Non-Fiction reads so far in 2024
I try to get to a non-fiction book every week, but, alas, I don't always succeed when so many great fiction books are out there. Still, if one sets a goal, one perseveres as best as one can.
So far I've read:
Ta-Nehisi Coates – Between the World and Me
America's racist history and how to navigate it, relayed to a teenaged black boy through the lens of his father.
Hanif Abdurraqib – A Little Devil in America
Exploration of Black influences on American music, literature and drama/acting.
David Grann – The Wager
Survival tale after an infamous 19th century shipwreck trying to navigate around South America. A lesson in how imperialist Britain could bollocks anything through hubris and fanatical adherence to class lines.
Hope Jahren – Lab Girl
Women have never had it easy in STEM, but that doesn't mean it's all drab. Great to see how Ms Jahren hung in there for the love of science and nature, despite the constant uphill battles.
David Treuer – The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee
Yes, Native Americans have gotten a rum deal since Europeans first came here, but the Native-American author makes it clear that his people have accomplished great things despite it--and especially thanks to their resiliency. A book surprising for its hopeful outlook.
Ralph Waldo Emerson – Self-Reliance
The mousetrap attraction philosopher is by turns insightful and annoying as only a Victorian philosopher could be with his incidental snobbery, LOL.
Daniel Ellsberg – The Doomsday Machine
Ellsberg was there almost from the beginning with the birth of American nuclear policy, including playing a pivotal role in the infamous Cuban crisis. He asserts that America has always had a first-strike policy, that continues even now. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Michelle Obama – The Light We Carry
How to make a difference in the world without being a prat.
Kevin Hart – This Is How We Do It
A self-help book, sort of. that asserts one stop feeling sorry for oneself and blaming all the obstacles and do your best to get through them, over them or around them. Of course, not everyone will enjoy the kind of success Mr Hart has, so it's a bit...insensitive...of him to preach from the promised land to the rest of us who aren't so lucky.
Jim Popkin – Code Name Blue Wren
A Cuban asset working in the very heart of the Pentagon, with full access to our most coveted secrets. What could possibly go wrong?
Michelle Zauner – Crying in H Mart
A memoir about grief shouldn't be this funny. Ms. Zauner relays what it was like growing up with an American dad and Korean mum, and how food was the language of love between mother and daughter.
Les & Tamara Payne – The Dead Are Arising
Fills in the gaps of Malcolm X's autobiography with what he either didn't know about (young child) or forgot or just plain glossed over for his own reasons.
Clint Smith – How the Word Is Passed
Intriguing book from an African-American perspective about how our choices of what to teach or commemorate of history says a whole lot about us as Americans, like all those well-preserved Southern plantations, statues honoring Confederate traitors, and even the long road to Juneteenth going from a locally celebrated event in Texas to a national holiday. Smith also tracks back to where the slavery business all started, with a trip to Senegal and its Door of No Return (which probably wasn't that).
Overall, I've found it a good year in reading about reality, thus far.
= new reply since forum marked as read
