Bulletin #40
—The modern world revolves around data, but because data treats men (not women) as the default, bias against women is inherent in the systems that run our lives—
The Non-fiction Feature
Invisible Women
Author: Caroline Criado Perez
Publisher: Abrams Press
Pages: 488 | 2021
We like to think that the unpaid work women do is just about individual women caring for their individual family members to their own individual benefit.
It isn’t…When the government cuts public services that we all pay for with our taxes, demand for those services doesn’t suddenly cease. The work is simply transferred onto women…
The Memoir Spot
The Girls Who Went Away – The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades before Roe v. Wade
by Ann Fessler
“Yet another myth in common currency is that these women did move on and forget.
In truth, none of the mothers I interviewed was able to forget. Rather, they describe the surrender of their child as the most significant and defining event of their lives.”
The Product Spot
UN Women Data Hub
The UN Women Data Hub has reports on data on security and violence against women across the world, findings on how multiple countries left behind women in pandemic responses, and a comprehensive library of resources.
The Monthly Bulletin: August 2024
—A sweeping look at our technological eras, and what our past eras tell us about the one we exist in today—
The Non-fiction Feature
The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
Author: Tim Wu
Publisher: Vintage
Pages: 384| 2011
Yet for many people, the Internet’s structure was–indeed remains–deeply counterintuitive.
This is because it defies every expectation one has developed from experience of other media industries, which are all predicated on control of the customer…the Internet abdicates control to the individual; that is its special allure, its power to be endlessly surprising, as well as its founding principle.
The Memoir Spot
Alibaba – The House That Jack Ma Built
by Duncan Clark
“Everything I’d learned in China was that China was the richest country in the world,” Jack later said.
“When I arrived in Australia, I realized it was totally different. I started to think you have to use your own mind to judge, to think.”
The Product Spot
Internet History Podcast
A fun podcast about the history of the internet!
The Monthly Bulletin: July 2024
—The horrors that Central American migrants face, caused in part by U.S. policies, when fleeing north—
The Non-fiction Feature
The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail
Author: Oscar Martinez
Publisher: Verso
Pages: 224| 2014
I hope, rather, that the book generates respect for these men and women, for those who have done something for their families that many of us could hardly find the strength to do.
Respect for this drive that migrants have, a drive which is stronger than the criminal cartels, a drive more powerful than the train engine and a drive more vital than any limb–a leg, for example–of our very body.
The Children’s Spot
Mama’s Nightingale
by Edwidge Danticat
“The next time we visit Mama, I do my best not to cry. I sit on her lap and kiss her whole face.
I don’t ask when she’s coming home, because she doesn’t know either.”
The Product Spot
El Faro – Latin America’s first native internet newspaper
A newspaper, boasting bold journalists, that tells the stories about Latin America that nobody else dares.
The Monthly Bulletin: June 2024
—How we remember things, why we remember things, and what we can do to remember better—
The Non-fiction Feature
Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything
Author: Joshua Foer
Publisher: Penguin Books
Pages: 320 | 2012
The principle underlying all memory techniques is that our brains don’t remember all types of information equally well. As exceptional as we are at remembering visual imagery…we’re terrible at remembering other kinds of information, like lists of words or numbers.
The point of memory techniques is…to take the kinds of memories our brains aren’t good at holding on to and transform them into the kinds of memories our brains were built for.
The Fiction Spot
Still Alice
by Lisa Genova
“She could no longer follow the thread of the plot or remember the significance of the characters if they weren’t in every scene.
She could appreciate small moments but retained only a general sense of the film after the credits rolled…Watching movies made her keenly aware of how lost she was.”
The Product Spot
Lumosity Brain Games
Lumosity offers “games designed to train your brain.” It has speed, memory, attention, flexibility, problem-solving, word, and math games.
The Monthly Bulletin: May 2024
—A remarkable argument for shared spaces, and how they can forge the connections we need for health and civic life—
The Non-fiction Feature
Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life
Author: Eric Klinenberg
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Pages: 304 | 2019
When social infrastructure, [the physical places and organizations that shape the way people interact], is robust, it fosters contact, mutual support, and collaboration among friends and neighbors; when degraded, it inhibits social activity, leaving families and individuals to fend for themselves…local, face-to-face interactions…are the building blocks of all public life.
The Memoir Spot
Your Guide to the National Parks, and others
by Michael Oswald
“Joshua Tree National Park possesses some of the most unique landscapes on the planet. Forests of twisted Joshua trees and abstract piles of rocks mark a protected region where the Mojave and Colorado deserts converge in southeastern California.
