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East Bay Booksellers2023 HOLIDAY CATALOG(Fiction & Nonfiction]

Another year, another Holiday Catalog! This year we’ve chosen to combine the Fiction and Nonfiction catalogs. This makes things longer – so much longer! – but the Table of Contents links should scoot you around as leisurely or focused as you’d like. In these pages you’ll find a pretty good representation of the sort of things we give pride of place at the store. So, definitely some of the things you’re already looking, but also things that maybe are a bit off the radar. Enjoy!STACKSFiction & Nonfiction Edition Winter 2023Table of ContentsNew FictionStaff PicksSci-Fi / FantasyGraphic NovelsMysteries / ThrillersFictionArt History / TheoryCalifornia / Western StudiesBiography / Travel WritingBelles Letters/ Critical StudiesGender, Race & Disability StudiesNative / Indigenous StudiesNorth American StudiesGlobal Studies & Political ScienceCritical Theory / PhilosophyMythology / Religious StudiesSciences & Nature WritingPsychology & HealthPerforming Arts & SportsNonfictionPoetry & Drama

The Apple in the Darkby Clarice Lispector (trans. by Benjamin Moser)“It’s the best one,” Clarice Lispector remarked on the occasion of the publication of The Apple in the Dark: “I can’t define it, how it is, I can only say that it’s much better constructed than the previous ones.”Cross-Stitchby Jazmina Barbera (trans. by Christina MacSweeney)The debut novel of female friendship and coming-of-age from Jazmina Barrera, acclaimed author of Linea Nigra and On LighthousesNew FictionIn Ascensionby Martin MacInnesLook, we’re not even sure we’re supposed to be selling this book since it’s not even out in the US. Ah, but this is the UK edition! That’s how much much we’re digging it. At Night He Lifts Weightsby Kang Young-Sook (trans. by Janet Hong) Every author the Bay Area’s very own Transit Books will now win the Nobel Prize in Literature, right? That’s how this thing works, if I’m not mistaken.In any event, Kang Young-Sook’s collection of short stories is dystopian in the same sort of way contemporary life is dystopian. No escape from that for you in these pages, I assure you, or just about anywhere, if we’re being honest. The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild - by Mathias Énard (trans. by Frank Wynne)A new novel from the celebrated author of Compass and Zone is always worthy of notice. Striking a different tone than his previous novels, the latest revels in its nods to Rabelais. Énard is never one to play it straightforward, and here past and future do not mix so much as they mingle. I don’t know … it makes sense when you read the book.

We’re Safe When We’re Aloneby Nghiem TranThu says: “A good son. Father. The Mansion. The Ghosts. Possibly all the synopsis I can offer before plunging into this enigmatic and voracious spiral of a novella. Reminiscent of Borges, yet rebellious in its refusal to take shape. It is a transportive and philosophical experience that will chill you to the bone.”Lies and Sorceryby Elsa Morante (trans. by Jenny McPhee)The Long Formby Kate BriggsA novel from the author of This Little Art that reminds you of an important truth: Kate Briggs is smarter than you, and that’s a very good thing. Such intelligence in lesser or more malevolent hands would lead to very bad things. Admired by the likes of Natalia Ginzburg, but mostly unknown to us dullards in the U.S., Lies and Sorcery should be Elsa Morante’s coming out party in these parts. Written during World War II, it is in the grand tradition of Stendhal, Tolstoy, and Proust, spanning the lives of three generations of delightfully eccentric women.Dragon Palaceby Hiromi Kawakami (trans. by Ted Goossen)From the bestselling author of Strange Weather in Tokyo comes this otherworldly collection of eight stories, each a masterpiece of transformation, infused with humor, sex, and the universal search for love and beauty—in a world where the laws of time and space, and even species boundaries, don’t apply. Master of the Eclipseby Etel AdnanThough she is known primarily for her poetry and painting, Adnan’s way with prose is similarly subtle. In the same spare way of those forms, there is a light touch with heavy sense of beauty, albeit scarred. Septologyby Jon Fosse (trans. by Damion Searls)For a long time, reading the work of Jon Fosse was a bit like a cult. Okay, out here in California especially that sounds more ominous than I mean. More of a “cool kid” sort of thing to do. But now that he’s won the Nobel Prize, we’re now emerging into the sun, pale and a little hungry, and eager to see what might yet become of this world.

My Workby Olga Ravn (trans. by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell)My Work is a novel about the unique and fundamental experience of giving birth, mixing different literary forms—fiction, essay, poetry, memoir, and letters—to explore the relationship between motherhood, work, individuality, and literature.Study for Obedienceby Sarah BernsteinThis is Amiko, Do You Copy?by Natsuko Imamura (trans. by Hitomi Yoshio)A surprising and moving novella about a misunderstood neurodivergent girl from one of Japan's most acclaimed young writers, the author of The Woman in the Purple Skirt.Tremorby Teju ColeTrue story: I once saw Teju Cole perform as a reader at a jazz club with Vijay Iyer. Cole would do some readings while Iyer and his band performed quietly, and then would recede when the band went full force. During the intermission the man sitting next to me was outraged at all the reading taking place. I asked if didn’t realize what he’d bought a ticket to see, and he told me to mind my own business.Our Strangers: Storiesby Lydia DavisLydia Davis is an American master of the short story form. Hers do not look or sound like anybody’s else’s, even when people attempt to look and sound like her. A new collection is always an event.The Premonitionby Banana Yoshimoto (trans. by Asa Yoneda)The story of a young woman haunted by her childhood and the inescapable bitterness that inevitably comes from knowing the truth – and “they” say translated literature is hard to relate to! While you’re at it, grab a copy of Dead End Memories and Kitchen from Thu’s Staff Picks shelf.The publisher’s marketing copy has the phrases “a series of inexplicable events occurs,” “collective bovine hysteria,” “a local dog’s phantom pregnancy,” and “potato blight” – so, yeah, I was all in! And rewarded with a richly written, lyrical book. A helluva debut novel.

The Vulnerablesby Sigrid NunezElegy plus comedy is the only way to express how we live in the world today, says a character in Sigrid Nunez’s ninth novel. The Vulnerables offers a meditation on our contemporary era, as a solitary female narrator asks what it means to be alive at this complex moment in history and considers how our present reality affects the way a person looks back on her past. Before We Say Goodbyeby Toshikazu Kawaguchi The fourth book in the beloved Before the Coffee Gets Cold series. Readers will once again be introduced to a new set of visitors: the husband with something important left to say; the woman who couldn't bid her dog farewell; the woman who couldn't answer a proposal; and the daughter who drove her father away.The New Animalsby Pip AdamThe Dorothy Project Hive has been singing the praises of its latest discovery for American readers. Set in the Auckland fashion scene in 2016, The New Animals moves over the course of one night through the hopes, misapprehensions, resentments, and regrets of a small group of fashion-industry workers, divided by generation and class. The Goodbye Catby Hiro Arikawa (trans. by Philip Gabriel)Whether it’s books about cats, greeting cards with cats doing cat things (or, frankly, non-cat things), puzzles featuring intoxicated cats, and even a book using feline domestication as a model for Marxist theory, East Bay Booksellers has cat lovers covered! The Unsaddledby Pascal Quignard (trans. by John Taylor)Reading Quignard is a bit like grabbing a drink with your most erudite friend. It can on some days be very tedious, but with the right drink in hand it is the best possible thing. I love the opening sentence description provided by Seagull (the publisher): “A captivating and wide-ranging interpretation of accidental dismounting.”The Bee Stingby Paul MurrayShortlisted for the 2023 Booker PrizePaul Murray’s exuberantly entertaining new novel, is a tour de force: a portrait of postcrash Ireland, a tragicomic family saga, and a dazzling story about the struggle to be good at the end of the world.

The Vaster Wildsby Lauren GroffLauren Groff’s new novel is at once an adventure story and a fable about trying to find a new way of living in a world succumbing to the churn of colonialism. It tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history, to ask how—and if—we can adapt quickly enough to save ourselves.Roman Storiesby Jhumpa LahiriThe first short story collection by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author since Unaccustomed Earth.Rome—metropolis and monument, suspended between past and future, multi-faceted and metaphysical—is the protagonist, not the setting, of these nine storiesThe Liberatorsby E. J. KohSpanning two continents and four generations, E. J. Koh’s debut novel exquisitely captures two Korean families forever changed by fateful decisions made in love and war. The Homewood Trilogyby John Edgar WidemanIn 1983, The Homewood Trilogy signaled the arrival of a major voice in American literature. Forty years later, this edition of the Trilogy celebrates Wideman’s ongoing contribution by offering these masterworks to a new generation of readers. Brooklyn Crime Novelby Jonathan LethemFrom the bestselling and award-winning author of The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn comes a sweeping story of community, crime, and gentrification, tracing more than fifty years of life in one Brooklyn neighborhood.Dayby Michael CunninghamUsing somebody else’s blurb may seem a little lazy, but have you seen the length of this catalog? “Along with George Eliot, Michael Cunningham belongs in that rare group of novelists who hold the world close, with apparently infinite respect, compassion, and tenderness, all while describing the world and its inhabitants unsparingly.”—Tony Kushner

The Best American Short Stories 2024edited by Min Jin LeeYou know the deal with these … Death Valleyby Melissa BroderDeath Valley is Melissa Broder at her most imaginative, most universal, and finest, and is “a journey unlike any you’ve read before” (Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah)Her Side of the Storyby Alba de Céspedes (trans. by Jill Foulston)From the author of Forbidden Notebook, Alba de Céspedes, a richly told novel she called “the story of a great love and of a crime.” Historical literary fiction readers take note! Blackoutsby Justin TorresWinner of the National Book Award for FictionA book about storytelling—its legacies, dangers, delights, and potential for change—and a bold exploration of form, art, and love, Blackouts uses fiction to see through the inventions of history and narrative.Vengeance is Mineby Marie NDiaye (trans. by Jordan Stump)Told in a slow seethe recalling the short novels of Elena Ferrante and the psychological richness of Patricia Highsmith’s work, Vengeance Is Mine is a dreamlike portrait of a woman afflicted by failing memories and a tortured uncertainty about her own past that threatens to become her undoing. Bundle with her Self-Portrait in Green and That Time of Yearfrom the Bay Area’s homebase of translated literature, Two Lines Press.Family Mealby Bryan Washington

The Maniacby Benjamin LabatutUnsure whether he’d agree, but Labatut’s The Maniac is sort of a novelesque expansion of the themes found in his path-breaking When We Cease to Understand the World – a book that inexplicably both Brad & Obama agreed was great! Labatut is a wild, cantankerous man of letters, and we trust will be enthralled (& possibly scandalized!) by him for years to come.Barefoot Doctorby Can Xue (trans. by Karen Gernant & Zeping Chen)An Ordinary Youthby Walter Kempowski (trans. by Michael Lipkin)Walter Kempowski (1929–2007) was one of postwar Germany’s most acclaimed and popular writers. His novels include All for Nothing and Marrow and Bone (both published by NYRB Classics). There was some speculation that Can Xue might be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature this year. She did not, but it would not have been undeserved. Soon, I think … soon. And when it happens, once again, it will be small & academic presses (in this case, Yale University Press and Sublunary Press) leading the charge.The Voyage of Horace Pirouelleby Philippe Soupault (trans. by Justin Vicari)Wakefield Press says of its latest, “A Rimbaudesque novella of wayward wanderlust and liberty from the cofounder of Surrealism.”Oh yeah … that’s the stuff. BTW … be sure to check out our Wakefield Press display tucked away in the Fiction section of the store.Same Bed, Different Dreamsby Ed ParkA wild, sweeping novel that imagines an alternate secret history of Korea and the traces it leaves on the present—loaded with assassins and mad poets, RPGs and slasher films, pop bands and the perils of social media. This will be a lot of people’s favorite novel of the year.Love and Missedby Susie BoytSusie Boyt’s sentences in this dynamic new novel are crystalline in the proper, if not wholly common sense of the word. Not “transparent” so much, as the boring would insist it means, but refractive. Light and life explode on these pages.In other words, it’s a flat-out great book.

Land of Milk and Honeyby C. Pam ZhangLeigh says: “A lush, vibrant thrilling contrast to her fantastic debut. In a world experiencing food storage and semi-collapse, Chef takes a job in an uber-wealthy enclave filled with fruit, vegetables, delicacies and some serious ethical issues.” The Most Secret Memory of Menby Mohamed Mbougar Sarr (trans. by Lara Vergnaud) A gripping literary mystery in the vein of Bolaño’s Savage Detectives, this coming-of-age novel unravels the fascinating life of a maligned Black author, based on Yambo Ouologuem.The first Sub-Saharan African winner of France’s top literary prize, the Goncourt.On a Woman’s Madnessby Astrid Roemer (trans. by Lucy Scott)Strikingly translated by Lucy Scott, Astrid Roemer’s classic queer novel is a tentpole of European and post-colonial literature. And amid tales of plantation-dwelling snakes, rare orchids, and star-crossed lovers, it is also a blistering meditation on the cruelties we inflict on those who disobey. Marigold and Roseby Louise GlückSimultaneously sad and funny, and shot through with a sense of stoic wonder, this small miracle of a book, following thirteen books of poetry and two collections of essays, is unlike anything Glück has written, while at the same time it is inevitable, transcendent. RIP, to one of America’s greats.Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kindby Molly McGheeMolly McGhee touches on themes most people know all too well—the relentlessly crushing weight of debt, the recognition that work won’t love you back and the awkwardness of finding love when you are without hope. This is a breakthrough work of surrealist fiction, a piercing critique of late-stage capitalism, and a reckoning with its true cost.The Confession of Copeland Caneby Keenan NorrisSet in East Oakland, California in a very near future, The Confession of Copeland Cane introduces us to a prescient and contemporary voice, one whose take on coming of age in America becomes a startling reflection of our present moment.

Let Us Descendby Jesmyn WardFrom Jesmyn Ward—the two-time National Book Award winner, youngest winner of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, and MacArthur Fellow—comes a haunting masterpiece, sure to be an instant classic, about an enslaved girl in the years before the Civil War.The Children’s Bachby Helen GarnerA literary institution in Australia, Helen Garner’s perfectly formed novels embody the tumultuous 1970s and 1980s. Drawn on a small canvas and with a subtle musical backdrop, The Children’s Bach is “a jewel” (Ben Lerner) within Garner’s revered catalogue, a beloved work that solidified her place among the masters of modern letters, a finely etched masterpiece that weighs the burdens of commitment against the costs of liberation.The Honor of Your Presenceby Dave EggersThroughout all his work, Dave Eggers explores the the things that invite, that fracture, and that possibly might heal humans coming together. His latest short story / novella is a succinct embodiment and celebration of that. The Man Who Cried I Amby John A. WilliamsFew novels have so deliberately blurred the boundaries between fiction and reality as The Man Who Cried I Am(1967), and many of its early readers assumed the King Alfred plan was real. In her introduction, Merve Emre examines the gonzo marketing plan behind the novel that fueled this confusion and prompted an FBI investigation. This deluxe paperback also includes a new foreword by novelist Ishmael Reed.The End of Augustby Yu Miri (trans. by Morgan Giles)I don’t generally do historical fiction or family epics … and this is both in a big way! Ah, but Yu Miri (author of the acclaimed Tokyo Ueno Station) can do, and does no, wrong!Menewoodby Nicole GriffithLeigh says: “Nicola Griffith’s Hild Sequence brings historical detail on the scale of Hilary Mantel, lyricism akin to an epic poem, and the righteous imagination to center a range of unique characters often neglected in fiction rooted in the distant past.”

