redemption he dreams of? How will he know he hasn’t just made things worse? – Tordotcom, imprint of MacMillan Publishers

This title is 167 pages.

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Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson

In a crowded London pub, two young people meet. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists—he a photographer, she a dancer—and both are trying to make their mark in a world that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence, and over the course of a year they find their relationship tested by forces beyond their control.

Narrated with deep intimacy, Open Water is at once an achingly beautiful love story and a potent insight into race and masculinity that asks what it means to be a person in a world that sees you only as a Black body; to be vulnerable when you are only respected for strength; to find safety in love, only to lose it. With gorgeous, soulful intensity, and blistering emotional intelligence, Caleb Azumah Nelson gives a profoundly sensitive portrait of romantic love in all its feverish waves and comforting beauty.

This is one of the most essential debut novels of recent years, heralding the arrival of a stellar and prodigious young talent. – Black Cat, imprint of Grove Atlantic

This title is 166 pages.

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Assembly by Natasha Brown

Come of age in the credit crunch. Be civil in a hostile environment. Go to college, get an education, start a career. Do all the right things. Buy an apartment. Buy art. Buy a sort of happiness. But above all, keep your head down. Keep quiet. And keep going.

The narrator of Assembly is a black British woman. She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend’s family estate, set deep in the English countryside. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself. As the minutes tick down and the future beckons, she can’t escape the question: is it time to take it all apart?

Assembly is a story about the stories we live within – those of race and class, safety and freedom, winners and losers.And it is about one woman daring to take control of her own story, even at the cost of her life. With a steely, unfaltering gaze, Natasha Brown dismantles the mythology of whiteness, lining up the debris in a neat row and walking away. – Little, Brown and Company

This title is 106 pages.

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Nonfiction:

This Body is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor

Humans are a varied and divergent bunch with all manner of beliefs, morals, and bodies. Systems of oppression thrive off our inability to make peace with difference and injure the relationship we have with our own bodies.

The Body Is Not an Apology offers radical self-love as the balm to heal the wounds inflicted by these violent systems. World-renowned activist and poet Sonya Renee Taylor invites us to reconnect with the radical origins of our minds and bodies and celebrate our collective, enduring strength. As we awaken to our own indoctrinated body shame, we feel inspired to awaken others and to interrupt the systems that perpetuate body shame and oppression against all bodies. When we act from this truth on a global scale, we usher in the transformative opportunity of radical self-love, which is the opportunity for a more just, equitable, and compassionate world–for us all. – Berett-Koehler Publishers

This title is 159 pages.

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The Soul of a Woman by Isabel Allende

“When I say that I was a feminist in kindergarten, I am not exaggerating,” begins Isabel Allende. As a child, she watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children without “resources or voice.” Isabel became a fierce and defiant little girl, determined to fight for the life her mother couldn’t have.

As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, she rode the second wave of feminism. Among a tribe of like-minded female journalists, Allende for the first time felt comfortable in her own skin, as they wrote “with a knife between our teeth” about women’s issues. She has seen what the movement has accomplished in the course of her lifetime. And over the course of three passionate marriages, she has learned how to grow as a woman while having a partner, when to step away, and the rewards of embracing one’s sexuality.

So what feeds the soul of feminists—and all women—today? To be safe, to be valued, to live in peace, to have their own resources, to be connected, to have control over our bodies and lives, and above all, to be loved. On all these fronts, there is much work yet to be done, and this book, Allende hopes, will “light the torches of our daughters and granddaughters with mine. They will have to live for us, as we lived for our mothers, and carry on with the work still left to be finished.” – Ballantine Books

This title is 174 pages.

When Stars are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed

- Stephanie Leave a comment

“But we are not one star. We are millions. Not one background, but millions.

To the untrained eye, the night sky is a scattering of stars, a chaos of light and dark across the universe.

And yet, the stars are not lost.
They form patterns. Constellations. If you know how to look, there are stories woven into the very essense of stars.

