Shelved: Books Read and Reviewed in February 2026

 

Author Talk

Last Seen:  The Enduring Search by Formerly Enslaved People to Find Their Lost Families.  Judith Giesberg.  Simon & Schuster, 2025.  336 pages.  Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the free review copy.  

No matter how you slice it, every aspect of slavery is unfathomable.  From the racist attitudes that led to its acceptance and justification, to the sheer brutality, to the magnitude of despair and devastation that it caused, to the realization of just how much slavery contributed to American growth and development, to the lingering after effects still felt today, slavery is almost impossible to comprehend.  Here, author Judith Giesberg adds yet another element to the mix.  One of the most harrowing and horrifying cruelties of slavery was separation of families.  American slavery did not recognize any legitimacy when it came to marriages and families amongst the enslaved people.  Loved ones were sold away from each other and separated by hundreds or thousands of miles.  Runaways escaped, often losing all contact with relatives forever.  As soon as slavery ended in 1865, members of the "Freedom Generation," those that had been enslaved and their children, began searching for parents, children, spouses, lovers, friends, and even fellow veterans with whom they had lost contact.  As late as the early 1920s, individuals placed classified ads in and wrote letters to the editors of black newspapers.  These notices were posted and shared and, since most of the formerly enslaved were illiterate or just learning to read, pastors read the ads from the pulpit.  Giesberg has created an incredibly moving narrative based on an archive of almost 5,000 ads and letters by choosing several specific stories to research and explore in depth.  She tells the stories of the searchers, their lost family members, and even their enslavers, revealing happy and not-so-happy outcomes.  She does an excellent job of bringing a lesser known aspect of slavery into the light.  

Trailer for the Netflix series

One Hundred Years of Solitude.  Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  Editorial Sudamericana, 1967. Harper & Row, 1970 (US).  422 pages.

Another classic read,  Garcia Marquez' magnum opus and one of the iconic touchstones of Latin American and world literature.  One Hundred Years of Solitude follows seven generations of the Buendía family in the fictional Latin American town of Macondo. Founded by José Arcadio Buendía and his wife Úrsula, Macondo grows from an isolated village, whose citizens do not die, into a town shaped by civil wars, foreign exploitation, and modernization, only to fall into decay. The novel blends magical realism with history, portraying extraordinary events—such as ascensions into heaven, prophetic manuscripts, and ghostly visitations—as everyday occurrences. Across generations, the Buendías repeat patterns of obsession, passion, violence, and solitude. Names, personalities, and destinies recur, suggesting the inescapability of fate. Úrsula’s long life anchors the family, while later descendants struggle with isolation and emotional detachment. As time loops and memory fades, the family becomes increasingly disconnected from both its past and each other. Finally, ancient prophecies are revealed.  It's a lot.  There are a lot of characters, a lot of symbolism, a lot of magic, and a lot going on.  There's enough fodder for many deep and long literary conversations and debates.  It really is a magical other world.  I'm not sure what it is, but it was a memorable visit.

 

Old School Indian.  Aaron John Curtis.  Hillman Grad Books, 2025.  352 pages.

Abe Jacobs is a Mohawk Indian who left the reservation at eighteen to go to Syracuse University.  There, he met his future wife Alex, and they moved to Miami where she became an elementary school teacher, and he became a clerk in book store with dreams of being a writer.  Their relationship is wild, unconventional, passionate, and open, and Abe has lost touch with his Mohawk identity.  At age 43, he develops an extremely rare autoimmune disorder that his Miami doctors say is basically untreatable and terminal.  Running from his illness and troubled marriage, Abe returns to the Rez and his family.  He reconnects with tradition, his Mohawk identity, and himself in what's described as a "coming-of-middle-age" story that deals with family and the deeply embedded ripple effects of history and culture.  It's also irreverent, funny, and innovative.  Like There, There by Tommy Orange, I think it's destined to be a modern classic.  If college professors taught novels anymore, I could see it added to required class reading lists.  I would say the same for high school reading lists, except that it is pretty sexually explicit.  It's a great book club selection, and a great novel.

The Kite Runner Trailer 2007

The Kite Runner.  Khaled Hosseini.  Riverhead Books, 2003.  371 pages.