Treacle Walkerby Alan GarnerWhat a wild and wonderful celebration of myth, folklore and storytelling from one of England’s greats. A story “like no other” tends always to have roots, and Garner is a master and following where these lead.The Wolves of Eternityby Karl Ove Knausgaard (trans. by Martin Aitken)This is Knausgaard’s attempt at a big, grand Russian novel, incorporating all the themes of materialism and religion, responsibilities owed and received you’d expect of such. Also like some of those novels, it’s a page-turner. Knausgaard, for all his navel-gazing reputation, is a great teller of stories.. Organ Meatsby K-Ming Chang“Organ Meats possesses something of the febrile intensity of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, their laser focus on female friendship, but instead of Naples, K-Ming Chang’s wild girls inhabit a magical universe of talking dogs and shape-shifting body parts.”—The New York Times (Editors’ Choice)So Late in the Dayby Claire KeeganCelebrated for her powerful short fiction, considered “among the form’s most masterful practitioners” (New York Times), Claire Keegan now gifts us three exquisite stories, newly revised and expanded, together forming a brilliant examination of gender dynamics and an arc from Keegan’s earliest to her most recent work.A Grandmother Begins the Storyby Michelle PorterMichelle Porter makes her fiction debut with an enchanting and original story of the unrivaled desire for healing and the power of familial bonds across five generations of Métis women and the land and bison that surround them.Scatterlingsby Resoketswe Martha ManenzheA lyrical, moving novel in the spirit of Transcendent Kingdom and A Burning—and the most awarded debut title in South Africa—that tells the story of a multiracial family when the Immorality Act is passed, revealing the story of one family’s scattered souls in the wake of history.

Trustby Hernan DiazOne of our top-selling novels the past two years!Leigh says: “I absoluvely love this one. What begins as a straightforward novel fractures into unexpected parts revealing different narratives. The unwritten dialogue between them is where the magic happens.”Joan is Okayby Weike WangThu says: “A marvelous, funny book that will help you through a tough day. It’ll bring you closer to the people that feel far. The ones you wish you could reach. Especially the ones you think don’t care, but probably do the most.”Treasure Island!!!!by Sara LevineA true-blue EBB backlist bestseller! Elizabeth says: “UNHINGED – in the best possible way.”Nightbitchby Rachel YoderLeigh says: “Knocked my socks off. Ferocious, funny, and fully loaded. Don’t read too much about this one before reading. Howl at yonder moon while devouring.”The Boy and the Dogby Seishu Hase (trans. by Alison Watts)Thu says: “The story of a dog that travels for five years following a triple disaster to find his beloved boy, who hasn’t spoken since and the people he meets along the way. Each section of his trek follows a familiar structure, yet astonishingly unique everytime. Comforting, bittersweet, and absolutely exquisite.” Staff Picks(Fiction

When I Sing, Mountains Danceby Irene Solà (trans. by Mara Faye Lethem)Brad says: “What a book! The novels I cherish most are the ones that go about creating their own rules – for who matters in a story’s telling, what doesn’t, and the boundaries that keep them apart. Books very much like this one make me celebrate reading.”Slow Days, Fast Companyby Eve BabitzKick the Latchby Kathryn ScanlanLeigh says: “Like the only open stool at the bar happened to be next to the most badass horsewoman. Kathryn Scanlan is queen of small books with BIG voice.”Elizabeth says: “I love California! I love LA! I love Eve! You would be hard-pressed to find one page of this collection that doesn’t brim over with pathos, with, beauty and passion.”After Sapphoby Selby Wynn SchwartzBrad says: “There are, of course, lots of good books. Some are even great. But on occasion you come across one that is brilliant. I’ve had such excited conversations about this book with customers this year. I look forward to having yet more to come!”Light From Uncommon Starsby Ryka AokiAdelaide says: “A delightful exploration of friendship, family, redemption, and the power of beauty in our lives. I usually dislike books centered around music, but Aoki’s lush and vivid descriptions capture something so magical words rarely rouch. Also made me cry a lot, which I love.On the Origin of Species and Other Storiesby Bo-Young KimThu says: “Excellent and absorbing futuristic stories varying in theme. Made me wonder about reality, how we define existence, and the boundless potential and fluidity of our mindsets.”

Harrowby Joy WilliamsBrad says: “Harrow feels as though it were written in a different time, while also being fully of this time. Williams eschews the tropes and designs of most contemporary American fiction –and we’re all the better for it.”The Dishwasherby Stéphane Larue (trans. by Pablo Strauss)Elizabeth says: “Stolen moments of cool peace stocking the walk-in under the stars smoking by the dumpster. Meals eaten off of a plate balanced on your knee. Agony, ecstasy, dinner rushes –this book brought it allllll back. A glorious read.”The Storytellerby Walter Benjamin (ed. by Sam Dolbear, Esther Leslie and Sebastian Truskolaski)Brad says: “I thought this would sell, but I had no idea how much it would sell. Tell your friends and loved ones, Oakland HERE for Walter Benjamin.” You make this job a pleasure. The Baudelaire Fractalby Lisa RobertsonBrad says: “This book is IT! Holy hell .. every page of this novel – very loosely defined, one of ideas (not plot – never that for me!) – made me stop and pinch myself. Did I dream-read this exquisite book? Read it and let me know.”Manhuntby Gretchen Felker-MartinAdelaide says: “This is a horrifying book, in every way you can imagine. And it’s so good! Like, so good it pulled me out of a long reading slump. Gretchen’s writing brings every scene vividly, terrifyingly to life. Go into this book knowing it will cut you, carve you, rip your insides out. But do, definitely do, read this book.”Biography of Xby Catherine LaceyLeigh says: “Lacey is constantly expanding my understanding of what fiction can be and do. This is one of the best nevels I’ve read in years –beautiful on the sentence level and holds its own world inside. Read it, and then read it again!”

The Sorrow of Othersby Ada ZhangThu says: “Perfect for readers (like me!) who love and never tire of sad books. (I see you.) A collection that examines loneliness and how it can seem so precise and piercing to the heart, yet somehow lost in a vast expanse.”Pondby Claire-Louise BennettBrad says: “My friends were inundated with text messages from me raving about and quoting this book. One of the great “kick-down-the-damn-door” debuts of recent memory. Get lost in Bennett’s narrator’s headspace and you may not wish to be found. One of those quiet books that are actually screaming.Omensetter’s Luckby William H. GassElizabeth says: “Much to say about this book … too much for a little card. Try the first sentence on for size and see what you think.”That first sentence: “Lilith’s Broodby Octava E. ButlerAdelaide says: “This is my favorite of Butler’s works. She asks questions which don’t have easy answers, and are perhaps unanswerable except by those of whom they are asked. Especially challenging for me were the themes of consent and hierarchy in supposedly symbiotic relationships.”The Secret Lives of Church Ladiesby Deesha PhilyawThu says: “Just an unbelievably breathtaking collection of stories, oozing with intimacy and want. Sisterhood. Potential. I cannot describe it completely, but this book is an embrace.”Writers & Loversby Lily KingElizabeth says: “If you have ever pursued a creative life in between your dishwashing shifts – if you’ve rever had your heart broken by a mediocre poet (who hasn’t?) then this book is for you. It is beautiful.”

Babelby R. F. KuangAt the Edge of the Woodsby Kathryn BromwichThu says: “Rarely have I ever come across a book that’s truly as satisfying to read as this little book about a woman living in obscurity on the outskirts of the Italian Alps. Intriguing, mysterious, and contemplative – not to mention the prose is unbelievably visceral.”Treesby Percival EverettBrad says: “Is Percival Everett contemporary American literature’s most serious funny writer? Or its most funny serious writer? You be the judge. Trees is his masterpiece.”Dyketteby Jenny Fran DavisLeigh says: OMG, I love this! Gossipy, sexy, and almost painfully insightful. And so very funny.”The Raven Towerby Ann LeckieAdelaide says: “This book left me speechless. Utterly and completely devoid of words. Reading it felt like Leckie just flexing on her readers, like a taunt on every page, goading us into her strange, uniqueworld until she finally pulled the rug out, leaving us flailing, falling utterly undone. This book is absolutely perfect.”Days at the Morisaki Bookshopby Satoshi Yagisawa (trans. by Eric Ozawa)Thu says: “Sentimental, set in a cozy bookshop and coffee lover vibes? Perfect for anyone that breathes? Yes, please! This little novel is like an ideal Asian dessert – light, tasteful, and most important … not too sweet.”Thu says: “Tore right through this tome! A magically reimagined history set in Oxford. It explores the beauty and betrayal of translation and academia’s dark roots of power and imperialism.”

The Siren, the Song, and the Spy - by Maggie Tokuda-HallIn this second vibrant fantasy from Maggie Tokuda-Hall, companion to her best-selling debut, The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea, a diverse resistance force fights to topple an empire in a story about freedom, identity, and decolonization.Bluebeard’s Castleby Anna BillerBluebeard gets a feminist Gothic makeover in this subversive take on the famous French fairy tale. Filled with dark humor and evocative imagery, Bluebeard’s Castle is a subversive take on modern romance and Gothic erotica.Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horroredited by Jordan PeeleThe visionary writer and director of Get Out, Us, and Nope, and founder of Monkeypaw Productions, curates this groundbreaking anthology of all-new stories of Black horror, exploring not only the terrors of the supernatural but the chilling reality of injustice that haunts our nation.Orbitalby Samantha HarveyHarvey presents the thoughts and recollections of six men and women chosen to circumnavigate the planet – told over the course of sixteen sunrises and sunsets. Intimate and awesome in its scope, of intimacy and vision. Sci-Fi / FantasyGodzilla and Godzilla Raids Againby Shigeru Kayama (trans. by Jeffrey Angles)How on earth is this the first English translations of the original novellas about the iconic kaijū Godzilla?

The Privilege of the Happy Endingby Kij JohnsonA surprising and exciting new collection of speculative and experimental stories that explore animal intelligences, gender, and the nature of stories.System Collapseby Martha WellsEveryone's favorite lethal SecUnit is back in the next installment in Martha Wells's beloved Murderbot Diaries series.The Futureby by Naomi AldermanThe bestselling, award-winning author of The Power tells a wildly far-fetched tale (kidding!!) about greedy tech giants threatening life as we know it. The Tatami Time Machine Bluesby Tomihiko Morimi (trans. by Emily Balistrieri)In the boiling heat of summer, a broken remote control for an air conditioner threatens life as we know it in this reality-bending, time-slipping sequel to The Tatami Galaxy..Touchedby Walter MosleyIntergalactic visions, deadly threats, and explosive standoffs between mostly good and completely evil converge in a dystopian fantasy that could only be conceived by the inimitable Walter Mosley, one of the country’s most beloved and acclaimed writersThe Golden Pot: and other tales of the uncannyby E T A Hoffmann (trans by Peter Wortsman)Music and madness flow through E.T.A. Hoffmann’s phantasmagoric stories. The ringing of crystal bells heralds the arrival of a beguiling snake, and a student’s descent into lunacy; a young man abandons his betrothed for a woman who plays the piano skillfully but seems worryingly wooden; a counselor’s daughter must choose between singing and her life.

I Must Be Dreamingby Roz ChastA Christmas Bestiary is an essential guidebook to all the horrors that await us during the darkest time of the year, from common creatures such as Baba Yaga and the Krampus to the less encountered (but quite deadly) Yule Wight and Gryla.A Christmas Bestiaryby John Kenn Mortensen, Benni BødkerIn her new book, Roz Chast illustrates her own dream world, a place that is sometimes creepy but always hilarious, accompanied by an illustrated tour through “Dream-Theory Land” guided by insights from poets, philosophers, and psychoanalysts alike. Illuminating, surprising, funny, and often profound, I Must Be Dreamingexplores Roz Chast's newest subject of fascination-and promises to make it yours, too.Monicaby Daniel ClowesMonica is a series of interconnected narratives that collectively tell the life story — actually, stories — of its title character. Clowes calls upon a lifetime of inspiration to create the most complex and personal graphic novel of his distinguished career. Roamingby Jillian Tamaki, Mariko Tamaki Roaming is the third collaboration from the critically acclaimed team behind Skim and Governor General’s Literary Award winner This One Summer. Moody, atmospheric, and teeming with life, the magic of this comics duo leaks through the pages with lush and exquisite pen work. Haruki Murakami Manga Storiesby Haruki Murakami (adapted by Jc Deveney; illustrations by Pmgl) This book is, thankfully and joyfully, exactly what the title says it is. Graphic Novels

Ephemeraby Briana LoewinsohnGorgeously illustrated in a painted palette of warmy, earthy tones, it is a quiet book of isolation, plants, confusion, acceptance, and the fog of childhood. Loewinsohn’s debut book is an aching, meditative twist on autobiography, infusing the genre with an ethereal fusion of memory and imagination.Ducksby Kate BeatonElizabeth says: “Once in a while, a memoir manages the tricky task of telling the writer’s story while also gathering up the many corners to tell a story about all of us. We’ll be talking about and teaching this book for a long time.”The Dancing Plagueby Gareth BrookesBrad says: “What a book! It’s not particularly new anymore, but I read it every time we get it back in. Visually, textually, and tactilely special.”Curses - by George Wylesol From hospitals to hell to the wilderness, George Wylesol’s short stories take place in liminal spaces where nothing is as it seems; the surreal becomes real; and something is lying in wait around every corner. As our main characters navigate through corridors, passageways, and highways, they sink deeper and deeper into everyday strangeness that slips into peculiarity, creating an internal journey from normalcy to the supernatural.The Out Side: Trans & Nonbinary Comicsby Jillian Tamaki, Mariko Tamaki In this vibrant and affirming comics anthology, 29 trans & nonbinary comic artists share their personal journeys of self-discovery and acceptance.Featuring the work of Sage Coffey, Kyla Aiko, and Coco Ouwerkerk, The Out Side: Trans & Nonbinary Comics includes 29 creators' tales of self-love and affirmation and detailing their experiences with gender and identity.I Am Only a Foreigner Because You Do Not UnderstandL NicholsContinues Flocks, L. Nichols’s graphic memoir of growing up trans in the rural South. These comics document L.’s further transition, from living as a man to walking the middle path, facing depression, disease, divorce and death. Healing leaves scars, things fall apart, and pronouns change until there is no I, there is only us.