Be like a star. Shine your light. Shine your story. For stories will lead us home.”
― Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed, When Stars Are Scattered

Omar Mohamed and Victoria Jamieson worked together to create When Stars are Scattered, a graphic memoir telling the story of Omar and his younger brother’s lives as refugees. Omar and his younger brother, Hassan, have spent most of their lives in a refugee camp in Kenya called Dadaab. Separated from their mother at a tender age, the two young boys are taken in by an older woman in the camp who becomes their foster mother/legal guardian. Life in the camp is boring. Hassan has complex medical needs that the doctors in the camp don’t know how to treat. There is never enough food. Straying too far past their camp could result in bullies taking their clothes.

When Omar is offered the chance to go to school, he is torn. He would love to go to school. He wants to learn. School would also add some liveliness into his day. If he went, he would have to stay away from Hassan for longer periods of time, something that he isn’t quite sure Hassan would understand given that they are the only family the other has left. The balance between family duty and the chance to change their future weighs on Omar the entire time they live in the refugee camp.

This graphic memoir was heartbreaking, yet full of so much tender hope. Victoria captures Omar’s story so expressively and manages to inject humor into a difficult situation. While the art style is simple, it doesn’t detract from the point the authors are making. This retelling of Omar’s story pulls on your hearstrings and will bounce your feelings all over the place. Even though this is categorized as a juvenile graphic novel, this story is applicable to readers of any age.

This title is also available as a Libby eBook and Libby eAudiobook.

Sugar Falls by David A. Robertson, illustrations by Scott B. Henderson, and colours by Donovan Yaciuk

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Elder Betty Ross from Cross Lake First Nation has a story to tell. It may have taken her decades to tell her truth, but with the help of David A. Robertson, she has introduced the world to her resiliency and abuse at Canadian residential schools in the graphic novel, Sugar Falls: A Residential School Story. The hidden history of the Canadian Residential School System is shocking and needs to be talked about more than it has been in the past.

Betsy Ross was abandoned by her family at a young age. Betsy was eventually rescued and adopted by a loving family. Her world changed a few years later when, at the age of 8, she was taken away to a residential school against both her and her adopted family’s wishes. Her father made her promise to remember the strength of her relationships in order to survive. Those relationships would help light up any dark time she ran up against in the future.

When Betsy arrives at the school, she has no idea what to expect. She undergoes unspeakable abuses and indignities while at the school. She and other students are constantly berated and belittled by the priests and nuns. Her father’s words echo in her brain over and over filling her with hope, strength, determination, and resiliency she needs to survive this ordeal.

Betsy ended up changing her name to Betty in honor and remembrance of her friend, Helen Betty Osborne. Elder Betty Ross wrote this book with the help of David A. Robertson as a way to tell the truth about the residential schools.

 

Dark and Morbid Nonfiction

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Nonfiction is hard for me to get through, but when I read any, I tend to go to the dark side: topics that are terrible, dangerous, tragic, and morbid. This goes hand in hand with my love of all things true crime. As I was compiling my list for this blog, I gathered a list of pop-science, investigative journalism, historical writings, research-centered nonfiction, and some adventure-based.

I have gathered a list of dark and morbid nonfiction that haven’t been discusses on the blog before and that can be found at the Davenport Public Library (basically my dark to-be-read list!). Descriptions have been provided by the publishers and/or authors.

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A Fever in the Heartland: the Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan

The Roaring Twenties–the Jazz Age–has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height of the uniquely American hate group, the Ku Klux Klan. Their domain was not the old Confederacy, but the Heartland and the West. They hated Blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants in equal measure, and took radical steps to keep these people from the American promise. And the man who set in motion their takeover of great swaths of America was a charismatic charlatan named D.C. Stephenson.