Another classic down.  Few books appear on as many contemporary "Best Books" as this one does.  On one level, it's the story of two Afghan boys, Amir and Hassan.  Amir is the son of a wealthy and powerful local merchant, a highly respected pillar of the community, and Hassan is the son of the family's faithful servant and a member of a persecuted minority in Afghanistan.  A horrible crime committed against Hassan drives the two boys apart, and the families separate.  It's also a story about fathers and sons.  Finally, it's the story of Afghanistan.  Over the next decades, the upheaval of the Soviet invasion and occupation, civil war, and Taliban theocracy further disrupts their lives and destroys the country.  Amir and his father migrate to the US where they struggle to survive, and Amir struggles with guilt over the end of his relationship with Hassan.  Years later, he's drawn to return to Pakistan and Afghanistan by a dying family friend who reveals family secrets that push Amir to risk his life to find Hassan's son and to bring him back to the US.  It's an extremely moving and heart-rending novel, well worth a  read, even though elements of the plot are pretty  predictable.

Lecture on the Zorg Massacre

The Zorg:  A Tale of  Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery.  Siddharth Kara.  St. Martin's Press, 2025.   304 pages.  

Between 1517 and 1867, about 12.5 million Africans were forced onto the Middle Passage.   About 10.7 million survived the voyage, to be sold into lifetime bondage on brutal plantations in the Caribbean and in the Americas.  Yet, there are relatively few first-person accounts of the horrible practices, a fact that makes sense for a couple of reasons.  First, the Africans, of course, were almost entirely illiterate and kept so intentionally for the rest of their lives.  Today, there are so few accounts written by Africans that the authors can be counted on a few fingers, the most famous examples being Olaudah Equiano and Phillis Wheatley.  Second, most of the white men involved in the actual work of the slave trade were illiterate as well.  Even the ship captains and first mates most often had very limited literary abilities.  Finally, the whole episode is so massively shameful that many who were involved, and who profited from it, most likely made the effort to erase memories and documentation from existence.   The case of The Zorg Massacre was a watershed event that led directly to the galvanization of the abolitionist movement in Britain that led to the abolition of the British slave trade and slavery in Britain and the British Empire.  The Zorg (aka The Zong) was a Dutch slave ship captured by the British during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War in 1781.  A ship's doctor, with no prior leadership or navigation experience or expertise, was made captain and proceeded to overload the ship with nearly 400 enslaved people, almost double capacity, and set sail for Jamaica.  A normal voyage would have taken about 55 days, but the incompetence of The Zorg's officers added 20-25 days to the journey.  On the verge of running out of water, with days and days at sea left, the decision was made to reduce demand by throwing more than 130 living people overboard to drown.  When the ship finally returned to Liverpool England, its owners decided to file a claim with the insurance company that had insured the lives of the slaves --- "property" --- in order to recoup some of the financial losses incurred.  The company refused to pay, arguing that the murders were the fault of the slavers and that the claim was an attempt to defraud the company.  The ensuing court case was highly publicized at the time, and then seized by abolitionists as a vehicle by which to spread knowledge of the horrors of slavery amongst the general public, with the aforementioned Equiano and other famous British abolitionists, several of whom had once directly participated in the trade, leading the away, making speeches, writing letters, publishing accounts, and lobbying for legislation,  all citing the massacre as evidence.  The whole story is told in this excellent book, and the details about the practices and conditions of all aspects of the Middle Passage are necessary and heartbreaking.

Author talk

Harlem Rhapsody.  Victoria Christopher Murray.  Berkley, 2025.  400 pages.

Jessie Redmon Fauset was one of the most prolific writers of the Harlem Renaissance.  Poet Langston Hughes called her "the Midwife" of the literary explosion that was a huge part of the Renaissance.  At a time when publishing companies refused to publish black authors or employ black proofreaders or editors and even white women couldn't find employment higher than stenographer or secretary, Fauset became the literary editor of The Crisis, the official magazine of the NAACP, founded by W.E.B. DuBois.  In that role, she was responsible for the discovery and mentorship of almost all of the leading literary figures of the Harlem Renaissance, including Hughes, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer, to name just a few, and she made The Crisis a thriving and vibrant publication.  She published lots of her own poems and essays and four novels, the first novels to ever portray authentic middle class, college-educated, professional black characters living everyday lives and facing everyday challenges.  Yet, few people know about her or her contributions.  Author Victoria Christopher Murray endeavors to correct that in this historical fiction work.  She delivers a suiting tribute to Fauset and a rich depiction of 1920s Harlem and the culture of the Renaissance.  Fauset's life, however, is more than just literary achievement.  For over a decade, Faucet carried on an extramarital affair with The Crisis founder, and her own boss, W.E.B. DuBois.   Murray imagines the ups and downs of that relationship and its effects on the individuals involved and affected, and on the movement itself, revealing the faults, foibles, and flaws of both Fauset and DuBois.  The novel is a really good read and a history lesson at the same time.