The Death of the Red Riderby Yulia Yakovleva (trans by. Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp)The follow-up to Yakovleva’s The Punishment Hunter – another atmospheric and relentlessly dark detective series set in Stalinist Russia, where corruption, informers, and purges take paranoia to the next level.Skeletons in the Closetby Jean-Patrick Manchette (trans. by Alyson Waters)Brad says: “I’m so sad this is the final translation of Manchette’s works. But … hey, he’s no longer with us. It had to happen eventually. This is as fitting an end to the translations as I could hope. Intensely dark and funny and violent. I love Manchette so goddamn much.”The Secret Hoursby Mick HerronThe Secret Hours is a dazzling entry point into Mick Herron’s body of work, a standalone spy thriller that is at once unnerving, poignant, and laugh-out-loud funny. It is also the breathtaking secret history that Slough House fans have been waiting for.Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Weird Sistersby Olga Wojtas Shona McMonagle is your ordinary, garden-variety librarian: comfortably padded, in her middle years, expert in various arcane martial arts. She also has an impressive knack for time travel (“impressive” may be overstating things: her first two forays—revolutionary Russia, 19th-century France—went less than smoothly). This series is a hoot! A Country of Old Menby Joseph HansenOver the course of twelve novels spanning four decades of American culture—from the 1960s to the late 1980s—Joseph Hansen gave readers one of the truly great heroes of detective fiction.Mysteries / Thrillers

The Honjin Murdersby Seishi Yokomizo, (trans. by Louise Heal Kawai)A riveting account of one woman’s awful reinvention, M. S. Coe’s new novel is disturbingly funny and completely unexpected. With elements of pulp noir and confessional literature, The Formation of Calcium depicts the bland misery of modern American life as one woman seeks her own ill-fated transformation.Beware the WomanMegan AbbottElizabeth says: “A cross between Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, “Rosemary’s Baby,” and a classic Cabin in the Woods thriller. Megan Abbott neve rmisses. This book is a creepy delight.”Notes on an Executionby Danya KukafkaBlending breathtaking suspense with astonishing empathy, Notes on an Execution presents a chilling portrait of womanhood as it simultaneously unravels the familiar narrative of the American serial killer, interrogating our system of justice and our cultural obsession with crime stories, asking readers to consider the false promise of looking for meaning in the psyches of violent men.Epitaph for a Tramp and Epitaph for a Dead Beatby David MarksonOne of Japan's greatest classic murder mysteries, introducing their best loved detective, translated into English for the first time. This is the first in the series … and it is tremendously addictive.The Country of Toóby Rodrigo Rey Rosa (trans. by Stephen Henighan)Born and raised in Guatemala City, Rodrigo Rey Rosa is the author of five collections of short stories and more than a dozen novels that have been published in sixteen languages, among them Severina, and The African Shore. Rey Rosa has been awarded Guatemala’s national literature prize, China’s Best Foreign Book Award and, for his life’s work, Chile’s prestigious José Donoso Prize. The Formation of Calciumby M CoeBefore achieving critical acclaim as an experimental novelist (e.g., Wittgenstein’s Mistress). David Markson paid the rent by writing several crime novels, including two featuring the private detective Harry Fannin.

Art History / TheoryArt Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art -by Lauren ElkinAn erudite, potent examination of beauty and excess, sentiment and touch, the personal and the political, the ambiguous and the opaque, Art Monsters is a radical intervention that forces us to consider how the idea of the art monster might transform the way we imagine—and enact—our lives.Colors - by Andrew Berardini Colors is a collection of lush short stories about the many different shades that make up our lives. Berardini guides us through a spectrum of vignettes, weaving inspiration from Calvino’s Invisible Cities and Bowie’s Sound and Vision, arriving at color’s fundamental intersection with who we are and how we live.Decolonizing Design: A Cultural Justice Guidebook - by Elizabeth Tunstall (Dori) For leaders and practitioners in design institutions and communities, Tunstall’s work demonstrates how we can transform the way we imagine and remake the world, replacing pain and repression with equity, inclusion, and diversity—in short, she shows us how to realize the infinite possibilities that decolonized design represents.Defend / Defund: A Visual History of Organizing Against the Police - by The Interference ArchiveCyber-Feminism Index - by Mindy SeuHackers, scholars, artists and activists of all regions, races and sexual orientations consider how humans might reconstruct themselves by way of technologyNorman proposes a new way of thinking, one that recognizes our place in a complex global system where even simple behaviors affect the entire world. He identifies the economic metrics that contribute to the harmful effects of commerce and manufacturing and proposes a recalibration of what we consider important in life. Design for a Better World: Meaningful, Sustainable, Humanity Centered - by Donald A. NormanA sweeping and poignant history of community response to the violence of white supremacy and carceral systems in the US, told through interviews, archival reproductions, and narrative. In total, the publication shows how the modern Defund movement builds on powerful Black feminist and abolitionist movements past and imagines alternatives to policing for community safety for our present.

Fashion: A Manifesto - by Anouchka GrosA poetic demonstration of the capacity of format to produce meaning. The articulation of the codex as a site for meaning-makinghas rarely (if ever) been subject to such highly focused and detailed study as in this volume, in which Drucker shows how format and content can become fully integrated, co-dependent and mutually self-reflexive.The Effect of Tropical Light on White Men -by Catherine LordCatherine Lord fills her commonplace book with analyses of paintings and poems, anecdotes about her own upbringing that never quite add up to memoir, details from slave registries housed in the National Archives, and anti-racist, post-colonial, and queer texts.Eyeliner: A Cultural History - by Zahra HankirFrom the acclaimed editor of Our Women on the Ground comes a dazzling exploration of the intersections of beauty and power around the globe, told through the lens of an iconic cosmeticHow to Not Fuck Up Your Art-World Happiness - by Christoph Noe Taking us on a journey from the court of Louis XIV to TikTok’s avant apocalypse, Fashion: A Manifesto scrutinizes fashion from a number of angles: historically, psychologically, politically, environmentally, even linguistically, to open up questions about the ways in which it works both for and against us and looks forward to a future where our clothes treat us—not to mention the planet—a great deal more kindly.A light-hearted effort to make the art world a little bit happier, from the cofounder of Larry’s ListGay Betrayals - by Leo Bersani, Hanna Quinlan & Rosie HastingsThe Two Works series is a genius meshing together of theoretical writings and visual arts. Others in the series currently available include Art on the Frontlineand The Everyday and Everydayness. Diagrammatic Writing - by Johanna Drucker

Portal: San Francisco's Ferry Building and the Reinvention of American Cities -by John KingJustice and the Interstates provides a concise but in-depth examination of the damages wrought by highway construction on the nation’s communities of color.The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle -by Kent Monkman & Gisèle GordonBlending history, fiction, and memoir in bold new ways, The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle (also see Volume 2) are unlike anything published before. And in their power to reshape our shared understanding, they promise to change the way we see everything that lies ahead.The Other Side: A Journey Into Women, Art & the Spirit World - by Jennifer HiggieOne of our imports, this is a fascinating discussion on the solace of ritual, the gender exclusions of art history, the contemporary relevance of myth, the boom in alternative ways of understanding the world and the impact of spiritualism on feminism and contemporary art. From the author of The Mirror and the Paleette.To Photograph Is to Learn How to Die: An Essay with Digressions - by Tim CarpenterA two-time Pulitzer finalist explores the story of American urban design through San Francisco’s iconic Ferry Building.A book-length essay – in a gorgeously slim package –about photography’s unique ability to ease the ache of human mortalityThe Sphinx and the Milky Way: Selections from the Journals of Charles BurchfieldIn this comparatively small selection pulled from the original 62 volumes, we find Burchfield writing about sitting in the grass with his wife to nap and watch the sunset. He writes about the elation he feels at seeing the first flowers in the spring. He writes about the rain, wind and sun. There’s the resentment of having a job; the depression that sneaks in as he gets older; sometimes, too, he writes about the state of human progress; and occasionally, thoughts about God. It is the tender record of a life devoted to the essences of earthly beauty.Justice and the Interstates: The Racist Truth about Urban Highways - ed. by Ryan Reft, Amanda Phillips de Lucas, Rebecca Retzlaff

California & Western StudiesCalifornia, A Slave State - by Jean Pfaelzer By looking west to California, Jean Pfaelzer upends our understanding of slavery as a North-South struggle and reveals how the enslaved in California fought, fled, and resisted human bondage.The Ghost Forest: Racists, Radicals, and Real Estate in the California Redwoods- by Greg KingThe definitive story of the California redwoods, their discovery and their exploitation, as told by an activist who fought to protect their existence against those determined to cut them down.Deep Oakland: How Geology Shaped a City - by Andrew AldenIn Deep Oakland, geologist Andrew Alden excavates the ancient story of Oakland’s geologic underbelly and reveals how its silt, soil, and subterranean sinews are intimately entwined with its human history—and future.Our Better Nature: Environment and the Making of San Francisco - by Philip J. DreyfusPalo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World - by Malcolm HarrisExplores how a small American suburb became a powerful engine for economic growth and war, and how it came to lead the world into a surprisingly disastrous 21st century. PALO ALTO is an urgent and visionary history of the way we live now, one that ends with a clear-eyed, radical proposition for how we might begin to change course.California is the most multicultural state in America. As John Mack Faragher explains in this new history, California’s natural variety has always supported such diversity, including Native peoples speaking dozens of distinct languages, Spanish and Mexican colonists, gold seekers from all corners of the globe, and successive migrant waves from the eastern United States and from Europe, Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific Islands.California: An American History (Yale University Press)Dreyfus examines the ways that San Franciscans remade the landscape to fit their needs, and how their actions reflected and affected their ideas about nature, from the destruction of wetlands and forests to the creation of Golden Gate and Yosemite parks, the Sierra Club, and later, the birth of the modern environmental movement.

American Babylon - by Robert O. SelfAmerican Babylon demonstrates that the history of civil rights and black liberation politics in California did not follow a southern model, but represented a long-term struggle for economic rights that began during the World War II years and continued through the rise of the Black Panthers in the late 1960s. This struggle yielded a wide-ranging and profound critique of postwar metropolitan development and its foundation of class and racial segregation. From the Polk Award–winning investigative duo comes a critical look at the systematic corruption and brutality within the Oakland Police Department, and the more than two-decades-long saga of attempted reforms and explosive scandals.Kids on the Street: Queer Kinship and Religion in San Francisco's Tenderloin - by Joseph PlasterTracing the history of the downtown lodging house districts where marginally housed youth regularly lived beginning in the late 1800s, Plaster focuses on San Francisco’s Tenderloin from the 1950s to the present. The Riders Come Out at Night: Brutality, Corruption, and Cover-up in Oakland - by Ali Winston and Darwin BondGrahamBoth eye-opening and heartbreaking, the book offers a unique perspective on how the informal economy of undocumented labor truly functions in American society.Jornalero: Being a Day Laborer in the USA -by Juan Thomas OrdonezIn Cartographic Memory, Juan Herrera maps 1960s Chicano movement activism in the Latinx neighborhood of Fruitvale in Oakland, California, showing how activists there constructed a politics forged through productions of space. Cartographic Memory - by Juan HerreraThe incendiary story of conquest, racism, warfare, and historical amnesia at one of the world’s most celebrated and ostensibly enlightened public universities.The Scandal of Cal: Land Grabs, White Supremacy, and Miseducation at UC Berkeley -by Tony Platt

About Ed - by Robert GlückCreep: Accusations and Confessions- by Myriam GurbaWith her ruthless mind, wry humor, and adventurous style, Gurba implicates everyone from Joan Didion to her former abuser, everything from Mexican stereotypes to the carceral state. Braiding her own history and identity throughout, she argues for a new way of conceptualizing oppression, and she does it with her signature blend of bravado and humility.Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World-by Naomi KleinWith the assistance of Sigmund Freud, Jordan Peele, Alfred Hitchcock, and bell hooks, among other accomplices, Klein uses wry humor and a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the strange doubles that haunt us—and that have come to feel as intimate and proximate as a warped reflection in the mirror.Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant - by Curtis ChinServed up by the cofounder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and structured around the very menu that graced the tables of Chung’s, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant is both a memoir and an invitation: to step inside one boy’s childhood oasis, scoot into a vinyl booth, and grow up with himBiography / Travel LiteratureA moving story about love, AIDS, grief, and memory by one of the most adventurous writers to come out of San Francisco's LGBTQ+ scene.Crying in H Mart - by Michelle ZaunerEarlier - by Sasha Frere-JonesShuttling between his first year of life (1967) and the year he wrote the book (2020), Earlier is a glorious sequence of moments, a record of the experiences that set the shape of a life. Frere-Jones’s prose floats between clinically precise fragments and emotional impressions of revelations, pleasures, and accidents. It’s a book about how lives happen and sensibilities form.Thu says: “Surprisingly, this did not make me cry – I was prepared for the waterworks, too! But it was eye-opening. What are the complications, how much sacrifice and bravery is required to care for a loved one diminishing from illness? And how do you preserve yourself in the process?”

Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career - by Kristi CoulterHappily: A Personal History-with Fairy Tales- by Sabrina Orah MarkA beautifully written memoir-in-essays on fairy tales and their surprising relevance to modern life, from a Jewish woman raising Black children in the American South—based on her acclaimed Paris Review column “Happily”I Would Meet You Anywhere - by Susan Kiyo Ito “I Would Meet You Anywhere is the poignant memoir of Susan Kiyo Ito’s search for her birth parents. Ito’s story opens the door to Japanese American adoptions with insight and understanding into the complexities of family, identity, and choice. A rich and compelling read.” —Gail TsukiyamaIn Vitro: On Longing and Transformation - by Isabel Zapata (trans. Robin Myers)A meditation on in vitro fertilization that expands and complicates the stories we tell about pregnancy. In the tradition of Rivka Galchen’s Little Labors and Sarah Manguso’s Ongoingness, it draws from diary and essay forms to create a new kind of literary companion and open up space for nuanced conversations about pregnancy.A Living Remedy - by Nichole ChungThu says: “Chung explores the dichotomy between health and wealth in America, community and connection, grief and healing in this moving memoir about the passing of her beloved adoptive parents. First her father and, unexpectedly and soon after, her mother. Filled with care and liberating from this conception that grief is a timeline.”Liliana’s Invincible Summer - by Cristina Rivera GarzaUsing her skills as an acclaimed scholar, novelist, and poet, Rivera Garza collected and curated evidence—handwritten letters, police reports, school notebooks, interviews with Liliana’s loved ones—to document her sister’s life. Through this remarkable and genre-defying memoir, she confronts the trauma of losing her sister and examines how this tragedy continues to shape who she is—and what she fights for—today.Unsparing, absurd, and wickedly funny, Exit Interview is a rare journey inside the crucible that is Amazon. It is an intimate, surprisingly relatable look at the work life of a driven woman in a world that loves the idea of female ambition but balks at the reality.

