Book List

Able and Willing

/ Susan O. / 2 Comments

Disability is a loaded word. 

I won’t debate the semantics of the term, what the current politically correct term is, or how to make your workplace more variant friendly.

Let’s talk about something far more inflammatory. The rights of the disabled to carry out adult relationships. At best, a disabled person is able to find a partner despite their difficulties, marry (or not), and live a happy adult life together, with or without kids (popular example: the TV show Little People, Big World). Sometimes, it’s disabled people fighting in court for the right to marry or raise their own children (the movie I Am Sam). At the very worst, it’s vulnerable people being preyed upon, taken advantage of, or controlled to the point of involuntary sterilization.

I grabbed the book Hunchback, partly because it was short, and partly because I’ve been in the field of disabilities for 40 years. Hunchback, a novella by Saou Ichikawa, was not the book I’d expected, despite winning multiple awards. Ichikawa’s character, Shaka, suffers from congenital myopathy (same as the author—write what you know), which has left her with progressively weak muscles. Her back is so hunched over she can’t breathe when holding a book, and she spends half the day using a ventilator. She can walk short distances, but her body is twisted and one leg is far shorter than the other. She has a tracheostomy, which makes talking difficult, so she uses a lot of alternative communication devices. Shaka spends her time writing erotica online, the money from which she spends on food for poor people and women. 

Winner of several Japanese awards, Hunchback calls out ableism on many levels. Ichikawa considers it political: Disabled people are hidden away by society, never considered because they’re never seen. People in wheelchairs are rarely mentioned in literature at all, unless they’re being “cured,” like in Heidi or A Secret Garden. Disabled people are portrayed as a drain on society, dependent on charity, so by making a wealthy disabled character (who generates income through pornography), she pokes a hornet’s nest.

Another book that touches on the subject of sexual autonomy is James Cole’s Not a Whole Boy. Cole was born in the 60’s with a severe case of exstrophy – most of his organs were born outside his body, and his pelvis malformed. Most babies with this condition do not survive. Due to Cole’s mother’s determination and a great team of doctors, Cole managed to thrive despite severe obstacles. While he seemed more or less normal to other kids, Cole hid the fact that he had double ostomies – all his waste was collected in bags, as he didn’t have the needed parts and couldn’t use a toilet. As he got older and puberty kicked in, it became necessary to undergo multiple surgeries just to have a sense of comfort, normalcy, and proper biological function. Cole’s book documents his struggles with medieval children’s hospitals, lack of pain management, and his eventual success with a career in art and film – certainly not hidden away.

A book that took me by complete surprise was Riva Lehrer’s Golem Girl, a golem being a creature formed from dirt or clay. Riva was born with Spina Bifida in 1958, a time when most afflicted infants did not survive, and almost certainly didn’t walk. She suffers dozens of painful surgeries to keep her mobility, most of which do nothing to ease her issues – she’s just a guinea pig for the surgeons. Although she attends a grade school for the disabled (disability laws hadn’t been written yet), she attends a mainstream high school, then university, where she gets a degree in fine art, all while dealing with surgeries and intense feelings of revulsion toward herself. Amplifying it is her mother’s overprotective codependency, spitting out helpful comments such as “You don’t need a nose job. No one wants to marry a cripple,” and “You shouldn’t have children; pregnancy will just mess up your spine worse,” – culminating in an involuntary hysterectomy at 15 on the mother’s order. 

Riva goes on to have multiple affairs with both men and women. While some relationships work out, many times she’s still hit with prejudice – “I can’t love a cripple.” Riva remains unstoppable. She becomes more comfortable with herself through meeting up with other people – often activists – with disabilities. As an artist, she gains renown (and awards) through her paintings of disabled people (and others) she has met. 

This book was so hard to put down, and read like you were in the middle of a conversation with her. Lehrer doesn’t go into detail on her disability or surgeries; she talks about herself, not her medical issues. After doing time as an anatomical artist, she sees people not so much as disabled, but as human variants – no one is “normal,” there is no “normal,” just human variations. But everyone has a right to love and happiness.

At the heart of it, people with physical disabilities are still people. It doesn’t mean they don’t have the same dreams, desires, or feelings as people who aren’t. All of these books will give you deep new insights into the strength of humanity.