For at least 5,000 years, Native Americans, missionaries, miners, ranchers, and homesteaders have had their shake at life in this arid environment.”
The Product Spot
Detroit River Story Lab
The University of Michigan’s Detroit River Story Lab partners with regional organizations to connect communities with the Detroit River and its stories. These partnerships amplify marginalized voices–building narrative infrastructure–and lift the river’s role in Detroit and other nearby locations.
The Monthly Bulletin: March 2024
—How, and why, certain environmental factors led to sweeping civilizational changes in some parts of the world but not others—
The Non-fiction Feature
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Author: Jared Diamond
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
Pages: 528 | 2017
Thus, questions about inequality in the modern world can be reformulated as follows.
Why did wealth and power become distributed as they now are, rather than in some other way? For instance, why aren’t Native Americans, Africans, and Aboriginal Australians the ones who decimated, subjugated, or exterminated Europeans and Asians?
The Children’s Spot
Timeline: A Visual History of Our World
by Peter Goes
“2010s – Wars and poverty bring streams of refugees to Europe, with thousands risking their lives in unseaworthy boats in search of a better life.
Yes, Europeans scrambled out of economic crisis, and we have untold computing power in our pocket–but peace and prosperity for all remains a distant dream.”
The Product Spot
A History of the World in 100 Objects (podcast)
100 episodes about 100 historical objects–it is a mini-journey through the world, through time, and through cultures.
The Monthly Bulletin: February 2024
—In reimagining life beyond early marriage, single U.S. women created remarkable change—
The Non-fiction Feature
All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation
Author: Rebecca Traister
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Pages: 368 | 2016
A move toward independent life did not simply emerge from a clamshell: It was born of generations of dissatisfaction with the inequities of religious, conservative, social practice…The impulse toward liberation isn’t inoculated against by strict conservative backgrounds; it’s often inculcated by them.
The Fiction Spot
Lessons in Chemistry
by Bonnie Garmus
“It is my experience that far too many people do not appreciate the work and sacrifice that goes into being a wife, a mother, a woman.
Well, I am not one of them. At the end of our thirty minutes together, we will have done something worth doing. We will have created something that will not go unnoticed. We will have made supper. And it will matter.”
The Product Spot
The Golden Girls
The Golden Girls is a classic sitcom about unmarried women and the rich, complex, and wonderful lives they lead.
The Monthly Bulletin: January 2024
—The innumerable upsides of introversion and how it benefits our lives—
The Non-fiction Feature
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
Author: Susan Cain
Publisher: Crown Publish Group
Pages: 368 | 2013
It turned out that the introverts who were especially good at acting like extroverts tended to score high for a trait that psychologists call “self-monitoring.” Self-monitors are highly skilled at modifying their behavior to the social demands of a situation.”
The Children’s Spot
Ava and Pip
by Carol Weston
“Pip is twelve–for one more month. She talks at home, but at school, she is extremely shy. Pip was a preemie, which means she was born early…When Pip was little, they worried about her a lot. To tell you the truth, they still worry about her a lot. They also pay way more attention to her than to me. I try not to let it bother me…but it kind of does.
The Product Spot
Personality tests
There are many websites based on the famed Myers-Briggs personality types. That is, the websites ask you a slew of questions about yourself to determine things such as: do you direct and receive energy via extraversion (E) or introversion (I)? Do you take in information with sensing (S) or intuition (N); and do you conclude things by thinking (T) or feeling (F)? Last, do you approach the outside world through judging (J) or perceiving (P)?
The Monthly Bulletin: December 2023
a list of all the books reviewed in 2023
(and my super pithy take on them)
The Monthly Bulletin: November 2023
—The story of the doctor who shed light on the Flint water crisis and revealed the government’s abandonment of civic responsibility—
The Non-fiction Feature
What the Eyes Don’t See – A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City
Author: Mona Hanna-Attisha
Publisher: One World
Pages: 384 | 2019
We found out later that in January 2015, state officials, while telling Flint residents that their water was safe to drink, were arranging for water coolers to be delivered to the Flint State Office Building so state employees wouldn’t have to drink from the tap.
The Fiction Spot
Chevy in the Hole
by Kelsey Ronan
“There was lead in her bloodstream. The Flint River was the amniotic fluid she had somersaulted in. There was no way of knowing what would happen to her, the particular ways she would suffer, or who she could’ve been.”