Love and Money, Sex and Death -by McKenzie WarkAfter a successful career, a twenty-year marriage, and two kids, McKenzie Wark has an acute midlife crisis: coming out as a trans woman. Changing both social role and bodily form recasts her relation to the world. Transition changes what, and how, she remembers. She makes fresh sense of her past and of history by writing to key figures in her life about the big themes that haunt us all—love and money, sex and death.A Man of Two Faces - by Viet Thanh NguyenWith insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, i Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son.Nimrods: a fake-punk self-hurt anti-memoir - by Kawika GuillermoIn Nimrods, Kawika Guillermo chronicles the agonizing absurdities of being a newly minted professor (and overtired father) hired to teach in a Social Justice Institute while haunted by the inner ghosts of patriarchy, racial pessimism, and imperial arrogance.Rewriting Illness - by Elizabeth BenedictWith wisdom, self-effacing wit, and the story-telling skills of a seasoned novelist, she brings to life her cancer diagnosis and committed hypochondria. She tracks the progression of her illness from muddled diagnosis to debilitating treatment as she gathers sustenance from her family and an assortment of urbane, ironic friends, including her fearless “cancer guru.” Orphan Bachelors - by Fae Myenne NgOrphan Bachelors weaves together the history of one family, lucky to exist and nevertheless doomed; an elegy for brothers estranged and for elders lost; and insights into writing between languages and teaching between generations. It also features Cantonese profanity, snakes that cure fear and opium that conquers sorrow, and a seemingly immortal creep of tortoises.Ma and Me - by Pursata ReangThu says: “Reang exhumes a folkloric account of buried trauma, seeds of guilt, cultural chasms, and generational differences in this extraordinary book about two kindred, fiercely bound yet polarizing women. I was moved to tears.”

Stay True - by Hua HsuThu says: “Towards the end of their colleague years in Berkeley – personalities and interests taking shape, futures agape – the horrific carjacking and murder of Hsu’s friend, Ken, shatters one lifetime and frames an unfortunate yet exquisite dissection of friendship and self-reflection.”They Called Us Exceptional: And Other Lies That Raised Us- by Prachi GuptaHow do we understand ourselves when the story about who we are supposed to be is stronger than our sense of self? What do we stand to gain—and lose—by taking control of our narrative? These questions propel Prachi Gupta’s heartfelt memoir and can feel particularly fraught for immigrants and their children who live under immense pressure to belong in America. Story of a Poem - by Matthew ZapruderBy comparing the writing of a poem with his own tangled evolution as a son, husband and father, Zapruder unfolds moments of his own life in the reflection of an increasingly uncanny world. With a wide range of reference points— from Celan, Li Bai and Frank O’Hara to Whitman, Merwin and Rupi Kaur—we join Zapruder on a poet’s journey; that in some alchemy of literature, becomes a journey of our own.The Serpent Coiled in Naples - by Marius Kociejowski Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden - by Camille T. DungyDungy recounts the seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the predominantly white community of Fort Collins, Colorado. When she moved there in 2013, with her husband and daughter, the community held strict restrictions about what residents could and could not plant in their gardens.Solito - by Javier ZamoraA memoir as gripping as it is moving, Solito provides an immediate and intimate account not only of a treacherous and near-impossible journey, but also of the miraculous kindness and love delivered at the most unexpected moments. Solito is Javier Zamora’s story, but it’s also the story of millions of others who had no choice but to leave home.A travelogue revealing the hidden stories of Naples.In recent years Naples has become, for better or worse, the new destination in Italy. While many of its more unusual features are on display for all to see, the stories behind them remain largely hidden.

What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma - by Stephanie FooIn this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don’t move on from trauma—but you can learn to move with it.Working Girl: On Selling Art and Selling Sex -by Sophia GiovannittiIn this searching and provocative work, moving from the author’s own experiences to political analyses and the workings of the contemporary art world, Giovannitti asks how we might face the great dilemma of the art and sex industries head on: what happens to desire, beauty, creativity, and autonomy when everything is a transaction? Giovannitti finds a way to commit her life to art, to intimacy, and to freedom on her own terms.What You Don’t Know Will Make You Whole New Again - by Dorothy LazardTouching the Art - by Mattilda Bernstein SycamoreA mixture of memoir, biography, criticism, and social history, Touching the Art is queer icon and activist Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore’s interrogation of the possibilities of artistic striving, the limits of the middle-class mindset, the legacy of familial abandonment, and what art can and cannot do.Way Makers: An Anthology of Women's Writing about Walking - ed. by Kerry AndrewsA sweeping collection of women’s writing on the wandering path, moving across genres, geographies, and centuries.The follow-up to the celebrated Wanderers, Kerri Andrews’s Way Makers is the first anthology of women’s writing about walking. Weird Walk: Wanderings and Wonderings through the British Ritual Year The first book by iconic zine creators and cultural phenomenon Weird Walk. This is a superbly designed guide to Britain's strange and ancient places, to standing stones and pagan rituals, and to the process of re-enchantment via weird walking.From one of California’s most celebrated librarians and public historians, a coming-of-age memoir about the thirst for knowledge and hometown pride.

Allegorical Moments: Call to the Everyday -by Lyn HejinianBig Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature -by Dan SinykinDan Sinykin explores how changes in the publishing industry have affected fiction, literary form, and what it means to be an author. Giving an inside look at the industry’s daily routines, personal dramas, and institutional crises, he reveals how conglomeration has shaped what kinds of books and writers are published. Artless - by Natasha StaggComposed of stories, fragmentary essays, and even press releases Stagg has been commissioned to write, Artless captures the media landscape lived and generated in New York during the past half decade. Part voyeur and part participant, Stagg continues her exploration of the branded identity and its elusive, bottomless desire for authenticity.The Book - by Mary RuefleBrad says: “This book, The Book, is the book!” Black Women Writers at Work - ed. by Claudia TateAlien Daughters Walk Into the SunAn Almanac of Extreme Girlhood - by Jackie WangCompiled as a field guide, travelogue, essay collection, and weather report, this book traces Wang’s trajectory from hard femme to Harvard, from dumpster dives and highway bike rides to dropping out of an MFA program, becoming a National Book Award finalist, and writing her trenchant book Carceral Capitalism. Allegorical Moments is a set of essays dedicated to rethinking allegory and arguing for its significance as a creative and critical response to sociopolitical, environmental, and existential turmoil affecting the contemporary world. Long out of print, Black Women Writers at Work is a vital contribution to Black literature in the 20th century. Responding to questions about why and for whom they write, and how they perceive their responsibility to their work, to others, and to society, the featured playwrights, poets, novelists, and essayists provide a window into the connections between their lives and their art.Belles Lettres / Critical Studies

The Book of (More) Delights - by Ross GayIn Ross Gay’s new collection of small, daily wonders, again written over the course of a year, one of America’s most original voices continues his ongoing investigation of delight.Critical Hits Writers Playing Video Games - ed. by Carmen Maria Machado & R. Robert LennonIn these pages, writer-gamers find solace from illness and grief, test ideas about language, bodies, power, race, and technology, and see their experiences and identities reflected in—or complicated by—the interactive virtual worlds they inhabit. A Darker Wilderness Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars - ed. by Erin SharkeyWhat are the politics of nature? Who owns it, where is it, what role does it play in our lives? Does it need to be tamed? Are we ourselves natural? In A Darker Wilderness, a constellation of luminary writers reflect on the significance of nature in their lived experience and on the role of nature in the lives of Black folks in the United States. Fassbinder Thousands of Mirrors - by Ian PenmanWritten over a short period "in the spirit" of RWF, who would often get films made in a matter of weeks or months,Penman’s biography of Rainer Werner Fassbinder is.echoes the fragmentary works of Roland Barthes and Emil Cioran, Eduardo Galeano and Alexander Kluge, this story has everything: sex, drugs, art, the city, cinema, and revolution.Forgotten Manuscript - by Sergio Chejfec (trans. by Jeffrey Lawrence)From Kafka through Borges, Nabokov, Levrero, Walser, the implications of how we write take on meaning as well worth considering as what we write. This is a love letter to the act of writing as practice, bearing down on all the ways it happens (cleaning typewriter keys, the inevitable drying out of the bottle of wite-out, the difference between Word Perfect and Word) to open up all the ways in which “when we express our thought, it changes.”Dirty Books - by Barry Reay and Nina AttwoodDirty Books offers a humorous and vivid snapshot of a fascinating moment in pornographic and literary history, uncovering a hidden, earlier history of the sexual revolution, when the profits made from erotica helped launch the careers of literary cult figures.

The Limits of My Language: Meditations on Depression - by Eva Meijer (trans. by Antionette Fawcett)The Light Room - by Kate ZambrenoHow will our memories, and our children’s, be affected by this time of profound disconnection? What does it mean to bring new life, and new work, into this moment of precarity and crisis? In The Light Room, Kate Zambreno offers a vision of how to live in ways that move away from disenchantment, and toward light and possibility.The Limits of My Language explores how depression can make us grow out of shape over time, like a twisted tree, how we can sometimes remould ourselves in conversation with others, and how to move on from our darkest thoughts.The Lyric Essay as Resistance - ed. by Zoë Bossiere and Erica TraboldThe lyric essay is always surprising; it is bold, unbound, and free. This collection highlights the lyric essay's natural capacity for representation and resistance and celebrates the form as a subversive genre that offers a mode of expression for marginalized voices.How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill - ed. by Jericho Brown and Darlene TaylorMore than 30 acclaimed writers—including diverse voices such as Nikki Giovanni, David Omotosho Black, Natasha Trethewey, Barry Jenkins, Jacqueline Woodson, Tayari Jones, and Angela Flournoy—reflect on their experience and expertise in this unique book on the craft of writing that focuses on the Black creative spirit.I Could Not Believe It: The 1979 Teenage Diaries of Sean DeLear - by Sean DeLearElizabeth says: “Even if you don’t care about the queer, punk LA music scene in the early 80s, this book is a tender reminder that to be 15 is a universal condition: tedium, beauty, and everything in between.”Imagine Languages: Myths, Utopias, Fantasies, Illusions, and Linguistic Fictions -by Marina Yaguello (trans. by Erik Butler)In Imaginary Languages, Marina Yaguello explores the history and practice of inventing languages, from religious speaking in tongues to politically utopian schemes of universality to the discoveries of modern linguistics.

Research For People Who Think They Would Rather Create - by Dirk Vis, Florian Cramer How to formulate your topic and your argument; how to structure your text rhetorically; how to deploy quotations effectively; how to disseminate and distribute your work in a community: Vis guides readers through all of these questions in a clear and accessible fashion. This book is essential for students of the arts across all disciplines.Silent Whale Letters: A Long-Distance Correspondence, on All Frequencies - by Ella Finer & Vibeke MasciniPhoto, Phyto, Proto, Nitro - by Melissa McCarthyThis sequel to Sharks, Surfers, Death, one of the great EBB cult classics, dropped from the sky / emerged from the sea unexpectedly … and there was much delight in the land!An experiment in listening to frequencies beyond human sensorial range, Silent Whale Letters is a long-distance correspondence intimately attuned to the infravoice of a blue whale, a document held silent in the sound archive, and other so-called "silent" subjects.The Muriel Rukeyser Era: Selected Prose - by Muriel Rukeyserhe Muriel Rukeyser Era offers new insight into Rukeyser's radical and strikingly contemporary vision for the role of the writer – especially the woman writer. This selection reveals the centrality of feminism, antifascism, and antiracism to her thinking and thus affirms the resonance and urgency of her work today.On Community - by Casey PlettLooking at phenomena from transgender literature, to Mennonite history, to hacker houses of Silicon Valley, and the rise of nationalism in North America, Plett delves into the thorny intractability of community's boons and faults. Deeply personal, authoritative in its illuminations, On Community is an essential contribution to the larger cultural discourse that asks how, and to what socio-political ends, we form bonds with one another.My Trade is a Mystery: Seven Meditations from a Life in Writing - by Carl PhillipsIn these intimate and eloquent meditations, the award-winning poet Carl Phillips shares lessons he has learned about the writing life, an “apprenticeship to what can never fully be mastered.” Drawing on forty years of teaching and mentoring emerging writers, he weaves his experiences as a poet with the necessary survival skills, including ambition, stamina, silence, politics, practice, audience, and community.

One Sunday afternoon in February 1977, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange, and several other Black women writers met at June Jordan’s Brooklyn apartment to eat gumbo, drink champagne, and talk about their work. Calling themselves “The Sisterhood,” the group—which also came to include Audre Lorde, Paule Marshall, Margo Jefferson, and others—would get together once a month over the next two years, creating a vital space for Black women to discuss literature and liberation. The Sisterhood tells the story of how this remarkable community transformed American writing and cultural institutions. Spells of a Voodoo Doll: Collected Works - by Assotto SaintThe collected life-work of an interdisciplinary writer, performer, and central figure in the Black Gay cultural arts and AIDS movements.The Sisterhood: How a Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture - by Courtney ThorssonSpace Crone - by Ursula K. Le GuinTone - by Sofia Samatar and Kate ZambrenoTone is a collaborative study of literary tone, a notoriously challenging and slippery topic for criticism. Both granular and global, infusing a text with feeling, tone is so difficult to pin down that responses to it often take the vague form of “I know it when I see it.”Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne - by Katherine RussellBrad says: “Katherine Russell is a picture book author and a Classics professor at Oxford. Who better to make this the year of John Donne?! Regular customers already may know my intense love of the man his writing. Rundell expertly explains why I feel you should, too!”Songs on Endless Repeat - by Anthony Veasna SoThe late Anthony Veasna So’s debut story collection, Afterparties, was a landmark publication, hailed as a “bittersweet triumph for a fresh voice silenced too soon” (Fresh Air). And he was equally known for his comic, soulful essays, published in n+1, The New Yorker, and The Millions.Songs on Endless Repeat gathers those essays together, along with previously unpublished fiction. Space Crone brings together Le Guin’s writings on feminism and gender for the first time, offering new insights into her imaginative, multispecies feminist consciousness: from its roots in deep ecology and philosophies of non-violence to her self-education about racism and her writing on motherhood and ageing.