Tales of Shipwreck & Survival

/ Susan O. / 2 Comments

Everyone knows about the Titanic since they found the wreckage and made a movie about it, but shipwreck is usually the last thing on anyone’s mind when they book a cruise. In reality, only 24 cruise ships have ever sank, and many of those had been pressed into service as warships at the time. Cruise ships, despite their top-heavy appearance, are quite safe. 

There are an estimated 3,000 shipwrecks off the coast of the Outer Banks, NC

There are an estimated three million shipwrecks under the waters, not counting small craft. Some of these date back as far as 2500 BCE, when the Mediterranean Sea was a hotbed of trade from Egypt and North Africa to the coasts of Italy, Greece, and Spain. The rate of commercial shipwrecks has been declining throughout this century, from 200 in 2000 to only 26 in 2023, and most of those are cargo ships, which are often in poor repair, overloaded, badly balanced, and cross some of the most difficult waters (releasing rubber ducks and sneakers). This does not include the fishing industry, which is nearly unregulated, especially in Asia and South America. It is estimated there are 100,000 deaths from fishing each year, due to poor industry standards and almost no oversight.

When we think about historical ships, we think back to Roman biremes, Viking longboats, and primitive rafts like Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon Tiki long before we come to the glory days of Spanish, British, French, and Portuguese galleons vying for naval power, leading to spectacular – and expensive – shipwrecks. The Bermuda Triangle, The Skeleton Coast, The Cape of Good Hope, and several rocky coastal areas around the continents were famous for wrecking ships, let alone the risk – then and now – for icebergs in the North Atlantic, and the real though rare possibility of rogue waves – lone giant waves of up to 100 feet, with no warning and no precursors, which have been implicated in a number of wrecks. There’s also the 1958 Lituya Bay, Alaska tsunami, which, due to the funneling nature of the bay, created a wave 1700 (yes, one thousand seven hundred) feet high, lifting a fishing boat, whose crew miraculously survived.

Like all natural disasters, ship disasters make for fascinating reading and occasionally a great movie. Here are some excellent works on the misfortunes of ocean-bound ships, some of which you may not have heard of, but really happened.

The Wager, by David Grann

If you haven’t yet read The Wager, you need to. A true tale of murder, mutiny, greed, heroism, and unbelievable survival in the harshest of conditions. Against better judgment, the Wager tries to round the dangerous Cape Horn in 1741, smashing against rocks in a gale. In a barren wasteland, with nothing to eat, the crew splits, half commit mutiny, some commit murder, and half of them will make it back to tell the riveting tale. A must read.

Graveyard of the Pacific, by Randall Sullivan

Who knew that more 2000 ships have been wrecked on the corner of the Oregon/Washington coast? Fierce storms, fog, reefs, sandbars, and tidal rips from the incoming flood of the Columbia river are so bad that there are specific ships and captains who must steer commercial ships through the area. While the book is partially taken up by one man’s quest to kayak through this deadly area, the rest of the book is quite fascinating.

Ghost Ship, by Brian Hicks   

There are many theories as to why the ship Mary Celeste was found abandoned at sea in 1872, with no clue as to what happened. The lifeboat was missing, and the crew abandoned ship so rapidly that food was still on the table and a sleeping child’s form was still outlined on the captain’s bed. Hicks combs through details to provide a solid, scientific reason, the best theory anyone has come up with yet, and the horrible fate of the crew.

In the Heart of the Sea, by Nathaniel Philbrick. 

The foundering of the whaleship Essex in 1820 became the inspiration for Melville’s novel Moby Dick. The Essex was sunk by a sperm whale in the Pacific, killing most of the crew. A handfull survived in a whaleboat for five months, surviving on cannibalism and rainwater. Melville allegedly met the son of survivor Owen Chase while at sea, and later met surviving Captain Pollard, who was considered bad luck after two lost ships, and no one would hire him. The combined diaries of the survivors were later made into a film.

When the Dancing Stopped, by Brian Hicks.