The Product Spot
NRDC’s Guide to Safe Drinking Water
NRDC’s guide to safe drinking water discusses not only the possibility of lead in water but also PFAS (“forever chemicals”), atrazine, pathogens, nitrates, arsenic, and more. It also addresses what to do if you believe your water violates federal standards, and other questions about your drinking water.
The Monthly Bulletin: October 2023
—A dive into America’s “tiny reign of terror,” the Salem witch trials—
The Non-fiction Feature
The Witches: Suspicion, Betrayal, and Hysteria in 1692 Salem
Author: Stacy Schiff
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Pages: 512 | 2016
What exactly was a witch?…A witch is one who can do or seems to do strange things, beyond the known power of art and ordinary nature, by virtue of a confederacy with evil spirits.
The Children’s Spot
The Witches
by Roald Dahl
“In fairy-tales, witches always wear silly black hats and black cloaks, and they ride on broomsticks. But this is not a fairy-tale. This is about REAL WITCHES.”
The Product Spot
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the classic supernatural TV drama–chock full of vampires, witches, demons, magic, spells, and all other sorts of mysticism.
The Monthly Bulletin: September 2023
—A critical examination of high schools in wealthy suburbs, and the friction of increased academic competition between Asian Americans and whites—
The Non-fiction Feature
Race at the Top:
Asian Americans and Whites in Pursuit of the American Dream in Suburban Schools
Author: Natasha Warikoo
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Pages: 240 | 2022
When privileged children work incredibly hard in school, it’s easy to forget the ways in which private music lessons, expensive tutors, and a privileged community also enable their achievements…American meritocracy is built on exclusion.
The Memoir Spot
Learning in Public
by Courtney E. Martin
“This book is about the jar of good intentions that so many of us carry around these days….we put it by our tasteful succulent gardens next to our Black Lives Matter signs…The gift of adulthood is not a mortgage, I realized, but the freedom to pursue a moral life on your own terms, even if you are White, especially if you are White, and to let your children witness you trying.”
The Product Spot
“Sold a Story” – podcast
A podcast about how children learn to read in the U.S. Specifically, it’s about how a certain methodology of reading proliferated in schools, even though cognitive scientists proved the methodology unsound decades ago–teaching via this method actually made it harder for children to read.
The Monthly Bulletin: August 2023
—A stark look at how important stable housing is to every aspect of our lives, and why it is out of reach for millions—
The Non-fiction Feature
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Author: Matthew Desmond
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Pages: 448 | 2017
In fixating almost exclusively on what poor people and their communities lack–good jobs, a strong safety net, role models–we have neglected the critical ways that exploitation contributes to the persistence of poverty. We have overlooked a fact that landlords never have: there is a lot of money to be made off the poor…Exploitation thrives when it comes to the essentials, like housing and food.
The Memoir Spot
Home Boys
by Seth C. Kadish
“Ramon was the baby of the family, neglected by his hardworking mother. Jaime conceived of Ramon’s threats, stubbornness, and refusal to be put in placement as manifestations of a desire for attention, power, and control. Everyone was older, stronger, smarter, and more experienced than him. Ramon’s abusive and threatening stance was his only means to power.”
The Product Spot
The Eviction Lab at Princeton University
The Eviction Lab at Princeton University creates data, tools, and research to help neighbors and policymakers understand the eviction crisis. Run by researchers, students, and website architects, the team believes that a stable, affordable home is central to human flourishing and economic mobility.
The Monthly Bulletin: July 2023
—How media (openly and sneakily) defends the economic, social, and political agendas of privileged groups—
The Non-fiction Feature
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media
Author: Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Pages: 480 | 2002
In contrast to the standard conception of the media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and their independence of authority, we have spelled out and applied a propaganda model that indeed sees the media as serving a ‘societal purpose,’ but not that of enabling the public to assert meaningful control over the political process by providing them with the information needed for the intelligent discharge of political responsibilities.
The Memoir Spot
We Are Bellingcat
by Eliot Higgins
“Scattered around the globe, we are an online collective, investigating war crimes and picking apart disinformation, basing our findings on clues that are openly available on the internet–in social-media postings, in leaked databases, in free satellite maps. Paradoxically, in this age of online disinformation, facts are easier to come by than ever.”
The Product Spot
Fact-checking websites
There’s a lot of words out there–some of it is factual, some of it is close to factual but not quite, and some of it is just wrong. The key is how to parse through it, especially when it never seems like any of us have the time. Fact-checking websites, for both political and non-political topics, are incredibly useful tools for discerning truth, from kind of truth, from fiction.
