Society, politics and philosophy

Please visit our Book Bulletin 2019 crowdfunding project at CrowdPatch to buy recommendations for our Winter 2019 catalogue and to volunteer your skills, experience and contacts. All funds raised will support not-for-profit Jolabokaflod CIC’s forthcoming programme of events.

Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual (For a Sexist Workplace)
Jessica Bennett
(UK: Penguin, @PenguinUKBooks, 2017; USA: Harper Wave, @Harper_Wave, 2017)

This is a call to arms … Are you aged zero to infinity? Finished with the sexist status quo? Ready to kick ass and take names? Welcome to the Feminist Fight Club. You have lifetime membership.

Feminist Fight Club provides an arsenal of weapons for surviving in an unequal world. You will learn how to fight micro-aggressions, correct unconscious bias, deal with male colleagues who can’t stop ‘manterrupting’ or ‘bro-propriating’ your ideas – and how to lean in without falling the f*ck over. Every woman needs this book – and they needed it yesterday … This is not a drill.

Recommended by:
Leena Normington, Digital Content Producer | Social Media Producer, Vintage Books; YouTube: Creator for Change Fellow 2017, and Vlogger: Leena Norms (also known as ‘Just Kiss My Frog’)

Leena is an experienced producer of podcasts and online video, media presenter, social media consultant, copywriter and workshop leader. She is one of five winners of the Trailblazer Award in 2019, which celebrates young talent under the age of 30 in publishing. Leena creates content that suits the Vintage PRH imprint’s social platforms. On any given day she’ll be editing a podcast, creating a YouTube video, plotting a thread of tweets or building a fun reading list for the Vintage website. Leena also manages the imprint’s social channels so that it has a constant stream of content being uploaded on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, iTunes, YouTube and more. She makes sure everything is scheduled and looking good; and that Vintage responds to readers’ questions and suggestions.

The Myth of Meritocracy
James Bloodworth
(UK: Biteback Publishing, @BitebackPub, 2016)

The best jobs in Britain today are overwhelmingly done by the offspring of privileged parents. Meanwhile, it is increasingly difficult for bright but poor children to transcend their circumstances. This state of affairs should not only worry the poor. It hurts the middle classes too, who are increasingly locked out of the top professions by those from wealthy backgrounds. In a grossly unequal society, the privileges of the parents unfailingly become the privileges of the children.

The Outsider [UK] | The Stranger [USA]
Albert Camus
(UK: Penguin, @classicpenguins, 2013; USA: Vintage, @VintageAnchor, 1989)

‘My mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.’

In L’Étranger (1942), his classic existentialist novel (published in English as The Outsider and The Stranger), Camus explores the alienation of an individual who refuses to conform to social norms. Meursault, his anti-hero, will not lie. When his mother dies, he refuses to show his emotions simply to satisfy the expectations of others. And when he commits a random act of violence on a sun-drenched beach near Algiers, his lack of remorse compounds his guilt in the eyes of society and the law. Yet he is as much a victim as a criminal.

Albert Camus’ portrayal of a man confronting the absurd, and revolting against the injustice of society, depicts the paradox of man’s joy in life when faced with the ‘tender indifference’ of the world.

Recommended by:
Paul Atherton, Managing Director, Simple (TV) Productions Ltd (film/television)
Paul says: ‘The place I sit in the world. I didn’t cry at my mother’s funeral either.’

Paul is a British television producer and director, who was the first person to screen a film on the Coca-Cola billboard at Piccadilly Circus. His latest projects include: working with the Museum of Homelessness on an installation project to tackle stereotypes about homeless people (September 2018); and delivering a Video Diary Workshop at the Museum of London as part of CityRead London, a campaign to encourage reading and library use in the capital by highlighting one book for Londoners to read in one month (May 2019).

Pioneer Girl Perspectives: Exploring Laura Ingalls Wilder
Nancy Tystad Koupal
(USA: South Dakota State Historical Society, @SDHSF, 2017)

Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957) finished her autobiography, Pioneer Girl, in 1930 when she was 63 years old. Throughout the 1930s and into the early 1940s, she drew upon her original manuscript to write a successful series of books for young readers. Wilder’s vision of life on the American frontier in the last half of the nineteenth century continues to draw new generations of readers to her ‘Little House’ books.

Editor Nancy Tystad Koupal has collected essays from noted scholars of Wilder’s life and work that explore the themes and genesis of the author’s writings. Pioneer Girl Perspectives sheds new light on the story behind Wilder’s original manuscript and examines the ways in which the author – and her daughter and editor, Rose Wilder Lane – worked to develop a marketable narrative.

The essay contributors delve into the myths and realities of Wilder’s work to discover the real lives of frontier children, the influence of time and place on both Wilder and Lane, and the role of folklore in the ‘Little House’ novels. Together, the essays give readers a deeper understanding of how Wilder built and managed her story.

Recommended by:
Jennifer McIntyre, Marketing and Rights Director and Associate Editor, South Dakota Historical Society Press

Supported by funding from the US Department of Education‘s FIPSE program, as former Digitiser/Curator Jennifer was in charge of digitising the 5500 oral history recordings within the Archives of the South Dakota Oral History Center. She is Marketing Director for the South Dakota Historical Society Press. As a researcher for the Pioneer Girl Project, she works on illustrations and has spent months examining the newspapers of the Dakota territorial period.

