february 2021 – good to read

William J. Craddock
It’s not hyperbole to say William J. Craddock’s Be Not Content is the historical and literary successor to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Both writers gave first-hand accounts of extraordinary eras in America’s cultural history. Just as Kerouac did in capturing the 1950s Beat Generation, Craddock’s fictionalized memoir provides the most authentic narrative of the psychedelic revolution of the 1960s. Craddock was working for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1970, when he decided to record his experiences on the behest of friends and admirers: «I wanted to describe in detail the hopeful hopelessness, the paralyzing simplicity, the intricate and dazzling complexity and the agony of final-truth-pain that was part of the religiously devoted acid-head’s day-to-day existence.» This 50th anniversary edition includes additional writings and photos. A hippie bombshell!
Transreal Books | December 2020

Dr. Carl L. Hart
Dr. Carl L. Hart, Ziff Professor at Columbia University and former chair of the Department of Psychology, is one of the world’s preeminent experts on the effects of so-called recreational drugs on the human mind and body. Dr. Hart is open about the fact that he uses drugs himself, in a happy balance with the rest of his full and productive life as a colleague, husband, father, and friend. In Drug Use for Grown-Ups, he draws on decades of research and his own personal experience to argue definitively that the criminalization and demonization of drug use – not drugs themselves – have been a tremendous scourge on America, not least in reinforcing this country’s enduring structural racism. Drug Use for Grown-Ups is controversial, to be sure: the propaganda war, Dr. Hart argues, has been tremendously effective.
Penguin Books | January 2021

Akiko Busch
Today, we are relentlessly encouraged, even conditioned, to reveal, share, and promote ourselves. The pressure to be public comes not just from our peers, but from vast and pervasive technology companies that want to profit from patterns in our behavior. A lifelong student and observer of the natural world, Busch sets out to explore her own uneasiness with this arrangement, and what she senses is a widespread desire for a less scrutinized way of life—for invisibility. Writing about her own life, her family, and some of the world’s most exotic and remote places, she savors the pleasures of being unseen. Discovering and dramatizing a wonderful range of ways of disappearing, from virtual reality goggles that trick the wearer into believing her body has disappeared.
Penguin Books | February 2021

Rae Lee
Tiller is an average American college student with a good heart but minimal aspirations. Pong Lou is a larger-than-life, wildly creative Chinese American entrepreneur who sees something intriguing in Tiller beyond his bored exterior and takes him under his wing. When Pong brings him along on a boisterous trip across Asia, Tiller is catapulted from ordinary young man to talented protégé, and pulled into a series of ever more extreme and eye-opening experiences that transform his view of the world, of Pong, and of himself. Rich with commentary on Western attitudes, Eastern stereotypes, capitalism, global trade, mental health, parenthood, mentorship, and more, My Year Abroad, Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, is also an exploration of the surprising effects of cultural immersion—on a young American in Asia, on a Chinese man in America, and on an unlikely couple hiding out in the suburbs.
Penguin Books | February 2021

Ibram  X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain (Editors)
Four Hundred Souls is a one-volume “community” history of African Americans. The editors, Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, have assembled ninety brilliant writers, each of whom takes on a five-year period of that four-hundred-year span. The writers explore their periods through a variety of techniques: historical essays, short stories, personal vignettes, and fiery polemics. They approach history from various perspectives: through the eyes of towering historical icons or the untold stories of ordinary people; through places, laws, and objects. While themes of resistance and struggle, of hope and reinvention, course through the book, this collection of diverse pieces from ninety different minds, reflecting ninety different perspectives, fundamentally deconstructs the idea that Africans in America are a monolith.
Random House N.Y. | February 2021