Translating Myself and Others - by Jhumpa LahiriFeaturing essays originally written in Italian and published in English for the first time, as well as essays written in English, Translating Myself and Others brings together Lahiri’s most lyrical and eloquently observed meditations on the translator’s art as a sublime act of both linguistic and personal metamorphosis.Tree Spirits Grass Spirits - by Hiromi Ito (trans. by Jon L Pitt )A collected series of intertwined poetic essays written by acclaimed Japanese poet Hiromi Ito—part nature writing, part travelogue, part existential philosophy. The Young Man - by Annie Ernaux (trans. by Alison Strayer)Annie Ernaux's most recent book, dazzling and breathtaking, published in France in 2022, is about her affair with a man 30 years her junior.Le scandale!Angela Davis: An AutobiographyAngela Davis has been a political activist at the cutting edge of the Black Liberation, feminist, queer, and prison abolitionist movements for more than 50 years. First published and edited by Toni Morrison in 1974, An Autobiography is a powerful and commanding account of her early years in struggle. After Accountability - by PinkoAfter Accountability is an oral history and critical genealogy of this decisive movement concept that gathers interviews with eight transformative justice practitioners, socialist labor organizers, incarcerated abolitionists, and activists on the left conducted by members of the Pinko collective. `Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement - by Ashley ShawA manifesto exploding what we think we know about disability, and arguing that disabled people are the real experts when it comes to technology and disability. This badly needed introduction to disability expertise considers mobility devices, medical infrastructure, neurodivergence, and the crucial relationship between disability and race. Gender, Race & Disability Studies

Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America - by Michael HarriottIn Black AF History, Michael Harriot presents a more accurate version of American history. Combining unapologetically provocative storytelling with meticulous research based on primary sources as well as the work of pioneering Black historians, scholars, and journalists, Harriot removes the white sugarcoating from the American story, placing Black people squarely at the center. The Black Reparations Project - ed. by William Darity, A Kirsten Mullen, and Lucas HubbardA surge in interest in black reparations is taking place in America on a scale not seen since the Reconstruction Era. The Black Reparations Projectgathers an accomplished interdisciplinary team of scholars—members of the Reparations Planning Committee—who have considered the issues pertinent to making reparations happen. This book will be an essential resource in the national conversation going forward.Body Horror: Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes - by Anne Elizabeth MooreLeigh says: “Impactful essays at the intersection of culture, misogyny, capitalism and healthcare. Updated and expanded to account for the humorous changes of the five long years since the first edition. Excellent!”The Bars Are Ours: Histories and Cultures of Gay Bars in America,1960 and After - by Lucas HilderbrandBefore the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights - by Dylan C PenningrothA prize-winning scholar draws on astonishing new research to demonstrate how Black people used the law to their advantage long before the Civil Rights Movement.Bi: The Hidden Culture, History, and Science of Bisexuality - by Julia ShawIn The Bars Are Ours Lucas Hilderbrand offers a panoramic history of gay bars, showing how they served as the medium for queer communities, politics, and cultures. He explores local spots all over to country to demonstrate the intoxicating – even world-making –roles that bars have played in queer public life across the country..Julia Shaw explores all that we know about the world’s largest sexual minority through a personal journey that starts with her own openly bisexual identity and celebrates the resilience and beautiful diversity of the bi community. This rigorous and entertaining book will challenge us to think deeper about who we are and how we love.

Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary - by Toshio Meronek and Miss Major Griffin-GracyMiss Major Griffin-Gracy is a veteran of the infamous Stonewall Riots, a former sex worker, and a transgender elder and activist who has survived Bellevue psychiatric hospital, Attica Prison, the HIV/AIDS crisis and a world that white supremacy has built. She has shared tips with other sex workers in the nascent drag ball scene of the late 1960s, and helped found one of America’s first needle exchange clinics from the back of her van.=Ordinary Notes - by Christina SharpeBrad says: “In this deeply moving book, Sharpe is creating ways of seeing and saying beauty – beyond both performance and the very ugly, violent history of its denial to Black Americans. There is enormous power in her expressions of anger, sadness, and joy.”Easy Beauty - by Chloé Cooper JonesFamily Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care - by M. E. O’BrienFor some of us, the family is a source of love and support. But for many others, the family is a place of private horror, coercion and personal domination. In capitalist society, the private family carries the impossible demands of interpersonal care and social reproductive labor. Can we imagine a different future?In Defense of Witches: The Legacy of the Witch Hunts and Why Women Are Still on Trial - by Mona Chollet (trans. by Sophie R Lewis)Centuries after the infamous witch hunts that swept through Europe and America, witches continue to hold a unique fascination for many: as fairy tale villains, practitioners of pagan religion, as well as feminist icons. Witches are both the ultimate victim and the stubborn, elusive rebel. But who were the women who were accused and often killed for witchcraft? What types of women have centuries of terror censored, eliminated, and repressed?From the bars and domestic spaces of her life in Brooklyn to sculpture gardens in Rome; from film festivals in Utah to a Beyoncé concert in Milan; from a tennis tournament in California to the Killing Fields of Phnom Penh, Jones weaves memory, observation, experience, and aesthetic philosophy to probe the myths underlying our standards of beauty and desirability and interrogates her own complicity in upholding those myths.Presenting sharp analysis of literature, film, and influential feminist works, and drawing on her own experiences as a queer feminist scholar-activist of color, Ahmed reveals the invaluable lessons of the feminist killjoy, from the importance of asking questions to the power of the eye roll. The Feminist Killjoy Handbook: The Radical Potential of Getting in the Way - by Sara Ahmed

Adelaide says: “This is a really cool book about a really terribly place. Especially inspiring to me was the final chapter, which details resistance both in and outside the walls during the ear of Black Power and the Stonewall Rebellion.”The Women's House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison - by Hugh Ryan Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies - ed. by Colin Kaepernick, Robin D G Kelley, Keeanga-Yamahtta TaylorSince its founding as a discipline, Black Studies has been under relentless attack by social and political forces seeking to discredit and neutralize it. This bookwas born out of an urgent need to respond to the latest threat: efforts to remove content from an AP African American Studies course being piloted in high schools across the United States.Raving - by McKenzie WarkRaving to techno is an art and a technique at which queer and trans bodies might be particularly adept but which is for anyone who lets the beat seduce them. Extending the rave’s sensations, situations, fog, lasers, drugs, and pounding sound systems onto the page, Wark invokes a trans practice of raving as a timely aesthetic for dancing in the ruins of this collapsing capital.Our Migrant Souls{ Meditation on Race and the Meaning and Myths of “Latino” - by Hector TobarTaking on the impacts of colonialism, public policy, immigration, media, and pop culture, Our Migrant Souls decodes the meaning of “Latino” as a racial and ethnic identity in the modern United States, and gives voice to the anger and the hopes of young Latino people who have seen Latinidad transformed into hateful tropes and who have faced insult and division—a story as old as this country itself.Twelve Feminist Lessons of War - by Cynthia EnloeCynthia Enloe draws on firsthand experiences of war from women in places as diverse as Ukraine, Myanmar, Somalia, Vietnam, Rwanda, Algeria, Syria, and Northern Ireland to show how women's wars are not men's wars. Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith and Migration - by Alejandra OlivaThu says: “Immigration policy is discriminatory, antiquated, and simply put messed up. Yet to those of us on the other side, we’re divided and jaded. Oliva demonstrates the extraordinary gift of language and translation – it can expand our understanding of human connection, and why we need to address it now.”

Anarcho-Indigenism: Conversations on Land and Freedom - ed. by Francis Dupuis-Déri, Benjamin PilletThe contributors reveal what indigenous thought and traditions and anarchism have in common, without denying the scars left by colonialism even within this anti-authoritarian movement. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples - by Linda Tuhiwai SmithNow in its third edition, this important book explores intersections of imperialism and research - specifically, the ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge and tradition as 'regimes of truth.' Concepts such as 'discovery' and 'claiming' are discussed and an argument presented that the decolonization of research methods will help to reclaim control over indigenous ways of knowing and being. Settler Cannabis: From Gold Rush to Green Rush in Indigenous Northern California - by Kaitlin P. ReedKaitlin Reed demonstrates how the "green rush" is only the most recent example of settler colonial resource extraction and wealth accumulation. Situating the cannabis industry within this broader legacy, the author traces patterns of resource rushing—first gold, then timber, then fish, and now cannabis—to reveal the ongoing impacts on Indigenous cultures, lands, waters, and bodies.The Rediscovery of America - by Ned BlackhawkWinner of the 2023 National Book Award for NonfictionThis is a monumental work. Its reappraisal of American history – from the earliest colonialist past to the Cold War is exhaustive but approachable. It will be much-discussed and referenced.Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America - by Matika WilburMatika Wilbur is a critically acclaimed social documentarian and photographer from the Swinomish and Tulalip peoples of coastal Washington. Project 562, a crowd-funded initiative to visit, engage, and photograph people from over 562 sovereign Tribal Nations in North America, is her fourth major creative venture elevating Native American identity and culture.Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America - by Michael John WitgenOutnumbering white settlers well into the nineteenth century, they leveraged their political savvy to advance a dual citizenship that enabled mixed-race tribal members to lay claim to a place in U.S. civil society. Telling the stories of mixed-race traders and missionaries, tribal leaders and territorial governors, Witgen challenges our assumptions about the inevitability of U.S. expansion. Native / Indigenous Studies

The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved and Sold to Build the American Catholic Church - by Rachel L. Swarns“An absolutely essential addition to the history of the Catholic Church, whose involvement in New World slavery sustained the Church and, thereby, helped to entrench enslavement in American society.”—Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello and On JuneteenthThe Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America - by Saket SoniWeaving a deeply personal journey with a riveting tale of twenty-first-century forced labor, Soni takes us into the lives of the immigrant workers the United States increasingly relies on to rebuild after climate disasters. The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s -by Alexander NemerovSet amid the glimmering lakes and disappearing forests of the early United States, The Forest imagines how a wide variety of Americans experienced their lives. Part truth, part fiction, and featuring both real and invented characters, the book follows painters, poets, enslaved people, farmers, and artisans living and working in a world still made largely of wood. The Great American Transit Disaster: A Century of Austerity, Auto-Centric Planning, and White Flight - by Nicholas Dagen BloomMany a scholar and policy analyst has lamented American dependence on cars and the corresponding lack of federal investment in public transportation throughout the latter decades of the twentieth century. But as Nicholas Dagen Bloom shows in The Great American Transit Disaster, our transit networks are so bad for a very simple reason: we wanted it this way.Final Words - by 578 Men and Women Executed on Texas Death RowConsisting of a collection of government documents relating to the 578 executed Texas inmates, this sweeping project presents a portrait of each life brought to a violent end, including final moments that are often spent expressing words of love for family and friends, sorrow for victims, and even gratitude. The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance - by Rebecca ClarrenAn award-winning author investigates the entangled history of her Jewish ancestors' land in South Dakota and the Lakota, who were forced off that land by the United States governmentNorth American Studies

I Cannot Write My Life: Islam, Arabic, and Slavery in Omar ibn Said's America - by Mbaye Lo, Carl W Ernst“I Cannot Write My Life is the most detailed and disciplined study of one of the most important figures of antebellum American and Muslim history. It is a must read for students of Islam in America and should be of interest to anyone engaged in Black transatlantic studies."—Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, author of A History of Islam in AmericaI Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction - by Kidada E WilliamsLeigh says: “A unique and fiery look at the religious dimensions of culture on the American Right. As Sharlet meanders through the intensifying emotion and intensifying emotion and political fever morphing people into fighters”To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul- by Tracy K. SmithSmith etches a portrait of where we find ourselves four hundred years into the American experiment. Weaving in an account of her growing spiritual practice, she argues that the soul is not merely a private site of respite or transcendence, but a tool for fulfilling our duties to each other, and a sounding board for our most pressing collective questions: Where are we going as a nation? Where have we been?The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War - by Jeff SharletJust Action: Creating a Movement That Can End Segregation Enacted under the Color of Law - by Leah Rothstein, Richard RothsteinWild Girls: How the Outdoors Shaped the Women Who Challenged a Nation - by Tiya MilesThis beautiful, meditative work of history puts girls of all races—and the landscapes they loved—at center stage and reveals the impact of the outdoors on women’s independence, resourcefulness, and vision. For these trailblazing women of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, navigating the woods, following the stars, playing sports, and taking to the streets in peaceful protest were not only joyful pursuits, but also techniques to resist assimilation, racism, and sexism. Richard Rothstein’s now-classic The Color of Lawrecounted how government at all levels created segregation. Just Action describes how we can begin to undo it.“Kidada Williams demands that we listen to the Black Americans who, after the Civil War, testified that violent white supremacists derailed their plans for freedom, shattered their families, and left them emotionally traumatized. This book is a powerful act of moral witnessing that invites us to think anew about whose voices and experiences are valued, both in the past and in the present. What we do next is up to us.” —Kate Masur, author of Until Justice Be Done

Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation - by Ruth Wilson GilmoreGathering together Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s work from over three decades, Abolition Geography presents her singular contribution to the politics of abolition as theorist, researcher, and organizer, offering scholars and activists ways of seeing and doing to help navigate our turbulent present.Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech - by Brian MerchantThe most urgent story in modern tech begins not in Silicon Valley but two hundred years ago in rural England, when workers known as the Luddites rose up rather than starve at the hands of factory owners who were using automated machines to erase their livelihoods.Victor Cha and Ramon Pacheco Pardo draw on decades of research to explore the history of modern Korea, from the late nineteenth century, Japanese occupation, and Cold War division to the present day. This comprehensive history sheds light on the evolving identities of the two Koreas, explaining the sharp differences between North and South, and prospects for unification.If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution - by Vincent BevinsCareful investigation reveals that conventional wisdom on revolutionary change is gravely misguided. In this groundbreaking study of an extraordinary chain of events, protesters and major actors look back on successes and defeats, offering urgent lessons for the future.Korea: A New History of South and North -by Victor Cha & Ramon Pacheco PardoWith its finely nuanced portrayal of sex, class, and politics, Emperor of Rome goes directly to the heart of Roman fantasies (and our own) about what it was to be Roman at its richest, most luxurious, most extreme, most powerful, and most deadly, offering an account of Roman history as it has never been presented before.Emperor of Rome: Ruling the Ancient Roman World - by Mary BeardLet This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care - by Mariame Kaba, Kelly HayesLongtime organizers and movement educators Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes examine some of the political lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the convergence of mass protest and mass formations of mutual aid, and consider what this confluence of power can teach us about a future that will require mass acts of care, rescue and defense, in the face of both state violence and environmental disaster.Global Studies & Political Science

On Human Slaughter: Evil, Justice, Mercy -by Elizabeth BruenigElizabeth Bruenig’s pulls back the curtain on a routine crisis in America’s death chambers: state executioners’ inability to kill the condemned humanely. She takes readers to the torturous final moments of death row inmates while considering the often heinous crimes that led to their sentences.Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History -by Nur MasalhaDrawing on a rich body of sources and the latest archaeological evidence, Masalha shows how Palestine's multicultural past has been distorted and mythologised by Biblical lore and the Israel-Palestinian conflict. In the process, Masalha reveals that the concept of Palestine, contrary to accepted belief, is not a modern invention or one constructed in opposition to Israel, but rooted firmly in ancient past.Wonders and Rarities: The Marvelous Book That Traveled the World and Mapped the Cosmos - by Travis ZadehThe astonishing biography of one of the world’s most influential books. During the thirteenth century, the Persian naturalist and judge Zakariyyāʾ Qazwīnī authored what became one of the most influential works of natural history in the world: Wonders and Rarities. Recovering Qazwīnī’s ideas and his reception, Zadeh invites us into a forgotten world of thought, where wonder mastered the senses through the power of reason and the pleasure of contemplation.Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century - by Joya Chatterji This radically original and ambitious history of the Indian subcontinent explores the region’s unique twentieth-century history and foregrounds the deep connections, rather than the well-publicized fissures, between the cultures of India and Pakistan.Scarcity: A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis - by Fredrik Albritton Jonsson & Carl Wennerlind A sweeping intellectual history of the concept of economic scarcity—its development across five hundred years of European thought and its decisive role in fostering the climate crisis. The authors insist that we need new, sustainable models of economic thinking to address the climate crisis. Scarcity is not only a critique of infinite growth, but also a timely invitation to imagine alternative ways of flourishing on Earth.The Subversive Seventies - by Michael HardtIn his latest book, Michael Hardt sets out to show that popular understandings of the political movements of the seventies--often seen as fractious, violent, and largely unsuccessful--are not just inaccurate, but foreclose valuable lessons for the political struggles of today.