Stephenson was a magnetic presence whose life story changed with every telling. Within two years of his arrival in Indiana, he’d become the Grand Dragon of the state and the architect of the strategy that brought the group out of the shadows – their message endorsed from the pulpits of local churches, spread at family picnics and town celebrations. Judges, prosecutors, ministers, governors and senators across the country all proudly proclaimed their membership. But at the peak of his influence, it was a seemingly powerless woman – Madge Oberholtzer – who would reveal his secret cruelties, and whose deathbed testimony finally brought the Klan to their knees.  – Penguin Random House

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Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and a Legacy of Rage by Jeff Guinn

For the first time in thirty years, more than a dozen former ATF agents who participated in the initial February 28, 1993, Waco raid speak on the record about the poor decisions of their commanders that led to this deadly confrontation. The revelations in this book include why the FBI chose to end the siege with the use of CS gas; how both ATF and FBI officials tried and failed to cover up their agencies’ mistakes; where David Koresh plagiarized his infamous prophecies; and direct links between the Branch Davidian tragedy and the modern militia movement in America. Notorious conspiracist Alex Jones is a part of the Waco story. So much is new and stunning.

Guinn puts you alongside the ATF agents as they embarked on the disastrous initial assault, unaware that the Davidians knew they were coming and were armed and prepared to resist. His you-are-there narrative continues to the final assault and its momentous consequences. Drawing on this new information, including several eyewitness accounts, Guinn again does what he did with his bestselling books about Charles Manson and Jim Jones, revealing “gripping” (Houston Chronicle) new details about a story that we thought we knew. – Simon & Schuster

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Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation by Erika Krouse

Erika Krouse has one of those faces. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” people say, spilling confessions. In fall 2002, Erika accepts a new contract job investigating lawsuits as a private investigator. The role seems perfect for her, but she quickly realizes she has no idea what she’s doing. Then a lawyer named Grayson assigns her to investigate a sexual assault, a college student who was attacked by football players and recruits at a party a year earlier. Erika knows she should turn the assignment down. Her own history with sexual violence makes it all too personal. But she takes the job anyway inspired by Grayson’s conviction that he could help change things forever. And maybe she could, too.

Over the next five years, Erika learns everything she can about P. I. technique, tracking down witnesses and investigating a culture of sexual assault and harassment ingrained in the university’s football program. But as the investigation grows into a national scandal and a historic civil rights case, Erika finds herself increasingly consumed. When the case and her life both implode at the same time, Erika must figure out how to help win the case without losing herself.  – Erika Krouse

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Sex Cult Nun: Breaking Away from the Children of Gold, a wild radical religious cult by Faith Jones

Faith Jones was raised to be part of an elite religious army preparing for the End Times. Growing up on an isolated farm in Macau, she prayed for hours every day and read letters of prophecy written by her grandfather, the founder of the Children of God. Tens of thousands of members strong, the cult followers looked to Faith’s grandfather as their guiding light. As such, Faith was celebrated as special and then punished doubly to remind her that she was not.

Over decades, the Children of God grew into an international organization that became notorious for its alarming sex practices and allegations of abuse and exploitation. But with indomitable grit, Faith survived, creating a world of her own—pilfering books and teaching herself high school curriculum. Finally, at age twenty-three, thirsting for knowledge and freedom, she broke away, leaving behind everything she knew to forge her own path in America.

A complicated family story mixed with a hauntingly intimate coming-of-age narrative, Faith Jones’ extraordinary memoir reflects our societal norms of oppression and abuse while providing a unique lens to explore spiritual manipulation and our rights in our bodies. Honest, eye-opening, uplifting, and intensely affecting, Sex Cult Nun brings to life a hidden world that’s hypnotically alien yet unexpectedly relatable. – Faith Jones

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Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster by Adam Higginbotham

Early in the morning of April 26, 1986, Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station exploded, triggering one of the twentieth century’s greatest disasters. In the thirty years since then, Chernobyl has become lodged in the collective nightmares of the world: shorthand for the spectral horrors of radiation poisoning, for a dangerous technology slipping its leash, for ecological fragility, and for what can happen when a dishonest and careless state endangers its citizens and the entire world. But the real story of the accident, clouded from the beginning by secrecy, propaganda, and misinformation, has long remained in dispute.

Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews conducted over the course of more than ten years, as well as letters, unpublished memoirs, and documents from recently-declassified archives, Adam Higginbotham brings the disaster to life through the eyes of the men and women who witnessed it firsthand. The result is a “riveting, deeply reported reconstruction” (Los Angeles Times) and a definitive account of an event that changed history: a story that is more complex, more human, and more terrifying than the Soviet myth.