Georgia's Historical Recipes:  Seeking Our State's Oldest Written Foodways and the Stories Behind Them.  Valerie J. Frey.  University of Georgia Press, 2025.  400 pages.

As I always say, there's not much better than combining history and food.  There are few elements of culture that reveal as much about peoples, places, and times as a culture's foodways do.  Valerie J. Frey is a writer, researcher, and an archivist who specializes in finding and preserving history through food.  It's also obvious that she's an avid baker and collector.  Her discoveries of old cookbooks led her to do a deep dive into the history of cookbook publishing in Georgia, and she presents her findings here.  She finds examples from the antebellum period through  World War II and organizes them into fifty sections presented chronologically.  Each section contains a biography of the cookbook writer, the historical and cultural context of the time in which it was written, and sample recipes.  Frey also usually includes her own personal memories, connections, or attempts to re-create recipes, making the history all the more relatable and approachable.  The recipes and cookbooks provide windows onto Georgia history:  what was available, who could afford it, how was it presented, who cooked, who consumed, what did the home look and feel like, what did the larger society look like, and how did all of this evolve over time.  Beyond being a fun and educational read, this book is truly a great addition to the genres of food history and Georgia history. 

Seminole Chiefs on a visit to New York City, 1852.  Abraham standing on right

The Free and the Dead:  The Untold Story of the Black Seminole Chief, the Indigenous Rebel, and America's Forgotten War.  Jamie Holmes.  Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2026.  320 pages.

When Florida became a state in 1845, it was probably the most dangerous, least populated, and least explored state in the Union.  White settlers were deterred by heat, hurricane, insects, swamps, bears, wolves, panthers, venomous snakes, and disease.  The interior of the state was largely terra incognita - unknown and frightening for white pioneers.  Meanwhile, the Seminoles and the Miccosukees survived and struggled to maintain their independence and their culture,  The federal government policy of removing eastern Indians to Oklahoma Territory threatened that. In 1835, that threat boiled over into the Second Seminole War which continued until 1842, making it America's longest war until Vietnam.  It also ranks as the most expensive, and one of the deadliest and most destructive of the Indian Wars. When it was over, much of the white development  in the territory had been destroyed and most of the Seminoles had been forcibly removed to Oklahoma, but a few Seminoles and Miccosukees survived and remain to this day.   Jamie Holmes has written a new history of the war, focusing on Osceola the famous warrior leader, and the lesser known Abraham, the Black Seminole leader and interpreter who played very prominent role.  It's a solid history of the war, although I wouldn't call it revolutionary, but it does a really good job of telling the story of the Black Seminoles.  However, I am deducting a star from my rating for the ridiculous use of the phrase "forced labor camps" instead of plantations.

 Bloody Toombs.  Clarke Wright Johnson.  Liberty Hill Publishing, 2017.  452 pages.

I was born and raised in Toombs County Georgia, and my family has deep roots in the area, going back 6 or 7 generations.  Shortly after the county was formed (in 1905 from neighboring Montgomery County), it acquired the nickname "Bloody Toombs."  In the 1920s and 1930s, it was largely due to Ku Klux Klan activity.  In the 1950s and 1960s, it was attributed to the activity of the "Dixie Mafia," although there is some dispute as to whether the Dixie Mafia actually operated in the area or if it was just general lawlessness,  Every so often, I search online for "Bloody Toombs" to see what comes up, finding a few references going back to the 1920s in the New York Times and Time Magazine.  One day, this novel showed up in the search results.  A vampire horror story set in Toombs County, written by a man who has lived most of his life there?  While that's not my normal genre of choice --- not even close --- I was intrigued and had to order it, not expecting much.  My expectations seemed to be confirmed as soon as I turned to the table of contents, and my eye was immediately drawn to a huge typo in one of the chapter titles.  Verdict?  If you're interested in a vampire family saga that stretches throughout the 20th century and reads as if it was written by a slightly talented middle schooler, you might find it to be meh.  It doesn't even necessarily reflect its setting;  it could have been set anywhere in the American South.  You're welcome.  I read it so you don't have to.