The Entanglement: How Art and Philosophy Make Us What We Are -by Alva Noë Discourses of the Elders: The Aztec Huehuetlatolli A First English Translation -trans. by Sebastian PurcellSebastian Purcell’s fluency in his grandmother’s native Nahuatl brings to light the Aztec ethical landscape in brilliant clarity. Never before translated into English in its entirety, and one of the earliest post-contact texts ever recorded, Discourses of the Elders reflects the wisdom communicated by oral tradition and proves that philosophy can be active, communal, and grounded not in a “pursuit of happiness” but rather the pursuit of a meaningful life.Explores several arenas of failure, from the social and political to the spiritual and biological. Bradatan breaches the boundaries between argument and storytelling, scholarship and spiritual quest, and concludes that while success can make us shallow, our failures can lead us to humbler, more attentive, and better lived lives. We can do without success, but we are much poorer without the gifts of failure.A Gallery of Recuperation: On the Merits of Slandering Charlatans, Swindlers, and Frauds - by Jaime Semprun (trans. by Eric-John Russell)The first English translation of the French cult classic that lampoons France’s most popular intellectuals of the post-1968 period and their ideas, which became forces of counterrevolution.In Praise of Failure: Four Lessons in Humility - by Costica BradatanBlack Existentialism and Decolonizing Knowledge - by Lewis R. GordonThe Joy of Consent: A Philosophy of Good Sex -by Manon GarciaDrawing on sources rarely considered together—from Kantian ethics to kink practices – Garcia offers an alternative framework grounded in commitments to autonomy and dignity. While consent, she argues, should not be a definitive legal test, it is essential to realizing intimate desire, free from patriarchal domination. Cultivating consent makes sex sexy. By appreciating consent as the way toward an ethical sexual flourishing rather than a legal litmus test, Garcia adds a fresh voice to the struggle for freedom, equality, and security from sexist violence.Gordon's expansive output ranges across phenomenology, anti-Blackness, activist thinkers, sexuality, Fanon, Jimi Hendrix, Black Jewish struggles, critical pedagogy, psychoanalysis, and Ubuntu philosophy.Challenging the notions that art is a mere cultural curiosity and that philosophy has been outmoded by science, The Entanglement offers a new way of thinking about human nature, the limits of natural science in understanding the human, and the essential role of art and philosophy in trying to know ourselves.Critical Theory / Philosophy

Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary - by Leigh Claire La BergeBrad says: “This may look like a silly novelty item or a joke. And while it is definitely fun and joyously written / argued, it is also really quite densely packed with references and sophistication. One of my late-year books of the year.”The Thinking Root: The Poetry of Earliest Greek Philosophy - by Dan Beachy-QuickDrawn from “words that think,” these ancient Greek texts are fresh and alive in the hands of Beachy-Quick, who translates with the empathy of one who knows that “a word is its own form of life.” In aphorisms, axioms, vignettes, and anecdotes, these first theories of the world articulate a relationship to the world that precedes our story of its making, a world where “the beginning and the end are in common.”Power of Gentleness: Meditations on the Risk of Living - by Anne Dufourmantelle (trans. by Katherine Payne & Vincent Salle)Our bestselling nonfiction book of 2023!Brad says: “One of the most truly special books I’ve read in recent times. Dense, but excruciatingly good. You will sit with this book for weeks after you’ve actually finished reading it.”The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality - by William EggintonA soaring and lucid reflection on the lives and work of Borges, Heisenberg, and Kant, The Rigor of Angels movingly demonstrates that the mysteries of our place in the world may always loom over us—not as a threat, but as a reminder of our humble humanity.Nihilistic Times: Thinking with Max Weber - by Wendy BrownOne of America’s leading political theorists analyzes the nihilism degrading—and confounding – political and academic life today. Through readings of Max Weber’s Vocation Lectures, she proposes ways to counter nihilism’s devaluations of both knowledge and political responsibility.A Philosophy of Walking - by Frédéric Gros (trans. by John Howe)Frédéric Gros charts the many different ways we get from A to B – the pilgrimage, the promenade, the protest march, the nature ramble – and reveals what they say about us.A Philosophy of Walking is an entertaining and insightful manifesto for putting one foot in front of the other.

Art of the Grimoire: An Illustrated History of Magic Books and Spells - by Owen DaviesIn more than two hundred color illustrations from ancient times to the present, renowned scholar Owen Davies examines little-studied artistic qualities of grimoires, revealing a unique world of design and imagination. The book takes a global approach, considering Egyptian and Greek papyri, ancient Chinese bamboo scripts, South American pulp prints, and Japanese demon encyclopedias, among other examples.For Heaven's Sake: Hong Kong's Paper Offerings for the Afterlife - by Chris Gaul & Yoyo Chan"God is Red should be read and re-read by Americans who want to understand why the United States keeps losing the peace, war after war." —From the forward by Leslie Marmon Silko, author of CeremonyEl Monte: Notes on the Religions, Magic, and Folklore of the Black and Creole People of Cuba - by Lydia Cabrera (trans. by David Font-Navarrete)Rather than succumb to despair and cynicism in the face of the viciousness assaulting the fundamental value she places on justice, Kai Cheng, she gathered all her rage and grief and took one last leap of faith: she wrote. Whether prayers or spells or poems—and whether there’s a difference—she wrote to affirm the outcasts and runaways she calls her kin. She wrote to flawed but nonetheless lovable men, to people with good intentions who harm their own, to racists and transphobes seemingly beyond saving. What emerged was a blueprint for falling back in love with being human.Falling Back in Love with Being Human: Letters to Lost Souls - by Kai Cheng ThomThese care packages for lost loved ones and ancestors in the next life include everything from creature comforts and simple everyday needs, to extravagant luxuries and curious fancies. Individually, each offering is a touching manifestation of love and devotion. Together, they form a microcosm of Hong Kong’s aspirations, obsessions, and desires.Bardskull is the record of three journeys made by Martin Shaw, the celebrated storyteller and interpreter of myth, in the year before he turned fifty. It is unlike anything he has written before.Bardskull - by Martin ShawFirst published in Cuba in 1954 and appearing here in English for the first time, Lydia Cabrera’s El Monte is a foundational and iconic study of Afro-Cuban religious and cultural traditions. Mythology & Religious StudiesGod Is Red: A Native View of Religion - by Vine Deloria Jr.

Like Aesop’s Fables, this collection is designed not only for moral instruction, but also for the entertainment of readers. The stories, which originated in the Sanskrit Panchatantra and Mahabharata, were adapted, augmented, and translated into Arabic by the scholar and state official Ibn al-Muqaffa in the second/eighth century. Resistance to Christianity: A Chronological Encyclopaedia of Heresy from the Beginning to the Eighteenth Century - by Raoul Vaneigem (trans. by Bill Brown)Accounts of seemingly impossible phenomena abounded in the early modern era – tales of levitation, bilocation, and witchcraft – even as skepticism, atheism, and empirical science were starting to supplant religious belief in the paranormal. Carlos Eire explores how a culture increasingly devoted to scientific thinking grappled with events deemed impossible by its leading intellectuals.The Narrow Cage and Other Modern Fairy Tales - Vasily Eroshenko (trans. by Adam Kuplowsky)Rooted in traditional Jewish concepts while doggedly accessible and available to people from any, or no, religious background, On Repentance and Repair is a book for anyone who cares about creating a country and culture that is more whole than the one in which we live, and for anyone who has been hurt or who is struggling to take responsibility for their mistakes.On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World - by Danya RuttenbergA revisionary account of the forms of thought and belief that have been rejected or suppressed by orthodox Christianity over the course of the centuries.It is far more, however, than a study of religious movements and ideas. The story of how men and women have again and again resisted the authoritarian implications of religious orthodoxy is, above all, a crucial strand of the history of human freedom.Kalilah and Dimnah: Fables of Virtue and Vice - by Ibn al-Muqaffa (trans. by Michael Fishbein and James E Montgomery)In this biography, Alberto Manguel examines the question of Maimonides’ universal appeal – he was celebrated by Jews, Arabs, and Christians alike. In our time of abject divisiveness, Maimonides can help us find strategies to survive with dignity in an uncertain world.Maimonides: Faith in Reason - by Alberto ManguelVasily Eroshenko was one of the most remarkable transnational literary figures of the early twentieth century. He was well known in Japan and China as a social activist and a popular writer of political fairy tales that drew comparisons to Hans Christian Andersen and Oscar Wilde. This is the first English translation of his tales, from Esperanto and Japanese.They Flew: A History of the Impossible - by Carlos Eire

The Bathysphere Book: Effects of the Luminous Ocean Depths - by Brad FoxA wide ranging, philosophical, and sensual account of early deep sea exploration and its afterlives, The Bathysphere Book begins with the first ever voyage to the deep ocean in 1930 and expands to explore the adventures and entanglements of its all-too-human participants at a time when the world still felt entirely new.The Deserts of California - by Obi KaufmannFrom Obi Kaufmann, author-illustrator of the acclaimed California Field Atlas, comes a grand adventure through time, geography, and ecology in California’s deserts. Of a piece with his richly illustrated books The Forests of California and The Coasts of California, this volume features hundreds of vivid watercolor maps and illustrations, blending art and science to breathtaking effect.California Against the Sea - by Rosanna XiaXia investigates the impacts of engineered landscapes, the market pressures of development, and the ecological activism and political scrimmages that have carved our contemporary coastline – and foretell even greater changes to our shores. She charts how the decisions we make today will determine where we go tomorrow: headlong into natural disaster, or toward an equitable refashioning of coastal stewardship.Dark and Magical Places: The Neuroscience of Navigation - by Christopher KempInside our heads we carry around an infinite and endlessly unfolding map of the world. Navigation is one of the most ancient neural abilities we have – older than language. In Dark and Magical Places, Christopher Kemp embarks on a journey to discover the remarkable extent of what our minds can do.Let's Become Fungal!: Mycelium Teachings and the Arts: Based on Conversations with Indigenous Wisdom Keepers, Artists, Curators, Feminists and Mycologists - by Yasmine Ostendorf-RodríguezTwelve lessons in fungal activism, Indigenous knowledge and collaboration for artists, gardeners, educators and anyone intrigued by the fascinating life and inspiring metaphors of the mycelium and the mushroomCacophony of Bone - by Kerri ni DochartaighCacophony of Bone is an ode to a year, a place, and a love that transformed a life. When the pandemic came, time seemed to shapeshift; in Kerri’s elegant prose, we can trace its quickening, its slowing. She maps the circle of a year—a journey from one place to another, field notes of a life—from one winter to the next, telling of a changed life in a changed world, as well as all that stays the same. All that keeps on living and breathing, nesting and dying. Sciences & Nature Writing

Gaia and Philosophy - by Lynn Margulis and Dorion SaganFusing science, mathematics, philosophy, ecology and mythology, Gaia and Philosophy, with a new introduction by Dorion Sagan, challenges Western anthropocentrism to propose a symbiotic planet. In its striking philosophical conclusion, the revolutionary Gaia paradigm holds important implications not only for understanding life's past but for shaping its future.The Last Pool of Darkness - by Tim RobinsonIn the second volume of his beloved Connemara trilogy, cartographer Tim Robinson continues to unearth the stories of this rich landscape in Ireland – weaving placelore, etymology, geology, and the meeting of sea and shore into the region’s mythologies. A work of great precision and tenderness, The Last Pool of Darkness is an enchanting addition to the Seedbank series and next chapter in “one of the most remarkable non-fiction projects undertaken in English” (Robert Macfarlane).Is Math Real?: How Simple Questions Lead Us to Mathematics' Deepest Truths - by Eugenia ChengIs Math Real? is a much-needed repudiation of the rigid ways we’re taught to do math, and a celebration of the true, curious spirit of the discipline. Written with intelligence and passion, Is Math Real? brings us math as we’ve never seen it before, revealing how profound insights can emerge from seemingly unlikely sources.The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape - by Katie Holten Inspired by forests, trees, leaves, roots, and seeds, The Katie Holten invites readers to discover an unexpected and imaginative language to better read and write the natural world around us and reclaim our relationship with it. The Language of Trees considers our relationship with literature and landscape, resulting in an astonishing fusion of storytelling and art and a deeply beautiful celebration of trees through the ages.In a Flight of Starlings: The Wonders of Complex Systems - by Giorgio ParisiFrom the 2021 Nobel Prize winner in Physics, an enlightening and personal journey into the practice of groundbreaking science. Studying the movements of these communities, he has realized, proves an illuminating way into understanding complex systems of all kinds—collections of everything from atoms and planets to other animals, such as ourselves.The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation - by Cory DoctorowIn The Internet Con, Cory Doctorow explains how to seize the means of computation, by forcing Silicon Valley to do the thing it fears most: interoperate. Interoperability will tear down the walls between technologies, allowing users leave platforms, remix their media, and reconfigure their devices without corporate permission.