“The most complete and compelling history yet” (The Christian Science Monitor), Higginbotham’s “superb, enthralling, and necessarily terrifying…extraordinary” (The New York Times) book is an indelible portrait of the lessons learned when mankind seeks to bend the natural world to his will—lessons which, in the face of climate change and other threats, remain not just vital but necessary. – Simon & Schuster

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Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy

In this extraordinary work, Beth Macy takes us into the epicenter of a national drama that has unfolded over two decades. From the labs and marketing departments of big pharma to local doctor’s offices; wealthy suburbs to distressed small communities in Central Appalachia; from distant cities to once-idyllic farm towns; the spread of opioid addiction follows a tortuous trajectory that illustrates how this crisis has persisted for so long and become so firmly entrenched.

Beginning with a single dealer who lands in a small Virginia town and sets about turning high school football stars into heroin overdose statistics, Macy sets out to answer a grieving mother’s question-why her only son died-and comes away with a gripping, unputdownable story of greed and need. From the introduction of OxyContin in 1996, Macy investigates the powerful forces that led America’s doctors and patients to embrace a medical culture where overtreatment with painkillers became the norm. In some of the same communities featured in her bestselling book Factory Man, the unemployed use painkillers both to numb the pain of joblessness and pay their bills, while privileged teens trade pills in cul-de-sacs, and even high school standouts fall prey to prostitution, jail, and death.

Through unsparing, compelling, and unforgettably humane portraits of families and first responders determined to ameliorate this epidemic, each facet of the crisis comes into focus. In these politically fragmented times, Beth Macy shows that one thing uniting Americans across geographic, partisan, and class lines is opioid drug abuse. But even in the midst of twin crises in drug abuse and healthcare, Macy finds reason to hope and ample signs of the spirit and tenacity that are helping the countless ordinary people ensnared by addiction build a better future for themselves, their families, and their communities. – Little, Brown, & Company

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From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty

Fascinated by our pervasive fear of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty embarks on a global expedition to discover how other cultures care for the dead. From Zoroastrian sky burials to wish-granting Bolivian skulls, she investigates the world’s funerary customs and expands our sense of what it means to treat the dead with dignity. Her account questions the rituals of the American funeral industry—especially chemical embalming—and suggests that the most effective traditions are those that allow mourners to personally attend to the body of the deceased. Exquisitely illustrated by artist Landis Blair, From Here to Eternity is an adventure into the morbid unknown, a fascinating tour through the unique ways people everywhere confront mortality. – W.W. Norton

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Want some more dark and morbid nonfiction? Try these!

It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth: an auto-bio-graphic-novel by Zoe Thorogood

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TW for this book: suicidal ideation

“that’s the problem with flirting with the idea of something, sometimes you fall in”
― Zoe Thorogood, It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth

Zoe Thorogood’s 2022 graphic novel, It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth, destroyed me. It was messy and confusing and utterly desperate for help. Basically, it was perfect and fit what Zoe wrote it to be: an auto-bio-graphic-novel about her life as it falls apart.

Over a six month period, Zoe Thorogood tries to put her life back together even when the universe, and her own mind, conspires to destroy her. Zoe doesn’t have a choice about whether or not she wants to create. She must create something in order to survive.

This isn’t a light read. It’s destructive and heavy. Zoe writes about her depression and suicidal ideation, alongside other negative emotions. Her art is sharp and cuts you to the quick as she introduces readers to her other selves (animal-like and people-like). Zoe pulls in the people that she interacted with during those six months and how they impact her story and journey of survival. Her story takes place during the isolation of the pandemic, which in turn informs even more of her decisions. This graphic novel/memoir hit me right in the chest. Zoe is incredibly honest about her depression. She isn’t afraid to share how it affects her life and, in turn, her relationships with others. While her words pick you apart, the artwork isn’t idle, instead it intrigues you and pulls you in. She uses different drawing styles and colors depending on what the focus is. It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth may be messy, but it’s a relatable mess that I’m glad I stumbled on.