Author talk

White Lies:  The Double Life of Walter F. White and America's Darkest Secret.  A.J. Baime.  Mariner Books, 2022.  400 pages.  

At the turn of the 20th century, Walter White's childhood in Atlanta was perhaps more comfortable than that of many black children across the South.  His father was a mail carrier.  His mother shopped at Rich's Department Store, where clerks politely called her "Mrs. White," but she wasn't allowed to try on clothes, return clothes that didn't fit.  (The tea room wasn't an option; it did not exist until the 1920s.) Black customers had to trace their feet onto paper in order to shop for shoes, instead of trying them on. There was only one high school for black students, the costly private one operated by Atlanta University.  Public schools for black students only went through 8th grade.  Annual state and local spending per black student averaged about $2, one-tenth of the amount spent per white student.  Black teachers were paid less than half of what white teachers were paid.   Still, Atlanta race relations were relatively calm, until late September 1906 when white mobs murdered dozens of black Atlantans and burned many homes in a multi-day killing frenzy called the Atlanta Race Riot.  According to White, it was at that moment, when an armed white mob besieged the family home and threatened to kill him and his entire family, that 13 year old Walter decided that he was black.  Yes, you read that correctly --- decided.  Walter White had straight blond hair, blue eyes, and fairer skin than some of the white men who killed blacks during the riot.  Throughout his life, those that came into contact with White, black and white, without knowing him assumed he was white.  He could have easily chosen to "pass" and live a much safer life.  Instead, he resolved to "be black" and to devote his life to fighting for civil rights. As a student at Atlanta University, he attracted the attention of James Weldon Johnson who persuaded him to move to New York and to join the staff of the NAACP.  Soon, he volunteered to risk his life multiple times to investigate lynchings across the country.  Because of his appearance, murderers assumed he was a good "patriotic and Christian American" like themselves, and they proudly told him all the details of their horrible crimes, including naming leaders and active participants.  White gathered information and prepared reports for publication and for government officials, often fleeing town just before his deception was discovered.  If caught, he would have been just another victim.  He did this many times as he worked his way up the ladder of NAACP leadership, becoming one of the most effective and respected civil rights advocates of the time.  Things began to change, however, when squabbles with W.E.B. DuBois destabilized the organization, and his extramarital affair with a white woman came to light, White fell from grace, and his legacy was tarnished and largely forgotten.  This excellent biography attempts to give his story the fullness and light that it deserves.

Black History Month Reads: A Review of the Past Year's Reads

 

    A review of the black history themed  books that I've read since last February

Kugels and Collards:  Stories of Food, Family, and Tradition in Jewish South Carolina.  Rachel Gordin Barnett and Lyssa Kligman Harvey.  University of South Carolina Press, 2023.  256 pages.

South Carolina became home to some of the first Jews to ever live in North America, with the first recorded Jewish settlers arriving in Charleston in the 1690s.  Over the centuries, more Jews arrived, both Sephardic and Ashkenazi, then Germans, Russians, and Eastern Europeans, at the turn of the 20th century and, later, escaping the Holocaust.  Jewish families adapted and blended their traditions and foodways in their new home, influenced by contact with other ethnic groups, black and white, and by new and different ingredients that they found.  The result is this history and cookbook, containing some 80 recipes alongside dozens of stories about their creation and history.  As I've said lots of times in the past, it's hard to go wrong when combining food and history, and this book is a revealing insight into a particular culture.

Five-Carat Soul.  James McBride.  Riverhead Books, 2017.  320 pages.

This is a collection of previously unpublished short stories by one of my favorite writers of fiction, James McBride.  As one familiar with McBride's work would expect, the stories are full of deep insights into human nature and vivid characterizations, and most of them are  history related.  An antiques dealer discovers that a legendary toy commissioned by Civil War General Robert E. Lee now sits in the home of a black minister in Queens. Five strangers find themselves thrown together and face unexpected judgment. An American president draws inspiration from a conversation he overhears in a stable. Members of The Five-Carat Soul Bottom Bone Band recount stories from their own messy and hilarious lives. The final story is set in a zoo, with the animals as the characters grappling with the big questions about life, the natural order of things, and their relationship with the "smellies" - humans.  Each story is a treat.

The Residence:  Inside the Private World of the White House.  Kate Anderson Brower.  Harper, 2015.  320 pages.