If Ghost Ship wasn’t enough, Hicks covers the perfect storm of disaster on the Morro Castle, a top of the line 1934 cruise ship traveling between Cuba and New York’s Pier 13. With horrific odds, the ship faced a tropical storm gaining on them, a nor’easter barreling toward them from the opposite direction, a murdered captain, an arsonist’s chemical fire underneath a ceiling filled with gunpowder, a crew that had never performed a fire or lifeboat drill, lifeboats whose launch mechanisms were painted closed, and a crew that fell apart at the first sign of trouble. How anyone survived (besides the crew, who abandoned ship without helping passengers) is a miracle. A book that reads like a novel, and is very hard to put down.

Deadliest Sea: The Untold Story Behind the Greatest Rescue in Coast Guard History, by Kalee Thompson

More fish are caught in Alaskan waters than almost everywhere else, yet many fishing boats remain virtually unregulated as to safety, and there are powerful political groups that push against it. In 2008, the Alaska Ranger meets with bad weather and too much ice, loses its rudder, and starts to sink. As in every disaster, few are trained, shortcuts were taken, lifeboats don’t work properly, wetsuits have holes, and they are more than 200 miles from the Coast Guard rescue planes. Thompson creates a tense tale of survival and aggravatingly poor working conditions as the Coast Guard rushes to save the crew. A lot of names, but hard to put down.

Futility, or, The Wreck of the Titan, by Morgan Robertson

Okay, this one is short fiction, and because it’s so old it’s hard to get a copy of (you can read it for free on Project Gutenberg, here), but it’s mentioned in so many memes as “The Titanic Foretold!” that I wanted to include it here. Published in 1898, the book, yes, involves an “unsinkable” ship called the Titan, that, in its second collision in two days, hits an iceberg and capsizes. The unlikable protagonist rescues a little girl in order to get a seat on a lifeboat, then plots to use her to extort money from her family, and most of the book is about him whining about being stuck with the kid. There is almost nothing in this novella that compares with the Titanic, beyond a name (common enough. It would have been more compelling if the name was Carpathia or something) and an iceberg (also common in those waters). It’s short, you can read it, but it’s trite, simplistic, outdated, boring, and sometimes painful to read. But, truly, it in no way predicted the wreck of the Titanic.

If you’d prefer, check out these films of ocean disasters:

In the Heart of the Sea

The Perfect Storm

Finest Hours

The Poseidon Adventure

Titanic

The Life of Pi

All is Lost

Lifeboat

Making Sense of Book Awards

/ Adam / Leave a comment

Has this ever happened to you? You’re in a library or book store, minding your own business, when a ray of light blinds you, stopping you in your tracks. You think, “Is this aliens? Is this the rapture? What is going on?” You catch your breath and realize it’s just the gleam of one of those shiny emblems that says, “Booker Prize.” You pick up the book and even more questions flood your mind: “Who’s this Booker fella and what right does he have to tell me what to read?!” I’ve been there, I get it. But there’s no need to dismay. Once you make sense of book awards, they can be helpful tools in the eternal search for your next book.

Booker Prize

The Booker Prize (formerly the Man Booker Prize) is awarded to a book written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. A panel of five, made up of “creative peers,” choose the winning book. The award skews towards British and Irish authors, but winners hail from around the world, like Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka or Jamaican author Marlon James. These books land on the literary side side of things, and some recent winners include George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo, Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, and Bernadine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other.

The International Booker Prize is also worth noting. These books are translated into English and must be published in the UK or Ireland. The Vegetarian by Han Kang, Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, and Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov won in 2016, 2018, and 2023 respectively.

Nebula and Hugo Awards

The Nebula and Hugo Awards are the two big names associated with science fiction and fantasy (SF/F) literature. The biggest difference between these awards is the voting body. To vote on the Nebula, you need to belong to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. Essentially, you need to be a SF/F writer yourself. For the Hugo Award, all you need is a membership to the World Science Fiction Convention, which costs $50. Despite this difference, it’s not uncommon for a single title to win both awards. Some recent examples of this feat are Network Effect by Martha Wells, The Stone Sky by N. K. Jemisin, and This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

Edgar Award

The Edgar Award is named after (who else but) Edgar Allen Poe to honor the best of the mystery genre, and chosen by the Mystery Writers of America. In the past, some familiar names have won: Stephen King for Mr. Mercedes and Noah Hawley (writer of the Fargo television series) for Before the Fall. But overall, The Edgar Award stands out to me because the winning books tend to be less well known; it’s a good way to find underappreciated gems. Some recent winners include Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka, Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara, and The Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffiths.