Killers of the Flower Moon

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On October 20, Martin Scorsese’s newest blockbuster, Killers of the Flower Moon starring Leonardi DiCaprio, premiers in movie theaters across the country. Scorsese and DiCaprio have been working on this project since David Grann published a work of nonfiction by the same title in 2017. Grann’s book follows the 1925 FBI investigation, led by former Texas Ranger turned FBI agent Tom White, into the mysterious deaths of wealthy Osage Native Americans of Osage County, Oklahoma. The Osage were relocated to the land in 1870 and fifty years later oil was found. The Osage became wealthy and the federal government created a guardian system that made it extremely difficult for tribe members to handle their own affairs. This invited a slew of corruption that ultimately led to at least two dozen Osage deaths from 1921-1923. According to The Osage Nation, “Between 1920 and 1925 there were more than 60 mysterious or unsolved murders in Osage County, all dealing with Osage headright holders.”

When Scorsese and DiCaprio began working on the project, DiCaprio was cast to play FBI agent Tom White. This early version of the movie followed much the same plot as Grann’s book, but both Scorsese and DiCaprio wanted to focus more on the Osage. DiCaprio was recast as Ernest Burkhart and the relationship between Ernest and his Osage wife Mollie was further developed. So far the film has been met with praise with a  98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 10/10 on IMDB.

While the film version promises to be entertaining, memorable, and insightful, I always recommend reading the book first because films tend to leave out a lot and sometimes even make changes to the original work.  Reading Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann and watching the film by Martin Scorsese will ensure you don’t miss anything!

Additional nonfiction titles about Native Americans available at the Davenport Public Library.

Unworthy Republic: the Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory by Claudio Saunt

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present by David Treuer

We Refuse to Forget: a True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power by Caleb Gayle

A Brutal Reckoning: Andrew Jackson, the Creek Indians, and the Epic War for the American South by Peter Cozzens

Covered with Night: a Story of Murder and Indigenous in Early America by Nicole Eustace

 

October’s Simply Held Nonfiction Picks

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Have you joined Simply Held? If not, you’re missing out! Ten different nonfiction titles are chosen four times a year by our librarians and automatically placed on hold for you. Those selections come from the following categories: biography, body mind spirit, cookbook, explore your world, poetry, self-help, social justice, strength through struggle, theologies, and true crime. Join Simply Held to have any of the new nonfiction picks automatically put on hold for you four times a year.

Biography pick

Never Give Up: A Prairie Family’s Story by Tom Brokaw

In this moving story, the New York Times bestselling author of The Greatest Generation chronicles the values and lessons he absorbed from his parents and other people who worked hard to build lives on the prairie during the first half of the twentieth century.

“In our fractured times, this inspiring book reminds us how we can rise to meet our current challenges by honoring the fortitude of the generations before us.”—Walter Isaacson

Tom’s father, Red, left school in the second grade to work in the family hotel—the Brokaw House, established in Bristol, South Dakota, by R. P. Brokaw in 1883. Eventually, through work on construction jobs, Red developed an exceptional talent for machines. Tom’s mother, Jean, was the daughter of a farmer who lost everything during the Great Depression. They met after a high school play, when Jean played the lead and Red fell in love with her from the audience. Although they didn’t have much money early in their marriage, especially once they had three boys at home, Red’s philosophy of “Never give up” served them well. His big break came after World War II, when he went to work for the Army Corps of Engineers building great dams across the Missouri River, magnificent structures like the Fort Randall and the Gavins Point dams. Late in life, Red surprised his family by recording his memories of the hard times of his early life, reflections that inspired this book.

Tom Brokaw is known as one of the most successful people in broadcast journalism. Throughout his legendary career, Brokaw has always asked what we can learn from world events and from our history. Within Never Give Up is one answer, a portrait of the resilience and respect for others at the heart of one American family’s story.  – Penguin Random House

This title is also available in large print.

