Where is your nonfiction section please.
Review: Roadside Religion: In Search of the Sacred, the Strange, and the Substance of Faith, by Timothy Beal Perhaps you take to the road with the explicit aim of [...] discovering the world beyond your world. But what you end up discovering may be something more profoundly transformative and re-creative: yourself beyond yourself, in other... Continue Reading →
Hype: How Scammers, Grifters, and Con Artists Are Taking Over the Internet―and Why We're Following The story of the Fyre Festival, which saw Instagram influencers tricked into promoting a music festival on a private Bahamian island with luxury accommodations, gourmet dining and a picturesque setting, only to turn out to be a few rain-soaked tents... Continue Reading →
Psychiatry, prison-camp manufactured Chinese goods, and racist tales from Nebraska. What a grab bag today. Let's dive in! Nobody's Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness, by Roy Richard Grinkerpublished January 26, 2021 by W.W. Norton Only recently did mental illnesses brand the whole person, not just his or her behavior, with what['s...]... Continue Reading →
Review: The Pornification of America, by Bernadette Barton Welcome to raunch culture in the 2020s — when the United States has devolved into a Hustler fantasy. Naked and half naked pictures of girls and women litter every screen, billboard, and bus. Pole dancing studios keep women fit while men airdrop their dick pics to female passengers on... Continue Reading →
A Promised Land, by Barack Obama Is it even worth reviewing former President Barack Obama's book? What can I add to any discussion? It sells itself; you probably already knew before it came out whether you would read it or not. I struggled with whether I had anything meaningful to say about it, or if... Continue Reading →
Before I start on my 2020 favorites, I'd rather take a quick look ahead first. We're all hoping for a better 2021 -- eventually, at least -- so let's start there instead. Here are some upcoming nonfiction titles scheduled for early 2021 that I've got my eye on. Any of these on your list too?... Continue Reading →
In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was picked up for a murder that he not only didn't commit, but that he ridiculously couldn't have committed: he'd been locked into a warehouse working an overnight shift miles away when the robbery and shooting occurred. No problem for the prosecution, though - they just alleged he scaled a... Continue Reading →
Reading Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek last year was one of those infrequent, world-altering reading experiences for me. Exciting, then, to realize what a back catalog of nonfiction Dillard has. I read Teaching a Stone to Talk, an essay collection, last year as well. I find her writing worlds apart from any other author I... Continue Reading →
Two new essay collections out this month, both with weird, different looks at aspects of Americana. First, Tom Zoellner's The National Road: Dispatches From a Changing America, which "attempts to paint a picture of 'American place' in this uncertain era of political toxin and economic rearrangement. These are observations collected from thirty years of traveling... Continue Reading →
She Come By It Natural collects author Sarah Smarsh's four long-form essays about Dolly Parton and the beloved singer's connections to feminism through her roots in rural poverty in Tennessee (it's better than I'm setting it up, but that's the basic premise). These essays were the result of a Freshgrass Foundation journalism fellowship Smarsh won,... Continue Reading →
Essay collections can be wildly mixed bags: there are usually some that sing and others that are duds. I've already had one life-changingly glorious essay collection this year, one that made me not hate pandemic writing, so what were the odds of two more outstanding ones in the trash dump that is this year? Yet... Continue Reading →
After the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last week I barely even want to talk about this madman who may actually be responsible for putting a third Supreme Court Justice on the bench, but I did read two books about him last week. I don't know why I do these things to myself, besides... Continue Reading →