If you enjoyed the murder mystery comedy "The Residence"  on Netflix, as I did,  you may have been surprised, as I was, to learn that it was inspired by a nonfiction book, a history of the White House through the eyes and recollections of the men and women who work there daily as maids, butlers, ushers, cooks, plumbers, electricians, engineers, florists, nannies, and even calligraphers and have devoted their lives to serving the nation by saving its First Families, often for decades.  The author interviewed dozens of employees and wrote a truly fascinating account of what goes on behind the scenes and out of sight of the public.  The main focus is on the administrations from Kennedy to Obama, but there are historical tidbits that cover the entire history of the White House, going back to its first occupants, John and Abigail Adams.  Getting the employees to share their experiences was quite a feat.  Only a handful of White House employees have ever published their memoirs, and there is a universal sense of pride and professionalism among the employees of "The House," as they call it, that exists almost nowhere else.  Employees are fiercely protective of the families that employ them and often reveal very little about their work even to friends and family members, sometimes not even revealing to acquaintances where they work.  For many, telling stories in public was unthinkable. Their work is demanding and draining, but they often form deep and lasting relationships with each other and with the Presidents and their families. This was a great read, a very informative and entertaining look at how things work, the people that make it work every day, and the First Families of the past 50 years.  (Readers may be surprised to learn which families, and family members, are the most and least fondly remembered.)

Harriet Tubman Live in Concert.  Bob the Drag Queen.  Gallery Books, 2025.  239 pages.  (Audio version 4hrs, 17 minutes)

Wow!  I had no idea what to expect when I first learned about this book, but I immediately pre-ordered it.  We've been fans of Bob the Drag Queen since his first appearance on "RuPaul's Drag Race" and have seen him on a couple of stand-up comedy tours, but a book about Harriet Tubman?  It blew me away.  Pure creative genius and one of the most original things that I've read in a very long time.

Picture it:  NYC, present day.  People from the past, including many major historical figures have suddenly returned to life.  There's no explanation, almost no attention paid to it in the story.  It's just the mechanism which makes the story possible.  Don't worry about it.  "The Returned" live their lives and integrate into the present.  Cleopatra, for example, becomes a hugely successful makeup and fashion Instagram influencer.  Harriet Tubman, and several of the people she led to freedom on the Underground Railroad, have returned, and she's on a mission, again - a mission from God.  She contacts Darnell Williams, a once-hot hip-hop writer and producer whose music career is struggling, and tells him that God has chosen him to assist in her mission.  While one might deny God, nobody dares to say No to Harriet Tubman!  Her mission:  create an epic hip-hop album and stage show, a la "Hamilton."  In her first life, Tubman freed about 700 people from physical chains, and many more indirectly.  Now, she's back to free millions from metaphorical chains of all sorts.  Darnell has his own metaphorical chains to break, and he goes to work, with Harriet's guidance, to break free into his own authentic self.  This is a fantastic work, and I so hope that Bob is actively working to create a real album and show; it could be bigger than "Hamilton."  I highly recommend the audio version.  Not only is Bob the reader, but it also includes two of the show's songs at the end.  (NOTE:  The photo above was generated using AI.  There is no known photo of Harriet Tubman spittin' fire.)

A Perfect Frenzy:  A Royal Governor, His Black Allies and the Crisis That Spurred the American Revolution.  Andrew Lawler.  Atlantic Monthly Press, 2025.  544 pages.   

While the American Revolution officially began in April 1775 at Lexington and Concord, two major events occurred in January 1776 that were pivotal in fueling the Patriot cause.  Thomas Paine published his pamphlet "Common Sense" laying out the arguments for independence.  The other event is perhaps less known today, but it was perhaps even more effective:  On January 1, 1776, the city of Norfolk, Virginia was burned to the ground.  No other American city in history has been completely and utterly destroyed as Norfolk was.  Twenty years later, visitors were still stunned by the vast ruins and fields of debris.  For 250 years, the Norfolk fire has been blamed on the British, specifically the royal governor Lord Dunmore.  As a result of the fire, Dunmore was vilified on both sides of the Atlantic and labeled a war criminal.  Patriot propaganda painted him as a cruel and witless libertine who hosted huge orgies with enslaved women in the Governor's Palace when he wasn't wantonly destroying the lives of his subjects.  Following the Norfolk fire, Dunmore was even shunned by his peers in the House of Lords who believed that he had gone too far.  Dunmore died in a state of ignominy, and his family was reduced to relative poverty, ostracized by the British upper class.  