My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathways to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
Resmaa Menakem
(USA: Central Recovery Press, @RecoveryPress, 2017)

The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze, and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society. In this groundbreaking work, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of body-centred psychology. He argues this destruction will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational anguish of white supremacy, which is deeply embedded in all our bodies. Collective agony doesn’t just affect African Americans. White Americans suffer their own secondary trauma as well. So do blue Americans – our police.

My Grandmother’s Hands is a call to action for people to recognise that racism is not about the head, but about the body, and introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond America’s entrenched racialised divide.

Recommended by:
Central Recovery Press: at BookExpo America

Central Recovery Press (CRP) offers a library of quality materials across the full spectrum of behavioural healthcare topics, including addiction treatment and recovery, addiction and the family, parenting, relationships, trauma, grief and loss, and mindfulness. CRP’s publications are written for recovering individuals, their families and loved ones, behavioural health professionals and the general public.

The Descent of Man
Grayson Perry
(UK: Penguin, @PenguinUKBooks, 2017; USA: Penguin, @penguinusa, 2017

Grayson Perry has been thinking about masculinity – what it is, how it operates, why little boys are thought to be made of slugs and snails – since he was a boy. Now, in this funny and necessary book, he turns round to look at men with a clear eye and ask, ‘What sort of men would make the world a better place, for everyone?’ What would happen if we rethought the old, macho, outdated version of manhood, and embraced a different idea of what makes a man?

The author shares his thoughts on everything from power to physical appearance, from emotions to a brand new Manifesto for Men, all shot through with honesty, tenderness and the belief that, for everyone to benefit, upgrading masculinity has to be something men decide to do themselves. They have nothing to lose but their hang-ups.

The Extra Woman: How Marjorie Hillis Led a Generation of Women to Live Alone and Like It
Joanna Scutts
(USA: Liveright Publishing, @LiverightPub, 2017)

You’ve met the extra woman: she’s sophisticated, she lives comfortably alone, she pursues her passions unabashedly and – contrary to society’s suspicions – she really is happy. Despite multiple waves of feminist revolution, today’s single woman is still mired in judgment or, worse, pity. But for a brief, exclamatory period in the late 1930s, she was all the rage. A delicious cocktail of cultural history and literary biography, The Extra Woman transports us to the turbulent and transformative years between suffrage and the sixties, when, thanks to the glamorous grit of one Marjorie Hillis – Vogue‘s assistant editor and author of bestselling self-help books – single women boldly claimed and enjoyed their independence. Hillis’s tips made single life desirable and chic.

This book explores the revolutionary years following the ‘Live-Alone’ movement, when the status of these ‘brazen ladies’ peaked and then collapsed. By painting a wider picture of contemporary culture, the author reveals just how influential Hillis’s career was, spanning decades and numerous bestsellers. As she refashioned her message with every life experience, Hillis proved that guts, grace, and perseverance would always be in vogue (with a small ‘v’).

Recommended by:
Liveright Publishing: at BookExpo America

Liveright Publishing Corporation grew out of the storied Boni & Liveright press, one of the most important publishers of the early 20th century. Though no original titles had been published bearing the distinctive cowled monk colophon of Liveright for many years, in 2012, WW Norton & Company re-launched the storied imprint, producing an inaugural catalogue of publications sure to once again secure Liveright as a pre-eminent publisher of the finest literature. Along with publishing new works, Liveright Publishing of the 21st century will continue to print classics from the 20th century catalogue.

The Enemy Within: A Tale of Muslim Britain
Sayeeda Warsi
(UK: Penguin, @PenguinUKBooks, 2018)

Britain has often found groups within its borders whom it does not trust, whom it feels have a belief, culture, practice or agenda which runs contrary to those of the majority. From Catholics to Jews, miners to trade unionists, Marxists to liberals and even homosexuals, all have at times been viewed, described and treated as ‘the enemy within’. Muslims are the latest in a long line of ‘others’ to be given this label.

How did this state of affairs come to pass? What are the lessons and challenges for the future – and how will the tale of Muslim Britain develop? Sayeeda Warsi draws on her own unique position in British life, as the child of Pakistani immigrants, an outsider, who became an insider, the UK’s first Muslim Cabinet minister, to explore questions of cultural difference, terrorism, surveillance, social justice, religious freedom, integration and the meaning of ‘British values’.

Recommended by:
Anushka Asthana, Podcast Presenter, The Guardian | Podcast: Today in Focus

Anushka presents The Guardian‘s daily podcast, Today in Focus. She is the associate editor of Peston, ITV’s political interview programme hosted by the eponymous ITV News Political Editor, Robert Peston. She also is the Co-Presenter of BBC Radio 4‘s weekly politics magazine programme, The Week in Westminster

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Please visit our Book Bulletin 2019 crowdfunding project at CrowdPatch to buy recommendations for our Winter 2019 catalogue and to volunteer your skills, experience and contacts. All funds raised will support not-for-profit Jolabokaflod CIC’s forthcoming programme of events.

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