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Body, Mind, Spirit pick

The Witches’ Sabbath: An Exploration of History, Folklore & Modern Practice by Kelden

Discover the Hidden Depths of the Sabbath

Take flight for a mesmerizing exploration of an event long shrouded in fear and mystery—the Witches’ Sabbath. Kelden presents an in-depth examination of the Sabbath’s historical and folkloric development as well as its re-emergence within the modern practice of Witchcraft. From discussions on the folklore of flight and the events of nocturnal gatherings to enchanting rituals and recipes, you’ll find everything you need to not only understand the nature of the legendary Sabbath, but also journey there yourself. Offering impressive research and compelling stories from across Europe and the early American colonies, this book is the ultimate resource for discovering an oft misunderstood and overlooked aspect of Witchcraft.

Includes a foreword by Jason Mankey, author of The Horned God of the Witches  – Llewellyn Worldwide

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Cookbook Pick

Live Longer, Live Better: Lessons for Longevity from the World’s Healthiest Zones by Melissa Petitto, R.D.

Discover how the five cultures with the longest-living people eat and live, then enjoy 50 healthy recipes inspired by those locations—and perhaps live longer yourself.

When researchers identified a region in Sardinia as having the highest concentration of male centenarians, they later zeroed in on villages around the world with the highest longevity: Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; Ikaria, Greece; and Loma Linda, California, among the Seventh-Day Adventists.

In Live Longer, Live Better, nutritionist and chef Melissa Petitto, RD, looks at the food and lifestyle choices of the people in these regions and presents it in an easily digestible format. The first part of the book describes these areas of the world, what they have in common, and how their residents excel at living a healthy lifestyle that can lead to exceptional longevity. Similar characteristics of these communities include:

Happiness and emotional wellness
Family and community connections
Natural-movement physical activity
Disease prevention

The second part of the book provides 50 original, healthy recipes that reflect each of the locations, focusing on plant-based meals, as well as a typical day-in-the-life of a resident. Guidelines for this type of eating include reducing consumption of meat and dairy (but not altogether), cutting back on eggs and fish, slashing sugar, and increasing consumption of nuts, water, beans, and whole foods. The recipes offer ideas for rounding out meals so you can eat this way wherever you are. Some recipes include:

Okinawa: Bitter Melon and Tofu Stir Fry; Okinawan Milk Tea; and Kokuto, Banana, and Dark Chocolate Muffins
Sardinia: Sardinian Herb, Fennel, and Bean Soup; Fregola with Wild Mushrooms; and Sardinian Artichokes with Lemon and Pecorino
Loma Linda: California Veggie Bowl with Tahini Dressing; Quinoa and Spinach Stuffed Peppers with Cashew Cream; and No Bake Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
Ikaria: Warm Figs with Honey and Pistachio Drizzle; Ikarian Ratatouille; and Cornmeal Pie with Dried Fruit and Olive Oil
Nicoya: Tomato Rice with Grilled Avocado and Lime; Potato, Sweet Pepper, Corn, and Tomato Hash; and Chan Seed Pineapple Aqua Fresca

Because there’s no counting calories or nutrient grams, eating this way doesn’t have to be complicated. So what are you waiting for? There’s no time like now to start living better longer! – Chartwell Books, an imprint of the Quarto Group

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Explore Your World pick

From One Cell: A Journey into Life’s Origins and the Future of Medicine by Ben Stanger

Inside the quest to unlock the mysteries of development—and find the key to transforming our future.

Each of us began life as a single cell. From this humble origin, we embarked on a risky journey fraught with opportunities for disaster. Yet, amazingly, we reached our destination intact, emerging as dazzlingly complex, exquisitely engineered assemblages of trillions of cells. This metamorphosis constitutes one of nature’s most spectacular yet commonplace magic tricks—and one of its most coveted secrets. In From One Cell, physician and researcher Ben Stanger offers a breathtaking glimpse into what scientists are discovering about how life and the body take shape, and how these revelations stand to revolutionize medicine and the future of human health.

In vivid prose, Stanger leads readers on a gripping odyssey retracing this universal, yet unremembered, rite of passage. Through the eyes of the scientists unraveling development’s riddles in experiments as painstaking as they are inventive, we confront fascinating puzzles: how does the plethora of different tissues that compose our bodies arise from a single source? How do cells know what they are meant to become—skin or bone, blood or muscle—when all carry the same set of genetic instructions? Once a cell starts developing down one path, can it change its mind, or is its destiny irrevocably sealed?