The Lichen Museum - by Laurie A PalmerDrawing together a diverse set of voices, including personal encounters with lichenologists and lichens themselves, Palmer both imagines and embodies a radical new approach to human interconnection. Using this tiny organism as an emblem through which to navigate environmental and social concerns, this work narrows the gap between the human and natural worlds, emphasizing the notion of mutual dependence as a necessary means of survival and prosperity.Nature's Temples: A Natural History of Old-Growth Forests - by Joan MaloofJoan Maloof brings together the scientific data we have about old-growth forests, drawing on diverse fields to explain the ecological differences among forests of various ages. She describes the life forms and relationships that make old-growth forests uniqu and reveals why human attempts to manage forests can never replicate nature’s sublime handiwork. The Lure of the Beach: A Global History - by Robert C. RitchieThe Lure of the Beach is a chronicle of humanity's history with the coast, taking us from the seaside pleasure palaces of Roman elites and the aquatic rituals of medieval pilgrims, to the venues of modern resort towns and beyond. The Milkweed Lands: An Epic Story of One Plant: Its Nature and Ecology - by Eric Lee-Mäder (illustrated by Beverly Duncan)Ecologist Eric Lee-Mäder and noted botanical artist Beverly Duncan have teamed up to create this unique exploration of the complex ecosystem that is supported by the remarkable milkweed plant, often overlooked or dismissed as a roadside weed. The delightful illustrations and illuminating text give the reader the feeling of browsing an avid naturalist's sketchbook, while also learning about different milkweed species, how to propagate milkweed in the garden, the industrial uses of milkweed, interesting milkweed relatives, and more.Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West - by Sara DantFully revised and updated, Sara Dant focuses on the key events and topics in the environmental history of the American West, from the Beringia migration, Columbian Exchange, and federal territorial acquisition to post–World War II expansion, resource exploitation, and current climate change issues. Losing Eden is structured around three important themes: balancing economic success and ecological destruction, creating and protecting public lands, and achieving sustainability.Love for the Land: Lessons from Farmers Who Persist in Place - by Brooks LambThis book explores the power and potential of people-place relationships.Paying particular attention to farmland loss from suburban sprawl, rampant agricultural consolidation, and, for farmers of color, racial injustice, Brooks Lamb reckons with the harsh realities that these farmers face.

Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility - ed. by Rebecca Solnit & Young-LutunatabuaNot Too Late brings strong climate voices from around the world to address the political, scientific, social, and emotional dimensions of the most urgent issue human beings have ever faced. Accessible, encouraging, and engaging, it's an invitation to everyone to understand the issue more deeply, participate more boldly, and imagine the future more creatively.Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence - by James BridleArtist, technologist, and philosopher James Bridle’s Ways of Being is a brilliant, searching exploration of different kinds of intelligence – plant, animal, human, artificial – and how they transform our understanding of humans’ place in the cosmos.Profit: An Environmental History - by Mark StollThe World Itself: Consciousness and the Everything of Physics - by Ulf DanielssonUlf Daniellson stands opposed to the scientific orthodoxy that would substitute their mathematical models for reality and equate the mind to a computer. He instead makes a lucid and passionate case that it is nature, full of beauty and meaning, which must compel us. In challenging established worldviews, he also takes a fresh look at major philosophical debates, including the notion of free will.Notes on Complexity: A Scientific Theory of Connection, Consciousness, and Being - by Neil TheiseNotes on Complexity is an invitation to trade our limited, individualistic view for the expansive perspective of a universe that is dynamic, cohesive, and alive – a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Theise takes us to the exhilarating frontiers of human knowledge and in the process restores wonder and meaning to our experience of the everyday.The Book of Trespass - by Nick HayesThe Book of Trespass takes us on a journey over the walls of England, into the thousands of square miles of rivers, woodland, lakes and meadows that are blocked from public access. By trespassing the land of the media magnates, Lords, politicians and private corporations that own England, Nick Hayes argues that the root of social inequality is the uneven distribution of land. The story of profit’s incredible ingenuity and villainy begins in the Doge’s palace in medieval Venice and ends with Jeff Bezos aboard his own spacecraft. Mark Stoll’s revolutionary account places environmental factors at the heart of capitalism’s progress and reveals the long shadow of its terrible consequences.

All About Love - by bell hooksHere, at her most provocative and intensely personal, renowned scholar, cultural critic and feminist bell hooks offers a proactive new ethic for a society bereft with lovelessness--not the lack of romance, but the lack of care, compassion, and unity. People are divided, she declares, by society’s failure to provide a model for learning to love. Decolonizing the Body: Healing, Body-Centered Practices for Women of Color to Reclaim Confidence, Dignity, and Self-Worth -by Kelsey BlackwellWritten by a woman of color for women of color, Decolonizing the Body offers proven-effective somatic, body-centered practices to help you heal from systemic oppression, trust the profound wisdom of your own body, and reconnect with your true self.Curious Minds: The Power of Connection - by Perry Zurn & Dani S BassettBrad says: “We at EBB are in the business of curiosity … not just ours, but that of authors and publishers and, yes, you! Perry Zurn and Dani Bassett are in teh scientific business of explaining curiosity … how it links us to the world around us and to one another. Absolutely fascinating.”Dark Persuasion: A History of Brainwashing from Pavlov to Social Media - by Joel E DimsdaleThis gripping book traces the evolution of brainwashing from its beginnings in torture and religious conversion into the age of neuroscience and social media. When Pavlov introduced scientific approaches, his research was enthusiastically supported by Lenin and Stalin, setting the stage for major breakthroughs in tools for social, political, and religious control. Alone: Reflections on Solitary Living - by Daniel Schreiber (trans. by Ben Fergusson)Drawing on personal experience, as well as philosophy and sociology, Daniel Schreiber explores the tension between the desire for solitude and freedom, and the desire for companionship, intimacy, and love. Along the way he illuminates the role that friendships play in our lives—can they be a response to the loss of meaning in a world in crisis? A profoundly enlightening book on how we want to live, Alone spent almost a year on Germany’s bestseller list.American Poly: A History - by Christopher M GleasonThe first history of polyamory, this work examines the roots of sexual non-monogamy in political thought and countercultural spiritualism and traces its path to mainstream practice and cultural discussion today. Offering an original perspective on sexuality, marriage, and the family, American Poly reveals the history of polyamory in the United States from fringe practice to a new stage of the sexual revolution.Psychology & Health

How to Say Goodbye - by Wendy MacNaughtonHow to Say Goodbye features MacNaughton’s drawn-from-life artwork from both the Zen Hospice Project Guest House and her own aunt’s bedside as she died, paired with gentle advice from hospice caregivers on creating a positive sensory experience, acknowledging what you can’t control, and sharing memories and gratitude.Mothercare: On Obligation, Love, Death, and Ambivalence - by Lynne TillmanMothercare is both a cautionary tale and sympathetic guidance for anyone who suddenly becomes a caregiver. This story may be helpful, informative, consoling, or upsetting, but it never fails to underscore how impossible it is to get the job done completely right.Journal of a Black Queer Nurse - by Britney DanielsMedical Writings from Early Medieval England- ed. & trans. by John D Niles & Maria A D'AroncoThe first comprehensive edition and translation of Old English writings on health and healing in more than 150 years. Some cures resemble ones still used today; others are linguistically extravagant, prescribing ambitious healing practices. Alongside recipes for everyday ailments such as headaches are unparalleled procedures for preventing infant mortality, restoring lost cattle, warding off elf-shot, or remedying the effects of flying venom.I Feel Love: MDMA and the Quest for Connection in a Fractured World - by Rachel NuwerThe unlikely story of how the psychedelic drug MDMA emerged from the shadows to the forefront of a medical revolution--and the potential it may hold to help us thrive. From cutting-edge labs to pulsing club floors to the intimacy of the therapist's couch, Nuwer guides readers through a cultural and scientific upheaval that is rewriting our understanding of our brains, our selves, and the space between.It's Always Been Ours: Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies - by Jessica WilsonIn It’s Always Been Ours eating disorder specialist and storyteller Jessica Wilson challenges us to rethink what having a "good" body means in contemporary society. By centering the bodies of Black women in her cultural discussions of body image, food, health, and wellness, Wilson argues that we can interrogate white supremacy’s hold on us and reimagine the ways we think about, discuss, and tend to our bodies.Hilarious, gut-wrenching, and infuriating by turns, these stories are told from the perspective of a deeply empathetic, no-nonsense young nurse, who highlights the way race, inequality, and a profit-driven healthcare system make the hospital a place where systemic racism is lived.

On Marriage - by Devorah BaumBaum draws on a wide range of cultural material, from the classical to the contemporary, while interweaving reflections on her own experiences of matrimony to both critique and celebrate marriage’s many contradictions and its profound effects on us all. In doing so, she reveals how marriage has worked as a cover story for power and its abuses on the one hand, and for subversive and even utopian relational practices on the other.Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives - by Linda VillarosaFrom an award-winning writer at the New York Times Magazine and a contributor to the 1619 Project comes a landmark book that tells the full story of racial health disparities in America, revealing the toll racism takes on individuals and the health of our nation.Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock - by Jenny OdellSaving Time tugs at the seams of reality as we know it—the way we experience time itself—and rearranges it, imagining a world not centered on work, the office clock, or the profit motive. If we can “save” time by imagining a life, identity, and source of meaning outside these things, time might also save us.Suicidal: Why We Kill Ourselves - by Jesse BeringBrad says: “Many of us know this singular impulse. Either we’ve suffered the loss of people we love to it, or we suffer the thought itself. Often both. Bering’s treatment is bracing and honest and unlike any other I’ve encountered. Darkly funny at times, but never glib.”Polywise: A Deeper Dive into Navigating Open Relationships - by Jessica Fern w/ David CoolePolyamorous psychotherapist Jessica Fern and restorative justice facilitator David Cooley share the insights they have gained through thousands of hours working with clients in consensually nonmonogamous relationships. Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind - by Mike JayFrom Sigmund Freud’s experiments with cocaine to William James’s epiphany on nitrous oxide, Mike Jay brilliantly recovers a lost intellectual tradition of drug-taking that fed the birth of psychology, the discovery of the unconscious, and the emergence of modernism. Today, as we embrace novel cognitive enhancers and psychedelics, the experiments of the original psychonauts reveal the deep influence of mind-altering drugs on Western science, philosophy, and culture.

Anything That Moves - by Jamie StewartStewart's band Xiu Xiu has been called “self-flagellating,” “brutal,” “shocking,” and “perverse,” but also “genius,” “brilliant,” “unique,”“imaginative,” and “luminous.” So yeah … you should probably expect something similar of his biography. Estrus: Shovelin' The Shit Since '87 This is the complete, as-yet-untold story of US garage rock powerhouse Estrus Records, which for nearly two decades churned out hundreds of releases from some of the biggest garage, trash, surf, and punk bands worldwide, among them The Makers, The Mummies, Man . . . or Astroman?, and label head honcho Dave Crider’s drunk/punk quartet The Mono Men.Black Punk Now - ed. by Chris L Terry & James Spooner SpooneBlue - by Derek JarmanJarman’s Blue moves through myriad scenes, some banal, others fantastical. Stories of quotidian life– –getting coffee, reading the newspaper, and walking down the sidewalk – escalate to visions of Marco Polo, the Taj Mahal, or blue fighting yellow. Facing death and a cascade of pills, Jarman presents his illness in delirium and metaphors. He contemplates the physicality of emotions in lyrical prose as he grounds this story in the constant return to Blue – a color, a feeling, a funk.The Art of Darkness: The History of Goth - by John RobbThis is the first comprehensive history of goth music and culture. Across more than 500 pages, John Robb explores the origins and legacy of this enduring scene, which has its roots in the post-punk era.Black Friend - by ZiweZiwe made a name for herself by asking guests like Alyssa Milano, Fran Lebowitz, and Chet Hanks direct questions. In Black Friend, she turns her incisive perspective on both herself and the culture at large. Throughout the book, Ziwe combines pop-culture commentary and personal stories, which grapple with her own (mis)understanding of identity.Performing Arts & SportsBlack Punk Now is an anthology of contemporary nonfiction, fiction, illustrations, and comics that collectively describe punk today and give punks –especially the Black ones – a wider frame of reference. It shows all of the strains, styles, and identities of Black punk that are thriving, and gives newcomers to the scene more chances to see themselves.

Every Man For Himself and God Against All- by Werner Herzog (trans. by Michael Hofmann)Brad says: “I wasn’t expecting a celebrity memoir to be one of the best books of the year. Or least one of my favorites. But not every celebrity is Werner Herzog, and not every memoir is quite so wonderful.”High Bias: The Distorted History of the Cassette Tape - by Marc MastersMarc Masters introduces readers to the tape artists who thrive underground; concert tapers who trade bootlegs; mixtape makers who send messages with cassettes; tape hunters who rescue forgotten sounds; and today's labels, which reject streaming and sell music on cassette. Their stories celebrate the cassette tape as dangerous, vital, and radical.The Great Psychic Outdoors: Adventures in Low Fidelity - by Enrico MonacelliHaight-Ashbury, Psychedelics, and the Birth of Acid Rock - by Robert J. CampbellCombining literature, social history, and personal experience, author Robert J. Campbell traces the birth, downfall, and legacy of the innovative, playful, and spontaneous counterculture launched in 1960s Haight-Ashbury. Everything Keeps Dissolving: Conversations With Coil - by Nick SoulsbyCore members of the legendary British experimental band Coil tell its story in the present-tense, as events unfold across their twenty-year history. Nice sentence in the copy: “With music that could be dark, queer, and difficult, but often retained a warped pop sensibility, Coil’s albums were multi-faceted repositories of esoteric knowledge, lysergic wisdom and acerbic humor.”Goodbye, Oakland - by Dave Newhouse & Andy DolichHate so much that this book has to exist. Kick rocks, the whole lot of ‘em! Go Oakland Roots! Explores the weird world of lo-fi music to investigate its revolutionary potential and its ability to subvert what we think music can do.Confronting the aesthetic and conceptual stakes of this sonic craft, The Great Psychic Outdoors shows what lo-fi says about us, our lives under capitalism and the strange ways we cope with pain, madness and beauty.