The Monthly Bulletin: June 2023
—Amidst the horrors of WWII, a daring experiment on willing human subjects to discover the many effects of starvation—
The Non-fiction Feature
The Great Starvation Experiment: The Heroic Men Who Starved So That Millions Could Live
Author: Todd Tucker
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Pages: 288 | 2008
Keys’ primary argument to his military patrons was that solving the hunger problem effectively would be good for democracy. A famished Europe would be fertile ground for communist and fascist ideologues. Knowledge about hunger could be a weapon used to fend off the Red Menace.
The Memoir Spot
Mr. Humble & Dr. Butcher
by Brandy Schillace
“The fight over brain death had proved that even research scientists ignored public opinion at their peril. American progress in heart transplant medicine had stalled while the lawsuit disputing science’s claim to Bruce Tucker’s heart had wound its way through the courts. As soon as twelve Virginian jurors affirmed the surgeons’ right to harvest organs from the brain-dead man, transplant cases rose quickly.”
The Product Spot
The Office for Human Research Protection
The Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) provides leadership in the protection of the rights, welfare, and well-being of human subjects involved in research conducted or supported by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The Monthly Bulletin: May 2023
—Why the U.S. failed so spectacularly in Afghanistan, and why the government lied about it over and over—
The Non-fiction Feature
The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War
Author: Craig Whitlock
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 382 | 2022
Obama administration officials touted statistics that distorted what was really happening on the ground. The Bush administration had done the same, but Obama staffers in the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department took it to a new level, hyping figures that were misleading, spurious or downright false.
The Memoir Spot
The Strangest of Places
by Gerald Carozza
“General Petraeus has said more than once that in a counterinsurgency, money is ammunition. Like a World War I artillery barrage that laid so many shells into the European countryside that unexploded munitions still surface every spring to this day, the U.S. has bombarded Afghanistan with ammunition of money. And just as with traditional ammunition, there is collateral damage.”
The Product Spot
Clarissa Ward – NPR interview
Clarissa Ward, CNN’s chief international correspondent, was one of the first Western journalists to report on life under the Taliban in Afghanistan, and was present during the evacuation. In an NPR interview, she explains her experiences reporting, and how drastically things will change for the women of Afghanistan.
The Monthly Bulletin: April 2023
—A remarkable look at Detroit’s transformation over the 20th century, and the tense race relations that accompanied it—
The Non-fiction Feature
The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit
Author: Thomas J. Sugrue
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Pages: 432 | 2014
Some defined homeowners’ rights as an extension of their constitutional right to freedom of assembly. They had a right to choose their associates. That right would be infringed if their neighborhoods were racially mixed.
The Children’s Spot
Swing
by Kwame Alexander
Police officers
don’t say freeze
like they do
in the movies…
He loves somebody.
He’s gotta love somebody.
And I hope he remembers
somebody loves us too.
The Product Spot
The Detroit Institute of Arts
The Detroit Institute of Arts Museum has one of the largest art collections in the U.S.–it has collections spanning from ancient Egyptian and European works, as well as an impressive research library and archives.
The Monthly Bulletin: March 2023
—In the Middle Ages, surprising and unsurprising ways people perceived their bodies—
The Non-fiction Feature
Medieval Bodies: Life and Death in the Middle Ages
Author: Jack Hartnell
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
Pages: 352 | 2019
For they remind us that there must have been countless social customs of signs and symbols once alive in the Middle Ages, entire sophisticated gestural dialects that have since completely vanished.
The Fiction Spot
The Order
by John-Patrick Bayle
“The Church was never meant to be a nation lead by a king — swollen with its own self-righteousness and infected by political ambition.”
The Product Spot
The History Channel – Middle Ages
The History Channel’s Middle Ages section provides a rich resource for information ranging from the Knights Templar, Charlemagne, the Crusades, Joan of Arc, and more.
The Monthly Bulletin: February 2023
—Humans are altering the planet in a way never before seen, causing the horrifying extinction of an alarming number of species—
The Non-fiction Feature
The Sixth Extinction
Author: Elizabeth Kolbert
Publisher: Picador USA
Pages: 336 | 2015
No single mechanism explains all the mass extinctions in the record, and yet changes in ocean chemistry seem to be a pretty good indicator. Ocean acidification played a role in at least two of the Big Five extinctions (the end-Permian and the end-Triassic) and quite possibly it was a major factor in a third (the end-Cretaceous).
The Fiction Spot
Fox 8
by George Saunders
“Poor Fox 7, my frend, was spinning wile saling, like something long with a wate at one end! And what did those Yumans do? Stood bent over, laffing so hard!….Rest of the day I hid amung those dirt klods, kwietly wimpering.”