As Stanger shows us, the answers to these questions may at last empower us to solve some of our most persistently confounding medical challenges, from cancer to cognitive decline to degenerative disease. Recognizing tumors as evil doppelgangers of the embryo points the way toward new, more targeted cancer therapies. Learning how cells choose their identities and find their way in space could unlock lifesaving breakthroughs in regenerative medicine. The possibilities are extraordinary.

Popular science at its best, From One Cell celebrates the power and beauty of understanding our collective beginnings.  – W.W. Norton

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Poetry pick

Invasives: Poems by Emily Kingery

INVASIVES is a dark daydream in a small Midwestern town: a place of hunger, dizzying narcotics, and dormant lies in children’s minds. Here, a coming-of-age story emerges in delectable scenes, words that open and close like petals, and images that knife as easily as if through stems. INVASIVES conjures familiar dangers, then slices them open and enchants them. It softens into myth a love that refuses to disappear. – Emily Kingery

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Self-Help pick

Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good by Tina Turner with Taro Gold and Regula Curti

I dedicate this book to you…
in honor of your
unseen efforts to
triumph over each problem
life sends your way.

Tina was a global icon of inspiration. And here, with Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good, Tina shows how anyone can overcome life’s obstacles—even transform the “impossible” to possible—and fulfill our dreams. She shows how we, too, can improve our lives, empowering us with spiritual tools and sage advice to enrich our unique paths.

Buddhism has been a central part of Tina Turner’s life for decades and, in music, film, and live performances, she has shined as an example of generating hope from nothing, breaking through all limitations, and succeeding in life. Drawing from the lessons of her own life, from adversity to stratospheric heights, Tina effortlessly shows how the spiritual lessons of Buddhism help her transform from sorrow, adversity, and poverty into joy, stability, and prosperity.

Here, Tina shares the wisdom of an extraordinary lifetime in Happiness Becomes You making this the perfect gift of inspiration for you or a loved one. – Simon & Schuster

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Social Justice pick

Pulling the Chariot of the Sun: a Memoir of a Kidnapping by Shane McCrae

An unforgettable memoir by an award-winning poet about being kidnapped from his Black father and raised by his white supremacist grandparents.

When Shane McCrae was three years old, his grandparents kidnapped him and took him to suburban Texas. His mom was white and his dad was Black, and to hide his Blackness from him, his maternal grandparents stole him from his father. In the years that followed, they manipulated and controlled him, refusing to acknowledge his heritage—all the while believing they were doing what was best for him.

For their own safety and to ensure the kidnapping remained a success, Shane’s grandparents had to make sure that he never knew the full story, so he was raised to participate in his own disappearance. But despite elaborate fabrications and unreliable memories, Shane begins to reconstruct his own story and to forge his own identity. Gradually, the truth unveils itself, and with the truth, comes a path to reuniting with his father and finding his own place in the world.

A revelatory account of a singularly American childhood that hauntingly echoes the larger story of race in our country, Pulling the Chariot of the Sun is written with the virtuosity and heart of one of the finest poets writing today. And it is also a powerful reflection on what is broken in America—but also what might heal and make it whole again.  – Simon & Schuster

This title is also available as a Libby eAudiobook

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Strength Through Struggle pick

Where the Children Take Us: How One Family Achieved the Unimaginable by Zain E. Asher

In this spellbinding memoir, popular CNN anchor Zain E. Asher pays tribute to her mother’s strength and determination to raise four successful children in the shadow of tragedy.

Awaiting the return of her husband and young son from a road trip, Obiajulu Ejiofor receives shattering news. There’s been a fatal car crash, and one of them is dead.

In Where the Children Take Us, Obiajulu’s daughter, Zain E. Asher, tells the story of her mother’s harrowing fight to raise four children as a widowed immigrant in South London. There is tragedy in this tale, but it is not a tragedy. Drawing on tough-love parenting strategies, Obiajulu teaches her sons and daughters to overcome the daily pressures of poverty, crime and prejudice—and much more. With her relentless support, the children exceed all expectations—becoming a CNN anchor, an Oscar-nominated actor—Asher’s older brother Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave)—a medical doctor, and a thriving entrepreneur.