The kicker?  Dunmore and the British didn't destroy Norfolk.  THE PATRIOTS INTENTIONALLY BURNED THE CITY TO THE GROUND, and this fact was always known.  The Patriot propaganda machine used the destruction to maximum advantage to stir patriotic fervor. The fact is that Norfolk was a Loyalist stronghold, and British warships did destroy a few dozen structures, mainly warehouses and docks, but 95% of the buildings destroyed were intentionally ignited by Patriot troops under orders from Patriot officers and political figures. Why? They wanted to punish Norfolk for being strongly Loyalist, and Dunmore, once extremely popular and respected governor among the landed gentry and yeoman farmers alike, had crossed the line.  He recruited and armed free and enslaved black Virginians to fight for Britain, promising freedom in return.  This book tells a great, formerly untold, story and illustrates that history is extremely complicated and never just black and white.  In this situation, you have black and white Patriots wearing engraved brass breastplates or embroidered shirts saying "Liberty or Death" going into battle against Dunmore's black Ethiopian Regiment troops wearing breastplates engraved with "Liberty For Slaves."

The Vice President's Black Wife:  The Untold Life of Julia Chinn.  Amrita Chakrabati Myers.  The University of North Carolina Press, 2023.  296 pages.

Even the buffest of history buffs outside of Kentucky have probably never heard of Richard Mentor Johnson, the ninth Vice President of the United States and presidential contender who was a US Representative and Senator for years and whose political career was enhanced by stories that he was the man who killed Tecumseh at the Battle of the Thames. His family was among the first white settlers of Kentucky and was a prominent family in the area of Georgetown for decades.  However, Johnson's story goes much deeper, and it is an incredibly important and quintessential part of southern history and the legacy of slavery.   

For six months each year, Johnson lived in a boarding house in Washington while doing the young nation's business by day and attending the young society's most exclusive society affairs by night.  As far as Washingtonians knew, he was a lifelong bachelor.  His Kentucky neighbors knew different, and, later, political opponents used that knowledge to tarnish his career and to thwart his presidential aspirations.  The secret?   He was married.  To an enslaved woman that he "owned," a woman named Julia Chinn.  He and Julia had two daughters who were legally his property as well.  He never officially freed wither Julia or his daughters.  Julia died enslaved, and her daughters weren't freed until the ratification of the 13th amendment.  That doesn't make Johnson that unique.  The history of American slavery is the history of interracial sex, consensual and not consensual.  Slaveowners viewed enslaved women as their sexual property, and that view was universally accepted even if it was not stated aloud.  Slaveowners raped, cajoled, bribed.  Some treated their concubines as wives.  Some freed their lovers and children. Some sold them when there was too much gossip and people started noticing resemblances.  A few left their property to their enslaved or freed wives or children.  

Johnson stands out because he called Julia his wife.  The preacher of the church that Johnson's family co-founded married them.  He gave Julia complete and total authority to run his plantation and the Choctaw Academy (a federally funded school for young Choctaw men that provided a major income for Johnson) that was located on his property.  His daughters married local white men, and they and their descendants have "passed" ever since, with the vast majority of their descendants never knowing their family history until the last few years.  In this book, Myers digs deep to tell Julia's story for the first time.  Because there isn't much of a paper trail,  (Johnson's papers are sparse for such a political man.  It is thought that his brothers destroyed most of his letters and documents upon his death due to shame.), there is a lot of "could have," "probably," "possibly," and the like, and a lot of references to similar stories, but she does an excellent job of telling the important story and bringing it to light.  Important and extraordinarily complicated.  Spoiler alert: don't go thinking Johnson was heroic.

The Inheritors:  An Intimate Portrait of South Africa's Racial Reckoning.  Eve Fairbanks.  Simon & Schuster, 2022. 416 pages.  Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the review copy.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, South Africa underwent a revolution, scrapping more than a century of harshly enforced racial segregation and minority rule and instantly pivoting to a majority-rule democracy - an unparalleled transformation.  Americans being Americans, and American media being American media, South Africa basically ceased to exist at that point because we have almost no attention span for domestic events in foreign countries, especially African countries.  The Inheritors provides an insight into that transformation for American readers, primarily through the experiences of three South Africans: Dipuo, a young black woman and anti-apartheid organizer, Malaika, her daughter born around the time of the transition, and Christo, a white Afrikaans farm boy who was one of the last South Africans drafted to fight in Angola.  Eve Fairbanks built relationships with the three over the course of a decade, and she basically allows them to tell their stories.  Readers learn about the struggles of the country through the struggles of these individuals as they try to cope with unprecedented change.  It's an extremely moving, enlightening, and thought-provoking book.

