Archives de catégorie : History

WHITE TEARS/BROWN SCARS de Ruby Hamad

For readers of White Fragility, an explosive book of history and cultural criticism, which argues that white feminism has been a weapon of white supremacy and patriarchy deployed against Black and Indigenous women, and women of color.

WHITE TEARS/BROWN SCARS:
How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color
by Ruby Hamad
Catapult, October 2020
(chez MacKenzie Wolf – voir catalogue)

Taking us from the slave era, when white women fought in court to keep “ownership” of their slaves, through the centuries of colonialism, when they offered a soft face for brutal tactics, to the modern workplace, White Tears/Brown Scars tells a charged story of white women’s active participation in campaigns of oppression. It offers a long overdue validation of the experiences of women of color. Discussing subjects as varied as The Hunger Games, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the viral BBQ Becky video, and 19th century lynchings of Mexicans in the American Southwest, Ruby Hamad undertakes a new investigation of gender and race. She shows how the division between innocent white women and racialized, sexualized women of color was created, and why this division is crucial to confront. Along the way, there are revelatory responses to questions like: Why are white men not troubled by sexual assault on women? (See Christine Blasey Ford.) With rigor and precision, Hamad builds a powerful argument about the legacy of white superiority that we are socialized within, a reality that we must apprehend in order to fight.

Ruby Hamad is a journalist, author, and academic completing a Ph.D. in media studies at UNSW (Australia). Her Guardian article, ‘How White Women Use Strategic Tears to Silence Women of Color,’ became a global flashpoint for discussions of white feminism and racism and inspired her debut book, White Tears/Brown Scars, which has received critical acclaim in her home country of Australia. Her writing has also featured in Prospect Magazine, The New Arab, and more. She splits her time between Sydney and New York.

THE GENIUS OF WOMEN de Janice Kaplan

We tell girls that they can be anything, so why do 90 percent of Americans believe that geniuses are almost always men? New York Times bestselling journalist and creator and host of the podcast The Gratitude Diaries Janice Kaplan explores the powerful forces that have rigged the system—and celebrates the women geniuses, past and present, who have triumphed anyway.

THE GENIUS OF WOMEN:
From Overlooked to Changing the World
by Janice Kaplan
Dutton, February 2020
(chez The Martell Agency – voir catalogue)

Even in this time of rethinking women’s roles, we define genius almost exclusively through male achievement. When asked to name a genius, people mention Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, and Steve Jobs. As for great women? In one survey, the only female genius anyone listed was Marie Curie. Janice Kaplan, the New York Times bestselling author of The Gratitude Diaries, set out to determine why the extraordinary work of so many women has been brushed aside. Using her unique mix of memoir, narrative, and inspiration, she makes surprising discoveries about women geniuses now and throughout history, in fields from music to robotics. Through interviews with neuroscientists, psychologists, and dozens of women geniuses at work in the world today—including Nobel Prize winner Frances Arnold and AI expert Fei-Fei Li—she proves that genius isn’t just about talent. It’s about having that talent recognized, nurtured, and celebrated. Across the generations, even when they face less-than-perfect circumstances, women geniuses have created brilliant and original work. In THE GENIUS OF WOMEN, you’ll learn how they ignored obstacles and broke down seemingly unshakable barriers. The geniuses in this moving, powerful, and very entertaining book provide more than inspiration—they offer a clear blueprint to everyone who wants to find her own path and move forward with passion.

Janice Kaplan has enjoyed wide success as a magazine editor, television producer, writer, and journalist. The former editor in chief of Parade magazine, she is the author or coauthor of fourteen books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Gratitude Diaries and I’ll See You Again. She lives in New York City and Kent, Connecticut.

KING de Jonathan Eig

A new biography of Martin Luther King by award-winning author and journalist Jonathan Eig, including newly-revealed materials.

KING
by Jonathan Eig
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2022
(chez David Black Literary Agency)

Credit: Lizz Kannenberg

Martin Luther King Jr. was the courageous and brilliant leader of the American civil rights movement, but today many know nothing about him beyond four syllables: “I have a dream.” When we turn heroes into superheroes, when we simplify the lives of great men and women in order to make their lessons easier to digest, we lose sight of their true greatness. We fail to honor them as real people with real accomplishments. Martin Luther King is fast approaching this predicament. The timing for a fresh look at his life could not be better, and the need for one is urgent: thousands of previously unseen documents have come to light, and many of King’s friends, followers, and confidants are eager to talk. Those who can give firsthand accounts are nearing the point in their lives where, if they aren’t heard soon, their stories will be lost for good. In the thirty-six years since the last full biography of King was published, a plethora of new primary documents have become available, and our understanding of King the man has fundamentally changed. The new materials include the 102 interviews with King contemporaries conducted from 2010-2016 for the National Museum of African American History and Culture; more than 100 interview transcripts from the 1987 documentary Eyes on the Prize; handwritten notes from James Baldwin; a 1964 interview with King himself taken by the poet and novelist Robert Penn Warren; as well as tens of thousands of newly released FBI documents. Some of King’s contemporaries, including Harry Belafonte and Andrew Young, have already given interviews for Jonathan Eig’s book, which will also incorporate recent research suggesting that King battled depression, drawing from thousands of newly archived personal correspondence, including letters from King to his first biographer, Lawrence Dunbar Reddick, in 1958.