The generations-old Nigerian parenting techniques that lead to the family’s salvation were born in the village where young Obiajulu and Arinze meet with their country on the brink of war. Together, they emigrate to London in the 1970s to escape the violence, but soon confront a different set of challenges in the West.

When grief threatens to engulf her fractured family after the accident, Obiajulu, suddenly a single mother in a foreign land, refuses to accept defeat. As her children veer down the wrong path, she instills a family book club with Western literary classics, testing their resolve and challenging their deeper understanding. Desperate for inspiration, she plasters newspaper clippings of Black success stories on the walls and hunts for overachieving neighbors to serve as role models, all while running Shakespeare theatre lines with her son and finishing homework into the early morning with Zain. When distractions persist, she literally cuts the TV cord and installs a residential pay phone.

The story of a woman who survived genocide, famine, poverty, and crushing grief to rise from war torn Africa to the streets of South London and eventually the drawing rooms of Buckingham Palace, Where the Children Take Us is an unforgettable portrait of strength, tenacity, love, and perseverance embodied in one towering woman.  – HarperCollins

This title is also available in large print and a Libby eBook.

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Theologies pick

Becoming Eve: My Journey from Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman by Abby Stein

The powerful coming-of-age story of an ultra-Orthodox child who was born to become a rabbinic leader and instead became a woman

Abby Stein was raised in a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, isolated in a culture that lives according to the laws and practices of eighteenth-century Eastern Europe, speaking only Yiddish and Hebrew and shunning modern life. Stein was born as the first son in a dynastic rabbinical family, poised to become a leader of the next generation of Hasidic Jews.

But Abby felt certain at a young age that she was a girl. She suppressed her desire for a new body while looking for answers wherever she could find them, from forbidden religious texts to smuggled secular examinations of faith. Finally, she orchestrated a personal exodus from ultra-Orthodox manhood to mainstream femininity-a radical choice that forced her to leave her home, her family, her way of life.

Powerful in the truths it reveals about biology, culture, faith, and identity, Becoming Eve poses the enduring question: How far will you go to become the person you were meant to be? – Seal Press, Hachette Book Group

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True Crime pick

I Know Who You Are: How an Amateur DNA Sleuth Unmasked the Golden State Killer and Changed Crime Fighting Forever by Barbara Rae-Venter

For twelve years the Golden State Killer terrorized California, stalking victims and killing without remorse. Then he simply disappeared, for the next forty-four years, until an amateur DNA sleuth opened her laptop. In I Know Who You Are, Barbara Rae-Venter reveals how she went from researching her family history as a retiree to hunting for a notorious serial killer—and how she became the nation’s leading authority on investigative genetic genealogy, the most dazzling new crime-fighting weapon to appear in decades.

Rae-Venter leads readers on a vivid journey through the many cases she tackled, often starting with little more than a DNA sample. From the first criminal case she ever solved—uncovering the long-lost identity of a child abductee—to the heartbreaking story of the Billboard Boy, whose skeletal remains were discovered along a highway, to the search for the Golden State Killer, Rae-Venter shares haunting, often thrilling accounts of how she helped solve some of America’s most chilling cold cases in the span of just three years.

For each investigation, Rae-Venter brings readers inside her unique “grasshopper mind” as she analyzes DNA data and pores through obituaries, marriage records, and old newspaper articles. Readers join in on urgent calls with sheriffs, FBI agents, and district attorneys as she details the struggle to obtain usable crime scene DNA samples, until, finally, a critical piece of the puzzle tumbles into place.

I Know Who You Are captures both the exhilaration of the moment of discovery and the sheer depth of emotion that lingers around cold cases, informing Rae-Venter’s careful approach to her work. It is a story of relentless curiosity, of constant invention and reinvention, and of human beings striving to answer the most elemental questions about themselves: What defines identity? Where do we belong? And are we truly who we think we are? – Ballantine Books

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Join Simply Held to have any of the new nonfiction picks automatically put on hold for you four times a year.