She Came To Slay:  The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman.  Erica Armstrong Dunbar.  37 Ink, 2019.  176 pages.  Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the review copy.

If any American deserves a fresh, thoroughly researched, well-written, originally illustrated, biography that is equally accessible and enjoyable for everyone from grade school to adulthood, it is Harriet Tubman, and this is the book.  Of course, we all know the basics, that Tubman was the most famous conductor of the Underground Railroad who personally escorted hundreds enslaved people to freedom after her own escape.  Some of us may know of her long career as an abolitionist before the Civil War and her service as a spy and nurse during the Civil War.  Fewer know that she became the first woman to lead an armed combat mission - a very consequential mission.  Even after the war, she never stopped, becoming an active suffragist and an advocate for veterans and for the aged.  Tubman's always been near the top of my list of greatest Americans, and this biography is great introduction to her life for yourself and for any younger readers in your life.  

The Fifties:  An Underground History.  James R. Gaines.  Simon & Schuster, 2023.  288 pages.  Thanks to Simon & Schuster for the review copy.

Too many people think of the 1950s as a decade of conformity and complacency, picturing sock hops, soda fountains, and poodle skirts, but, as I tried to impress upon my students each year, there was always turbulence under that placid surface.  There was the rise of rock and roll and teenage rebellion which shocked older generations.  Beatniks challenged middle-class norms.  Artists shook up the art world.  The Red Scare and the Lavender Scare sent shock waves through government and society.  The civil rights and feminist movements started ramping up.  There was a lot of angst, anger, confusion, and conflict.  This book celebrates several individuals who were brave enough to stand - often alone - on their principles and lead fights that they believed needed fighting.  In particular, Gaines selects gay rights, feminism, civil rights, and environmental movements.  A couple of the people discussed are familiar names, Fannie Lou Hamer, Medgar Evers, and Rachel Carson for example, but the others aren't nearly as well known, or as celebrated as they should be.  There's Norbert Wiener, a mathematician and computer scientist who is considered the father of cybernetics, the forerunner of Artificial Intelligence.  There's Harry Hay who first envisioned a national gay rights movement in the 1940s.  There's Pauli Murray whose law school thesis provided much of the legal basis for Thurgood Marshall's arguments in Brown vs Board of Education and whose legal work made sexual discrimination unconstitutional. Gerda Lerner pioneered the concept of women's history as an academic field, despite being told by superiors and colleagues that there wasn't enough material to study.  Isaac Woodard was a black WWII veteran who was blinded by a South Carolina sheriff because he dared to look him in the eye.  These are all important stories that should be shared.  This book should be widely read.  Almost makes me wish that I was back in the classroom in order to share them. ... Almost.

Ring Shout.  P. Djeli Clark.  Tor Nightfire, 2025 (paperback, originally 2020).  192 pages.

If you liked the movie "Sinners," or other horror films by directors like Ryan Coogler and Jordan Peele, then this is the book for you.  It's horror, fantasy, and history all wrapped in one virtually non-stop action package.  The setting is 1922 in Macon and Stone Mountain Georgia.  The Ku Klux Klan has been reborn following the release of the movie "The Birth of a Nation" in 1915.  As black veterans returned from World War I and started standing up for their civil rights in Jim Crow America, the Klan mobilized and ramped up violence in response.  The Red Summer of 1919, the Tulsa Massacre of 1921, and a spike in lynchings are just some of the events referenced in this book.  In Clark's re-imagining, the KKK actually consists of two factions, the Klan, comprising the average American racists, and the Ku Kluxes who are actually demonic monsters created and fed by hate and who only exist by stirring and escalating hate.  A small band of women forms for the purpose of destroying the Ku Kluxes.  There's Maryse, armed with a magical sword gifted to her by three spiritual aunties who appear to her in visions, Sadie, a sharpshooter, and Chef, who disguised herself as a man and fought as a Harlem Hellfighter in WWI.  They're aided by Maryse's spiritual advisor Nana Jean and Molly, a self-taught Choctaw scientist and engineer who devises weapons and strategies along with her female apprentices, and Emma, a German Jewish social revolutionary communist.  Following some skirmishes and a major Klux attack on a juke joint in Macon, everybody heads to Stone Mountain, the site where the Klan was reborn and the first crosses were burned, for the final apocalyptic, the-fate-of-the-world-hangs-in-the-balance battle.   Clark blends history and horror with Gullah, African, and Caribbean folklore and delivers a very creative and original read and a great ride from beginning to end.