The Product Spot
NRDC – Acid Test: The Global Challenge of Ocean Acidification
An exploration of the startling phenomenon of ocean acidification, which may soon challenge marine life on a scale not seen for tens of millions of years.
The Monthly Bulletin: January 2023
—We live in a complex political and economical maze, and we are completely at the mercy of the small group of people who understand, and created, the maze—
The Non-fiction Feature
Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History
Author: Matt Taibbi
Publisher: Random House
Pages: 320 | 2011
There are really two Americas, one for the grifter class, and one for everybody else. In everybody-else land, the world of small businesses and wage-earning employees, the government is something to be avoided…In the grifter world, however, government is a slavish lapdog…The grifter class depends on these two positions getting confused.
The Fiction Spot
Sleep Donation
by Karen Russell
“I make this promise at a moment when people are plunging their straws into any available centimeter of shale and water, every crude oil and uranium and mineral well on Earth, with an indiscriminate and borderless appetite. Fresh air, the sight of trees–these are birthrights and pleasures that we seem bent on extinguishing.”
The Product Spot
The Boys (Amazon Prime show)
A dystopic examination of superheroes–what happens when they are revered, assumed to be working for the greater good, but actually just human at the core.
a list of all other outlined books – click titles to see more
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
The Non-Fiction Feature: The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
The Memoir Spot: Gardening Your Front Yard by Tara Nolan
The Product Spot: Community Supported Agriculture
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
The Children’s Spot: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
The Product Spot: Foundation (Apple TV+)
Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America
The Children’s Spot: Swing by Kwame Alexander
The Product Spot: Bipartisan Safer Communities Act
Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World
The Memoir Spot: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer
The Product Spot: Department of Energy’s Guide to Going Solar
Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic
The Memoir Spot: Smacked by Eilene Zimmerman
The Product Spot: Last Week Tonight – Harm Reduction episode
Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super-rich and Cheat Everyone Else
The Children’s Spot: The Short Cheap Tax Book for Students by Kirk Taylor
The Product Spot: ProPublica – The Secret IRS Files
The Zookeepers’ War: An Incredible True Story from the Cold War
The Children’s Spot: Breaking Stalin’s Nose by Eugene Yelchin
The Product Spot: Association of Zoos and Aquariums
An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You can Take It Back
The Memoir Spot: Something for the Pain: One Doctor’s Account of Life and Death in the ER
by Paul Austin
The Product Spot: Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs Company
The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic – and How it Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World
The Fiction Spot: The Plague by Albert Camus
The Product Spot: Jack Black lotion
Enhancing Government: Federalism for the 21st Century
The Children’s Spot: How the U.S. Government Works by Syl Sobel
The Product Spot: Cornell Law – Legal Information Institute
Citizens of London – The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest, Finest Hour
The Fiction Spot: The Lost Vintage by Ann Mah
The Product Spot: The National WWII Museum
Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few
The Fiction Spot: This Mournable Body by Tsitsi Dangarembga
The Product Spot: A Starting Point
How to Blow Up a Pipeline
The Children’s Spot: We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom
The Product Spot: Patagonia’s Worn Wear Program
A Queer History of the United States
The Poetry Spot: Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
The Product Spot: Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index
The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
The Fiction Spot: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
The Product Spot: Winix Air Purifier
The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — But Some Don’t
The Children’s Spot: It’s Probably Penny by Loreen Leedy
The Product Spot: Risk – a strategy board game
– Holiday Quotes Edition – 2021 –
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
The Fiction Spot: The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
The Product Spot: The MOSAIC Fund for Justice
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
The Fiction Spot: Pastwatch by Orson Scott Card
The Product Spot: National Geographic – Human Origins
The Making of Asian America: A History
The Memoir & Poetry Spot: Minor Feelings – Cathy Park Hong
The Product Spot: Mooncakes
Energy for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines
The Children’s Spot: My First Science Library for Babies – Chris Ferrie
The Product Spot: Bee’s Wrap
We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights
The Children’s Spot: Know Your Rights! A Modern Kid’s Guide to the American Constitution by Laura Barcella
The Product Spot: Stockpile
Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators
The Fiction Spot: Gutshot by Amelia Gray
The Product Spot: VIDA Kids KN95 Mask
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations about Race
The Memoir & Poetry Spot: Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon
The Product Spot: KiwiCo
$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America
The Fiction Spot: A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
The Product Spot: Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library