National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize

The National Book Award (courtesy of the National Book Foundation) and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (courtesy of Columbia University) are both meant for American authors. The Pulitzer Prize is awarded to novels that “deal with American life” and tend to be fairly popular, often getting the television or movie treatment in the years after its win. The National Book Award has more lofty goals, and is designed to “ensure that books have a prominent place in our culture.” These winners don’t generate as much buzz, but they’re just as profound and moving.

Winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction include The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, and The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.

Winners of the National Book Award include Blackouts by Justin Torres, Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward, and The Good Lord Bird by James McBride.

Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature is voted for by the Swedish Academy and stands out in a couple ways: Authors from any country are eligible for the award, and awards are based on an author’s body of work as a whole. This means that the winning author can put the “Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature” stamp on any book in their back catalogue and any future book they write. Sounds like a good deal to me! Past winners include Kazuo Ishiguro, Alice Munro, and Toni Morrison.

Women’s Prize for Fiction

The last award I’ll touch upon is the Women’s Prize for Fiction which is voted on by a panel of five notable women. This award, along with the Booker Prize and the now defunct Costa Book Awards, at one point made up the “trinity” of UK’s literary prizes. Recent winners include Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, and An American Marriage by Tayari Jones.

It can also be interesting to look at the notable awards of non-English speaking countries. Winners usually have an English translation available, and their relative obscurity makes it feel like you’ve uncovered some esoteric text. Compass by Mathias Énard was a great find of mine that won the French Prix Goncourt Award in 2015.

At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that these awards are all made up. They were all chosen by people, and people have their own tastes, their own mercurial and indecipherable preferences. There is no trait–not intelligence, success, nor clout–that makes one person a better “book judge” than another. If you find an award that speaks to you, great! But otherwise, take them all with a grain of salt and keep in mind the only book award that truly matters: The (insert your name here) Award.

P.S. If you really want to dive into the dramatic side of the book award world, there is always heated discussion about each year’s Booker Prize shortlist. This year, the six shortlisted books will be announced on September 23rd, and the more bookish parts of the internet will be a-buzz, defending their favorites and attacking the books they deem unworthy. It’s a bit messy, but good fun.

Optimism for Earth Day

/ Lauren / Leave a comment

I’d say I think about death more than your average sub-40-year-old. I could blame my high school English teacher for introducing me to existentialist thinker Albert Camus, or childhood Don Bluth films, but I probably just came out this way. Saying somebody “passed” feels strange in my mouth, inaccurate, as if the total and unequivocal departure from this plane of existence is akin to expelling a kidney stone. When I was pregnant, instead of choosing color palettes for a nursery like many expectant mothers, I went shopping for life insurance and wrote detailed directions for the disposal of my body (with relevant phone numbers).

“This is a great start to a post about optimism,” you might be thinking. But my acute awareness of mortality isn’t a pool I sit and wallow in. Instead, it spurs me to use my brief time to make a positive impact in this world. That’s how I feel about climate change. We’re inundated with data on warming temperatures, declining wildlife populations, more frequent severe weather events. We could collectively sit and wallow in a pool of doom. Or, we can arm ourselves with hope, draw up an imperfect plan of action, and try our best to leave whatever mark we can in the time we have.

If you’re stuck in the doom-pool and need some help, let one of these books be a hand extended to pull you out.

What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (2024)


In the throes of the terrible summer of 2020, a tiny bright spot emerged: How to Save a Planet, a cheery podcast that discussed tangible solutions to the problem of climate change. The podcast and its parent company were swallowed up and digested by Spotify, but biologist and policy wonk Ayana Elizabeth Johnson continues to spread the gospel of actionable solutions, most recently in this book.

Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World by Katharine Hayhoe (2021)


We all have a stake in the health of our planet. Instead of assailing you with facts about why you need to act on climate issues, Hayhoe gives you strategies to help you start conversations with almost anyone who isn’t on board (yet).

Cheaper, Faster, Better: How We’ll Win the Climate War by Tom Steyer (2024)


Streyer is excited about the future of clean energy, to the point where he left a lucrative job at an investment fund to start – well, another investment fund, but one dedicated to climate solutions. You’ll learn how investors, inventors, and entrepreneurs are harnessing the power of capitalism for the good of the planet.