Forgotten Souls:  The Search for the Lost Tuskegee Airmen.  Cheryl W.  Thompson.  Dafina/Kensington Books, to be published January 27, 2026.  240 pages.  Thanks to Kensington Books for the free advance readers copy for review.

It's taken far too long for the Tuskegee Airmen to get their just due for their service as the nation's first black military pilots and for their legendary record of achievements in World War II, but, at least in the past few decades, the veterans and their stories have been recognized.  Unfortunately, not all survived long enough to see it.  In fact, 27  of the over 1,000 Airmen were lost during the war, and their service and sacrifice was forgotten to all but their family. Cheryl W. Thompson, an investigative journalist and the daughter of a Tuskegee Airman herself, set out to uncover and tell the stories of those missing men.  The result is a really great history of the unit and the men who comprised it, and now, after 80 years, those 27 missing men are getting at least some of the respect they deserve.

Recipes From the American South.  Michael Twitty.  Phaidon Press, 2025.  432 pages.

This book is a must-have addition to any cookbook or southern history or southern food library.  It's the southern version of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in terms of scope and importance.  Michael Twitty has become one of America's greatest culinary historians.  He started out as a re-enactor, researching and demonstrating the foods and foodways of the American South that resulted from the blending of West African, Caribbean, Native American, and European cultures that resulted from the African diaspora and slavery.  His work illustrates both the importance of food history and the power of food to cross boundaries, erase differences, and unite people.  However, the region is vast, and even southern food is not monolithic.  Twitty presents 260 recipes that cover the entire breadth of southern cuisine.  The recipes are tested and prove, the photos are beautiful, and there are short histories of each dish.  Cooks will discover familiar recipes for dishes that their families have made for generations, but they will also discover new recipes and learn things about the old and the new in the process.  I've made some of the recipes and I will be making more, and the book has already become a first reference for me.  It is definitely a classic that should be on any southern cook's shelf.

The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi.  Wright Thompson.  Penguin Press, 2024.  448 pages.  

Place.  It is one of the most vital elements of the study of history.  It acts as a physical, emotional, and cognitive anchor, a three-dimensional primary document that transforms abstract events from the distant past into tangible, relatable experiences, providing invaluable context to the events that happened upon it and to the lives of the people who lived there, worked there, fought there, loved there, and died there. "Place" provides a connection that is not possible otherwise.  Think about the feeling you have on a battlefield or in a home or site, when your senses take it all in and  often both a new understanding and a new curiosity arise.   I've read very few books in my life that capture place as well as this book does.  Wright Thompson has mastered the craft and can teach lessons on the subject.  I've had this book ever since it was released, but I've only read it in the past few days.  After all, I knew the story of Emmett Till, I taught the story of Emmett Till every year, and  I knew it would be a tough read emotionally.  And it definitely is. It makes you despair and lose all hope for humanity (if you had any at the start).  If you know it, it makes you hear Nina Simone's song "Mississippi G*****n" on a constant loop in your head, and makes you believe that the world and country would be much better off if Mississippi had never existed, or at least hadn't been settled by any new humans after 1600, that Mississippi is hell on earth, populated by the moat deranged and depraved "people" in history.  (And when a native Georgian now living in Florida  says that, that's saying something.)  It is not all depravity, however.  The reader is introduced to some truly brave and heroic people that are usually not a part of the story:  friends and relatives of Emmett and his mother, witnesses who were previously ignored by the law and by the media, and people who have devoted their lives to keeping the story alive in the 7 decades since. This is not only a new history of the kidnapping and murder of a 15-year old boy and the intense and coordinated effort throughout the state over the ensuing decades to erase it from history and from the minds of white and black Mississippians, but it is also a history of Mississippi, the place, going back to before European contact and encompassing every aspect of its history.  The barn in which Till was tortured, mutilated, and murdered is like an epicenter of that history.  The Delta Blues were born, King Cotton thrived and collapsed, Indian villages were decimated, and the Archie Manning football dynasty was born, all within a few miles of the nondescript farm shed.  All of that comes to life in this book.  This book should be the required textbook for Mississippi state history classes. It should be required reading for all Americans.