Hit Girls: Women of Punk in the USA, 1975-1983 - by Jen B. LarsenThe women of Hit Girls are now rightfully exalted to cult status where their collective achievement is recognized and inspiring to new generations of women rockers. Included are interviews with: Texacala Jones, Stoney Rivera, Mish Bondaj, Alice Bag, Nikki Corvette, Penelope Houston, and many more formidable and infamous women who made their voices heard over the screaming guitars.Punk Revolution!: An Oral History of Punk Rock Politics and Activism - by John MalkinPunk rock has been on the front lines of activism since exploding on the scene in the 1970s. Punk Revolution!is a reflection on this cultural movement over the past 45 years, told through firsthand accounts of hundreds of musicians and activists.On Music Theory, and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone - by Philip EwellA People’s History of Soccer - by Mickaël Correia (trans. by Fionn Petch)Countering the clichés about soccer fans, Mickaël Correia dives into soccer countercultures born after the Second World War, from English hooligans to the ultras who played a central role in the 'Arab Spring.'The Jive 95: An Oral History of America's Greatest Underground Rock Radio Station, KSAN San Francisco - by Hank RosenfeldAn oral history of America’s first hippie underground FM station which broadcast the countercultural consciousness of the ‘60s and ‘70s to a new generation. A communal radio band of intrepid hellraisers, pranksters, and drug-enlightened geniuses defined this psychedelic era, from the Summer of Love in Golden Gate Park, to the rebellion and bitter end of the late 1970s, Lou Reed: The King of New York - by Will HermesThe first biographer to draw on the New York Public Library's much-publicized Reed archive, the release of previously unheard recordings, and a wealth of recent interviews, Hermes gives us a new Lou Reed - a pioneer in living and writing about nonbinary sexuality and gender identity, a committed artist who pursued beauty and noise with equal fervor, and a turbulent and sometimes truculent man whose emotional imprint endures.Since its inception in the mid-twentieth century, American music theory has been framed and taught almost exclusively by white men. As a result, whiteness and maleness are woven into the fabric of the field, and BIPOC music theorists face enormous hurdles due to their racial identities.Philip Ewell brings together autobiography, music theory and history, and theory and history of race in the United States to offer a black perspective on the state of music theory and to confront the field’s white supremacist roots.

Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors from the Songs of Steely Dan - by Alex Pappademas & Joan LeMayBrad says: “This book almost made me a Steely Dan fan. Almost … “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) - by Sly StoneNot many memoirs are generational events. But when Sly Stone, one of the few true musical geniuses of the last century, decides to finally tell his life story, it can’t be called anything else.Running - by Lindsey A FreemanSpaceships Over Glasgow: Mogwai and Misspent Youth - by Stuart BraithwaiteBorn the son of Scotland's last telescope-maker, Stuart Braithwaite was perhaps always destined for a life of psychedelic adventuring on the furthest frontiers of noise in Mogwai, one of the best loved and most groundbreaking post-rock bands of the past three decades.Rolling: A Ladies' Guide to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu -by Melanie FarmerWinner of the Hurston/Wright Crossover Award, Rolling is a funny, poignant essay disguised as a how-to guide. In addition to the martial art of Brazilian jiu jitsu, Farmer explores the boundaries of femininity and maternal expectations. With collaborative illustrations by Amy Wheaton.Roots Punk: A Visual and Oral History - by David A EnsmingerAs you might have gathered from a lot of the books chosen for this catalog, punk is pretty important to EBB … as a sound, as an art, and as an ethos. It’s a complex world, with an array of abhorrent politics (and other even worse behavior), but baked into it is a kicking against itself & all structures that would sediment either into power. Anyway, also check out David Ensminger’s Visual Vitriol. In Running, former NCAA Division I track athlete Lindsey A. Freeman presents the feminist and queer handbook of running that she always wanted but could never find. She also considers injury and recovery, what it means to run as a visibly queer person, and how the release found in running comes from a desire to touch something that cannot be accessed when still.

This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You - by Susan Rogers & Ogi OgasFor those maybe a little tired of Rick Rubin.This is journey into the science and soul of music that reveals the secrets of why your favorite songs move you. But it’s also a story of a musical trailblazer who began as a humble audio tech in Los Angeles, rose to become Prince’s chief engineer for Purple Rain, and became one of the most successful female record producers of all time.The Zen of Climbing - by Francis SanzaroClimbing is a sport of perception, and our successes and failures are matters of mind as much as body.Written by philosopher, essayist, and lifelong climber Francis Sanzaro, The Zen of Climbing explores the fundamentals of successful climbing, delving into sports psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and Taoism. Awareness, he argues, is the alchemy of climbing, allowing us to merge mental and physical attributes in one embodied whole.Ways of Hearing: Reflections on Music in 26 Pieces - ed. by Scott Burnham, Marna Seltzer & Dorothea von MoltkeAn outstanding anthology in which notable musicians, artists, scientists, thinkers, poets, and more – from Gustavo Dudamel and Carrie Mae Weems to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Paul Muldoon – explore the influence of music on their lives and workWho Cares Anyway: Post-Punk San Francisco and the End of the Analog Age - by Will YorkDrawing on extensive research – including interviews with over 100 musicians, artists, and other key players – Who Cares Anyway chronicles the wild post-punk San Francisco music scene, courtesy of those who lived it. It’s a tale full of existential drama, tragic anti-heroes, dark humor, spectacular failures – and even a few improbable successes.Time's Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance - by Jeremy EichlerAs the living memory of the Second World War fades, Time’s Echo proposes new ways of listening to history, and learning to hear between its notes the resonances of what another era has written, heard, dreamed, hoped, and mourned. A lyrical narrative full of insight and compassion, this book deepens how we think about the legacies of war, the presence of the past, and the renewed promise of art for our lives today.The Upcycled Self: A Memoir on the Art of Becoming Who We Are - by Tariq TrotterToday Tariq Trotter – aka Black Thought – is the platinum-selling, Grammy-winning co-founder of The Roots and one of the most exhilaratingly skillful and profound rappers our culture has ever produced. This is his story and a look into his prodigious mind.

Above Ground - by Clint SmithClint Smith is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of the narrative nonfiction book, How the Word Is Passed. He is also the author of the poetry collection Counting Descent.Carnival of Animals: Xi Xi's Animal Poems -Most of Xi Xi’s animal poems featured here are new works written during the past few years. Full of whimsical ideas, they embody the notion of “all humans are siblings, and all things are companions,” brimming with warmth and compassion. These poems could be described as bright and cheerful, approachable, clever and fluid, humorous, and deep with meaning, written as though the author is able to directly communicate with animals. The Asking - by Jane HirschfieldJane Hirschfield is the author of ten collections of poetry and two now-classic collections of essays on poetry’s deep workings, and the editor of four co-translated books presenting world poets from the deep past. Hirshfield is one of American poetry’s central spokespersons for concerns about the biosphere and interconnection.The Blue House: Collected Works of Tomas Tranströmer - trans. by Patty CraneThe Blue House gathers poems and writings from the Nobel laureate’s fourteen collections into a single book. Original Swedish sits alongside their English translations as Patty Crane translates his words into revelatory language acute in the understanding of human change and loss.Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction and Deliverance - ed. by Kaveh Akbar & Paige LewisIn 1997, Sarabande published Last Call, a poetry anthology that became a formative text on the lived experiences of addiction. Now, more than twenty-five years later, editors Kaveh Akbar and Paige Lewis offer this companion volume for a new generation.The Art of Revising Poetry - by Charles Finn & Kim StaffordUsing side-by-side pairings of first drafts and final versions, including full-page reproductions from the poets' personal notebooks, as well as an insightful essay on each poem's journey from start to finish,The Art of Revising Poetry tracks the creative process of twenty-one of the United States' most influential poets as they struggle over a single word, line break, or thought. Poetry & Drama

Catching the Light - by Joy HarjoComposed of intimate vignettes that take us through the author’s life journey as a youth in the late 1960s, a single mother, and a champion of Native nations, this book offers a fresh understanding of how poetry functions as an expression of purpose, spirit, community, and memory—in both the private, individual journey and as a vehicle for prophetic, public witness.Joan of Arkansas - by Emma WippermannJoan of Arkansas is an election-season closet drama about climate catastrophe, divine gender expression, the instructions of angels, and heavenly revelation relayed via viral video. Fifteen-year-old Joan has been tasked by God (They/Them) to ensure that Charles VII (R–Arkansas) adopts radical climate policy and wins his bid as the Lord’s candidate to become the president of the United States.Hydra Medusa - by Brandon ShimodaBrandon Shimoda is a yonsei poet/writer, and the author of eight books of poetry and prose. He is also the curator of the Hiroshima Library, an itinerant reading room/collection of books on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which has been installed most recently at the Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles) and Counterpath Gallery (Denver). The Iliad - trans. by Emily WilsonThe culmination of a decade of intense engagement with antiquity’s most surpassingly beautiful and emotionally complex poetry, Wilson’s Iliad now gives us a complete Homer for our generation.It is an epic achievement. Collected Poems of Anthony HechtThis volume brings together for the first time all of the poems that appeared in Anthony Hecht’s seven trade collections, from A Summoning of Stones (1954) through to The Darkness and the Light (2001); it adds the remarkable work contained in his posthumously issued Interior Skies: Late Poems from Liguria (2011); and it rounds this out with the best of the many poems which were left uncollected at the time of his death.The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised] [again] - by Adam LongOriginally performed by its creators, this 1987 Edinburgh Fringe hit remains the second longest-running West End comedy in history and has been translated into over thirty languages. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) is not so much a play as it is a vaudeville show in which three charismatic, wildly ambitious actors attempt to present all thirty-seven of Shakespeare's plays in a single performance.

The Lights - by Ben LernerWritten over a span of fifteen years, The Lights registers the pleasures, risks, and absurdities of making art and family and meaning against a backdrop of interlocking, accelerating crises, but for all their insight and critique, Ben Lerner’s poems ultimately communicate—in their unpredictability, in their intensities—the promise of mysterious sources of lift and illumination.Pig - by sam saxA collection of six plays that span the entirety of Bernhard’s career as a dramatist. The plays collected in this long-awaited addition to Bernhard’s oeuvre in English traverse somber lyricism and misanthropy to biting satire and glorious slapstick. Sounds about right!The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine - ed. by Kaveh AkbarLove Poems of Catullus - trans. by Tynan KoganeCatullus was undoubtedly one of the most intimate, witty, vivid, and tender poets of antiquity. Perhaps his greatest gift was his ability to truthfully reveal the fleeting instants of his bare psyche: moments of erotic passion, of scorn and jealousy, of heartfelt devotion, of consuming love. The cycle of poems to his love, “Lesbia,” have entranced poets and translators across the centuries, enriching many different traditions in English-language poetry.The Original 1939 Notebook of a Return to the Native Land: Bilingual Edition - by Aimé Césaire (trans. by A James Arnold & Clayton Eshleman)The original 1939 version of the poem, given here in French, and in its first English translation, reveals a work that is both spiritual and cultural in structure, tone, and thrust. This Wesleyan edition includes the original illustrations by Wifredo Lam.Save Yourself If You Can: Six Plays - by Thomas Bernhard (trans. by Douglas Robertson)Yes, there is a cheaper paperback edition. But this one is so much more appropriately gorgeous.Poets have always looked to the skies for inspiration, and have written as a way of getting closer to the power and beauty they sense in nature, in each other and in the cosmos. This anthology is a holistic and global survey of a lyric conversation about the divine, one which has been ongoing for millennia.sam sax draws on autobiography and history to create poems that explore topics ranging from drag queens and Miss Piggy to pig farming and hog lagoons. Collectively, these poems, borne of Sax’s obsession, offer a varied picture of what it means to be a human being. Delivered in a variety of forms, infused with humor, grace, sadness, and anger, Pig is a wholly unique collection from a virtuosic and original poet.

Spoken Word: A Cultural History - by Joshua BennettA celebration of voices outside the dominant cultural narrative, who boldly embraced an array of styles and forms and redefined what—and whom—the mainstream would include, Bennett's book illuminates the profound influence spoken word has had everywhere melodious words are heard, from Broadway to academia, from the podiums of political protest to cafés, schools, and rooms full of strangers all across the world.What Just Happened - by Richard HellBrad says: “The description I kept landing on as I read, thought about, and told others about this collection is one word: wise. You don’t need to know or appreciate Hell’s contributions to punk culture to love this book.”The Town: An Anthology of Oakland Poets -ed. by J. K. Fowler & Ayodele NzingaAn anthology of 65 poets who live in (or have lived in) Oakland, California.Nomadic Press' last publication is a love letter to Oakland and a collaborative editorial labor of love between J. K. Fowler and Ayodele Nzinga.Valley of the Many-Colored Grasses - by Ronald JohnsonSort of an American Holy Grail treasure hunt for decades, the saints at Song Cave have done us all a solid by re-releasing Johnson’s legendary collection.Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007-2020 -by Carl PhillipsTo 2040 - by Jorie GrahamIn sparse lines that move with cinematic precision, these poems pan from overhead views of reshaped shorelines to close-ups of a worm burrowing through earth. Here, we linger, climate crisis on hold, as Graham asks us to sit silently, to hear soil breathe. An urgent open letter to the future, with a habit of looking back.Carl Phillips is one of the great bingeable poets, so it’s great to have so many of his recent best in one place.Two lines that I can’t shake (from the poem “And If I Fall”::Light enters a cathedral the way persuasion fills a body.Light enters a cathedral, the way persuasion fills a body.

A “Working” Life - by EIleen MylesThe first new collection since Evolution from the prolific poet, activist, and writer Eileen Myles, a “Working Life” unerringly captures the measure of life. Whether alone or in relationship, on city sidewalks or in the country, their lyrics always engage with permanence and mortality, danger and safety, fear and wonder.Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza - by Mosab Abu TohaWinner of the American Book Award, the Palestine Book Award and Arrowsmith Press's 2023 Derek Walcott Poetry PrizeWhat Is Home?What is home:it is the shade of trees on my way to school before they were uprooted.It is my grandparents’ black-and-white wedding photo before the wallscrumbled.It is my uncle’s prayer rug, where dozens of ants slept on wintry nights, before it was looted andput in a museum.It is the oven my mother used to bake bread and roast chicken before a bomb reduced ourhouse to ashes.It is the café where I watched football matches and played –My child stops me: Can a four-letter word hold all of these?Vergil: The Poet's Life - by Sarah RudenSarah Ruden, widely praised for her translation of the Aeneid, uses evidence from Roman life and history alongside Vergil’s own writings to make careful deductions to reconstruct his life. Through her intimate knowledge of Vergil’s work, she brings to life a poet who was committed to creating something astonishingly new and memorable, even at great personal cost.From Unincorporated Territory [åmot] - by Craig Santos PerezWinner of the 2023 National Book Award for PoetryThis book is the fifth collection in Craig Santos Perez’s ongoing from unincorporated territory series about the history of his homeland, the western Pacific island of Guåhan (Guam), and the culture of his indigenous Chamoru people. “Åmot” is the Chamoru word for “medicine,” commonly referring to medicinal plants.