How Can I Help?: Saving Nature with Your Yard by Douglas Tallamy (2025)


Stand on the corner of gardening and conservation long enough, and you’ll run into Doug Tallamy. He’s published on the importance of native plants and the virtues of oak trees. His newest book gives property owners and gardeners a host of actions that they can take in their own yard to help the environment.

Holy Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice, and Finding Hope by Catherine Coleman Flowers (2025)


Flowers advocates for the rural poor in areas where a lack of infrastructure, paired with climate change-related flooding, makes it difficult for families to access sanitary water. This book is a series of essays on her work and personal experiences with environmental and racial justice, and it’s an inspiration for others to join in the fight for a safer, healthier future for our neighbors.

Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future by Alan Weisman (2025)


Previous books in the list have looked at specific solutions and people, but Weisman’s upcoming book (which conveniently comes out right on Earth Day) takes a wider approach to see what the fight against climate change means for us as human beings. He talks with architects, scientists, artists, and religious leaders to ultimately paint a portrait of hope.

Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn (2021)


Years ago, in the middle of a long hike in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, I looked down at the rocks beneath my feet and realized I would be very happy if, many thousands or millions of years from now, the elements in my body were to become part of a rock underneath a foot as someone or something moved through a beautiful place. Everything alive is going to die. But nature and the processes of the physical world will go on. In Scotland, rare flowers grow on a heap of 19th century waste. Elk and wolves wander the irradiated exclusion zone around Chernobyl. With beautiful prose, this book travels to places ravaged by war, pollution, and human-made disaster to show how life continues in our absence. With or without us, Earth will eventually heal itself, and I find that deeply comforting.

Put Some Alto in Your Voice: New Books About Women Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet

/ Lauren / Leave a comment

Maybe I should have been a scientist.

I mean, setting aside that my library degree has the word “science” in it, I could have been very happy with the hard stuff like biology and physics. My recent reading of Adam Higginbotham’s Challenger has me considering a parallel life as an engineer designing parts for the aerospace industry. Hope Jahren’s Lab Girl brought me back to college anatomy and physiology, which I took for fun. What self-respecting English major memorizes squamous cells and zygomatic processes for fun? And why didn’t I pursue this thing that obviously called to me?

Answer: literature and the arts simply sat closer and sang louder. We had lots of books at home, but the mystery of a story’s meaning or a certain chord or color called to me more than the mystery of what existed in outer space or beneath the soil. By the time I was thinking about my future, I could more easily conceptualize myself creating worlds than uncovering the world that already existed. But, if I ever change my mind and decide to implode my professional life, it’s easy enough to channel Suzanne Simard and fill out an application for forestry school.

Many women in history never had the benefit of choice that I do, the ability to see a path beyond their sex. Their dreams – if they were even allowed to dream – were crushed because women weren’t supposed to be scientists, or run businesses, or be leaders and advocates. They were supposed to keep quiet. Well, for this Women’s History Month, I’m sharing some brand new books about women that put some alto in their voice and let themselves be heard.

The Cure for Women: Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Challenge to Victorian Medicine That Changed Women’s Lives Forever by Lydia Reeder (2024)


After Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman to graduate from medical school, more women demanded a chance to study medicine. Their success spurred a chilling backlash from male physicians who distorted Darwin’s evolution theory and proclaimed that women should never be allowed to attend college or enter a profession because their menstrual cycles made them perpetually sick. Into the midst of this turmoil marched Mary Putnam Jacobi, daughter of a New York publisher and the first woman to be accepted into the world-renowned Sorbonne medical school in Paris. Aided by other prominent women physicians and suffragists, Jacobi conducted the first-ever data-backed, scientific research on women’s reproductive biology. The results of her studies shook the foundations of medical science and higher education.

She-Wolves: The Untold History of Women on Wall Street by Paulina Bren (2024)


Award-winning historian Paulina Bren tells the story of the first generations of women who fought their way into the bad-boy culture and lavish opulence of the finance world. If the wolves of Wall Street made a show of their ferocity, the she-wolves did so with tough-as-nails persistence. Starting at a time when “No Ladies” signs hung across the doors of Wall Street’s clubs and unapologetic sexism and racism were the norm at top firms, Bren chronicles the remarkable women who demanded a seat at the table. She-Wolves is an engaging and enraging look at the collision of women, finance, and New York from the go-go years to ground zero.