Jonathan Eig is the author of five critically acclaimed books, two of them New York Times bestsellers. He was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Monsey, New York. Eig is a former staff writer for the Wall Street Journal, and he remains a contributing writer there. He has written for the New York Times, The New Yorker, Esquire, the Washington Post, and other publications. His most recent book, Ali: A Life, was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. It has also been long-listed for the Plutarch Prize for biography and the 2018 PEN/ESPN Award for literary sports writing. It was selected as one of the best books of 2017 by The Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, and Sports Illustrated. Eig is currently working as producer on multi-part Muhammad Ali documentary. Eig is also working with Morgan Freeman and CBS Studios to develop an eight-part television series based on the life of Ali. Eig’s birth-control pill book is under option by Nat Geo for a television series, and his Lou Gehrig book is in development as a major motion picture. He lives in Chicago, IL.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT CAMPAIGN de John Klima

The first book to prominently feature captured and declassified Nazi communiqués sent from Washington, D.C., to Berlin that show how the Nazis attempted to contaminate the American political system by meddling in the 1940 election.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT CAMPAIGN:
Fear, Propaganda and the True Story of the Nazi Plot to Steal the American Presidency
by John Klima
Pantheon/PRH, 2022

Credit: Jennifer Marder

The year: 1940. Joseph Goebbels, desperate for a favorable outcome to the US presidential election, deployed every media tool at his disposal. THE ENLIGHTENMENT CAMPAIGN is the first book to prominently feature captured and declassified Nazi communiqués sent from Washington, D.C., to Berlin that show how the Nazis attempted to contaminate the American political system by meddling in the 1940 election. The protagonist: one of the farthest-reaching voices in American media of the time—the largely forgotten dynamo Dorothy Thompson. The first woman journalist to interview Hitler, in 1931, she came back from the experience aghast, and spent the next decade—the period of this book—sounding the alarm of the creeping threat of fascism coming to America. Through her syndicated columns and her regular radio addresses, her audience numbered 13 million. She was the first woman journalist to make the cover of TIME Magazine. Since her interview with Hitler—and drawing on her decades in Europe as a foreign correspondent—she saw the way insidious propaganda and the stoking of xenophobia could drive an economically vulnerable democracy into the arms of an anti-democratic despot. In a fast-paced, informative, and reverberating narrative, John Klima recounts this battle for the hearts and minds of the American people.

John Klima, a former staff writer at The Los Angeles Times, a former National Baseball columnist at the Los Angeles Daily News, and whose work has appeared in the Best American Sports Writing, The New York Times, and elsewhere, is the author of three critically acclaimed narrative baseball histories: The Game Must Go On (Thomas Dunne, 2015) (“Zips along and offers great descriptions,” PW), Bushville Wins! (Thomas Dunne, 2012) (“[Klima] tells a great story well, makes a dead era vivid,” Wall Street Journal), and Willie’s Boys (Wiley, 2009) (“The drama is real, the stakes are high, and Klima captures it with shimmering prose and hard-nosed reporting,” Jonathan Eig).

OUR MOON de Rebecca Boyle

Science journalist Rebecca Boyle explores the cultural and scientific history of the Moon and discovers that far from being a lifeless ornament of the sky, the Moon holds the answers to some of our most fundamental questions—from the origins of the Earth and the genesis of life to the nature of time itself.

OUR MOON:
Uncovering the Secrets It Holds to Our Past and Our Future
by Rebecca Boyle
Random House, January 2024
(via DeFiore and Co.)

The Moon is our constant companion. It has been watching over us since before there was an “us.” From our earliest beginnings, we have worshipped the moon, used it to mark our days, depended on its predictability to grow our crops and follow migrating herds, and looked to it for artistic and spiritual inspiration. The Moon has played many roles in our lives, and now it is ready to tell us all it knows.
In OUR MOON, award-winning science journalist Rebecca Boyle traces our relationship with the Moon over the centuries and explores the latest scientific findings into what the Moon can now tell us about Earth’s origins and its future. As we prepare to return to the Moon, it is more important than ever to take a closer look at this still mysterious neighbor of ours.
No other book has delved into the cultural and scientific history of the Moon. A subject with truly global appeal, OUR MOON is for readers who enjoy single-subject works such as Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens and David George Haskell’s The Songs of Trees.

Rebecca Boyle is a contributing writer for The Atlantic, a frequent contributor at FiveThirtyEight, and a freelance journalist whose work has been published in the New York Times, Wired, Aeon, Quanta, Popular Science, The New Yorker, and Scientific American. Boyle was a 2011 Ocean Science Journalism fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and a 2013 journalism fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. This is her first book.