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Tag: nonfiction

The Other Slavery, Andrés Reséndez

I was going to start this post about The Other Slavery by making a really grim joke about Ir*sh sl*very (asterisked out so Nazi bros don’t find my blog), but then I just got hugely sad about living in a world where that’s still a lie people perpetuate instead of talking about real actual slavery. So instead I’ll start by saying that Andrés Reséndez has produced what feels to me like a monumental work of American history, delving deep into archival records to uncover the hidden story of American enslavement of indigenous people. Reséndez argues that while disease certainly played…

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Angry White People, Hsiao-Hung Pai

By total coincidence, my hold on Angry White People came in the same week that Jo Cox was assassinated in England, apparently for her support of Britain’s presence in the EU and other liberalish political agendas. I heard the name “Nigel Farage” for the first and second times in this book and the news (respectively? not respectively? I don’t remember). The real reason I put a hold on it in the first place was that I’m interested in what makes people choose one belief over another one. I try — I do try — to ground my own beliefs in…

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Pandemic, Sonia Shah

I read Pandemic author Sonia Shah’s book The Body Hunter a few years back and was not satisfied with the quality of her citations. While I totally stand by that (the endnotes in that book were a mess), and I was all set to think ill of Pandemic also, actually the endnotes in this one were way much better sorted out. I conclude that she had better copyeditors this time around. This book’s about the spread of infectious diseases, and Sonia Shah herself admits that she’s not sure how to tell the story she wants to tell. Much of her…

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The Secret Life of the American Musical, Jack Viertel

Jack Viertel’s The Secret Life of the American Musical (hat-tip to the fabulous Kim for the recommendation!) isn’t a history of the American musical — a thing about which I would not care at all1 — but rather a dissection of what goes into making it. Viertel breaks down an array of musicals, from Gypsy to Hamilton, into their component parts to explore what makes their engines run. Some of this I was already familiar with, like the not-a-rule-but-sort-of-a-rule that the protagonist has to sing an “I Want” song early on, to get the audience on board with whatever the stakes are…

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American Gypsy, Oksana Marafioti

Before I launch into a proper review of Oksana Marafioti’s American Gypsy, a word about terminology. Marafioti never discusses, in the course of her book, her use of the term gypsy. However, many many many Romani people consider it to be an ethnic slur; and when the word appears in the course of this book, it’s more often than not being thrown at Marafioti or at her family as an insult. So although Marafioti herself has said that she’s not opposed to the use of the term, I’m going to stick with Romani throughout this review. And so should you,…

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Speak Now: Marriage Equality on Trial, Kenji Yoshino

This is probably a good time to let y’all know that as a matter of principle I cannot support a book with double subtitles. I’m not about that life. The full title of this book is Speak Now: Marriage Equality on Trial: The Story of Hollingsworth v. Perry, and someone needed to cut back on at least 30% of that mess before they published this book. Having said that, Speak Now reminded me of everything I love about reading nonfiction and everything I love (and hate) about the American legal system. The author, Kenji Yoshino, carefully lays out the facts…

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Review: The Bright Continent, Dayo Olopade

The universe is more diverse! If you aren’t already participating in Aarti’s wonderful September event A More Diverse Universe, you definitely should. Check out her amazing recommendations here and here and here, visit her blog to check out what other people are reading, and follow the hashtag #Diversiverse on Twitter. My first read for this event is Dayo Olopade’s The Bright Continent: Breaking Rules and Making Change in Modern Africa, a book I’ve long had my eye on because of its brilliantly colored, eye-catching jacket design. It’s also a terrific book, an antidote to what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has called “the…

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Review: The Body Hunters, Sonia Shah

Somebody recommended The Body Hunters when I reviewed Bad Pharma earlier this year, and I’m pleased that I was able to get and read it so soon! The author, an investigative journalist, here examines the ethics of biomedical research — specifically, of American drug companies outsourcing clinical trials to companies with laxer ethical requirements than the US and large populations of sick patients to run tests on. It’s a fairly widespread practice that only gets wider-spread with each passing year. I am an inveterate note-checker in my nonfiction. I already sort of was to begin with, and then I read…

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Review: In the Freud Archives, Janet Malcolm

For my second entry in Ana and Iris’s Long-Awaited Reads Month, I read Janet Malcolm’s book In the Freud Archives. When I discovered Janet Malcolm back in October 2011, In the Freud Archives was the book of hers that appealed to me the most. For one reason or another, I didn’t get to read it until Christmas vacation.; and I think I might have liked it better if I’d read it sooner. I am not exactly disillusioned with Janet Malcolm, but I’m not not disillusioned with her. Her writing remains as beautifully clear and elegant as I ever thought it…

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Review: The Imposter’s Daughter, Laurie Sandell

Throughout her childhood, Laurie Sandell’s father would enrapture her with stories of his brilliant, varied, and successful life: top grades at the best universities, meetings with Henry Kissinger to advise on policy, multiple awards for valor in the Vietnam War. As an adult, she spun through years of dysfunction and uncertainty before becoming an interviewer of celebrities. But Sandell also begins to learn things about her father that make it clear he isn’t, and never was, the person he claimed to be. Cover report: Same cover in England and America. I like it! To begin with the good things about…

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