American Poison: A Deadly Invention and the Woman Who Battled for Environmental Justice by Daniel Stone (2025)


The untold story of Alice Hamilton, a trailblazing doctor and public health activist who took on the booming auto industry—and the deadly invention of leaded gasoline, which would poison millions of people across America. Hamilton had New England connections, too – she attended Miss Porter’s Finishing School in Farmington, became the first woman faculty member of Harvard, and she retired to live out her days in Hadlyme, CT.

The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany by Pamela D. Toler (2024)


Toler draws on extensive archival research to unearth the largely forgotten story of Sigrid Schultz’s years spent courageously reporting the news from Berlin, from the revolts of 1919 through the Nazi rise to power and Allied air raids over Berlin in 1941. At a time when women reporters rarely wrote front-page stories and her male colleagues saw a powerful unmarried woman as a “freak,” Schultz pulled back the curtain on how the Nazis misreported the news to their own people, and how they attempted to control the foreign press through bribery and threats.

Fearless and Free: A Memoir by Josephine Baker (2025)


Published in English for the first time, this is the memoir of the fabulous, rule-breaking, one-of-a-kind Josephine Baker. After stealing the spotlight as a teenaged Broadway performer during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, Josephine then took Paris by storm, dazzling audiences across the Roaring Twenties. When World War II broke out, Josephine became a decorated spy for the French Résistance. Her celebrity worked as her cover, as she hid spies in her entourage and secret messages in her costumes as she traveled. She later joined the Civil Rights movement in the US, boycotting segregated concert venues, and speaking at the March on Washington alongside Martin Luther King Jr.

The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science by Dava Sobel (2024)


Dava Sobel approaches Marie Curie from a unique angle, narrating her remarkable life of discovery and fame alongside the women who became her legacy–from France’s Marguerite Perey and Norway’s Ellen Gleditsch to Mme. Curie’s elder daughter, Irène, winner of the 1935 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. For decades the only woman in the room at international scientific gatherings that probed new theories about the interior of the atom, Marie Curie traveled far and wide to share the secrets of radioactivity before her death at 66 from aplastic anemia.

Daughter of Daring: The Trick-riding, Train-leaping, Road-racing Life of Helen Gibson, Hollywood’s First Stuntwoman by Mallory O’Meara (2025)


Helen Gibson was a woman willing to do anything to give audiences a thrill. Advertised as “The Most Daring Actress in Pictures,” Helen emerged in the early days of the twentieth-century silent film scene as a rodeo rider, background actor, stunt double, and eventually one of the era’s biggest action stars. Her exploits on motorcycles, train cars, and horseback were as dangerous as they were glamorous, featured in hundreds of films and serials–yet her legacy was quickly overshadowed by the increasingly hypermasculine and male-dominated evolution of cinema in the decades that would follow her. Through the page-turning story of Helen’s pioneering legacy, Mallory O’Meara gives readers a glimpse of the Golden Age of Hollywood that could have been: an industry where women call the shots.

When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion by Julie Satow (2024)


The twentieth century American department store: a palace of consumption where every wish could be met under one roof. It was a place where women, shopper and shopgirl alike, could stake out a newfound independence. In the 1930s, Hortense Odlum of Bonwit Teller came to her husband’s department store as a housewife tasked with attracting more shoppers like herself, and wound up running the company. Dorothy Shaver of Lord & Taylor championed American designers during World War II–before which US fashions were almost exclusively Parisian copies–becoming the first businesswoman to earn a $1 million salary. And in the 1960s Geraldine Stutz of Henri Bendel re-invented the look of the modern department store. This stylish account captures the department store in all its glitz, decadence, and fun, and showcases the women who made that beautifully curated world go round.

Sisters in Science: How Four Women Physicists Escaped Nazi Germany and Made Scientific History by Olivia Campbell (2024)


In the 1930s, Germany was a hotbed of scientific thought. But after the Nazis took power, physicists like Hedwig Kohn, Lise Meitner, Hertha Sponer, and Hildegard Stücklen had no choice but to flee due to their Jewish ancestry or anti-Nazi sentiments. Their harrowing journey out of Germany became a life-and-death situation that required herculean efforts of friends and other prominent scientists.