Malcolm X “is the intellectual we need to reshape the future,” according to this whip-smart reinvestigation of the firebrand’s politics. Black studies scholar Andrews (Blackness at the Intersection) delves into the “liberatory” politics Malcolm formed and was able to expand upon after leaving the “cultish” Nation of Islam, arguing that these politics are a part of his legacy often overlooked in favor of an excessive focus on his early segregationist views. Those views Andrews also nonetheless defends as emerging from necessity—he quotes Malcolm’s insight that “the only person who can organize the man on the streets is the one who is unacceptable to the White community.” Andrews’s writing is no-holds-barred; he attacks contemporary Black bourgeois intellectuals who he sees as selling out Malcolm’s radical liberatory politics. He also pushes back against attempts to turn Malcolm into a Marxist figure, highlighting that class wasn’t a driving force in his activism, so much as Black solidarity in a white supremacist world order (“White is an attitude more than it is a color,” Malcolm asserted). Throughout, Andrews offers astute insights clarifying Malcolm’s thinking, in the process laying out a revolutionary political program he feels is still the right path to follow. Most fascinatingly, he persuasively delineates how Malcolm presaged contemporary debates around race. Searing, bold, and direct, this is a must for those interested in how race intersects with leftist politics. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 10/10/2025 | Details & Permalink

Minister Morrison (Letters from Old Screamer Mountain) provides a thoughtful and intimate guide to dismantling systemic racism. Drawing from decades of antiracist learning—including her founding of the Doing Our Own Work retreat—she characterizes allyship as a role defined by lifelong action. The process begins with the deep inner work of tackling one’s “racist legacy of obliviousness,” including researching “how race and class were at play” in the lives of one’s ancestors. Such analysis, she writes, brings one’s own “structural privilege” into sharp relief while clarifying how one’s actions can shape future generations. With this grounding, readers can fight racism in small-scale, local ways, like calling out bigoted comments from friends, family, or coworkers (“The violence of demeaning speech... is normalized by silence and assent”) or spearheading initiatives against efforts to suppress marginalized voices, including bans on books about the history of Indigenous dispossession or slavery. Throughout, the author’s emphasis on historical reckoning encourages readers to form a deeper foundation from which to do their antiracist work while avoiding performative allyship and white fragility. The result is a bracing and uplifting invitation for white people to become “agents of change.” (Sept.)

Reviewed on 10/10/2025 | Details & Permalink

McGrath (James Monroe) takes the long road to Gettysburg in this rambling group biography of Gen. George G. Meade, Gen. Robert E. Lee, and President Abraham Lincoln. McGrath first focuses on the men’s early lives; the breezy biographical details on Lincoln and Lee do not reveal much that’s new, whereas the innovative and meticulous lighthouse builder Meade is more robustly explored. McGrath then pegs the Mexican American War as changing all three men’s trajectories: Lincoln in his political stance against the war, and Lee and Meade, as West Point graduates called to serve, in the lessons they learned in battle. Meade realized the “importance of taking and holding the high ground,” a key component of his victory at Gettysburg, while Lee observed the “fragility” of senior military officer’s relationships with their civilian commanders in chief, which, McGrath posits, led to his later success working with Confederate president Jefferson Davis (Lee always “made it a point to keep Davis informed”). The first two years of the war receive short shrift, while the Gettysburg battle itself gets three chapters, one for each day of the fighting; in them, McGrath provides some neat factoids and the drama is at times stirring. Less successful is the lightweight look at the Gettysburg Address. Nevertheless, Civil War buffs will find a few flashes of insight here. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 10/10/2025 | Details & Permalink

Resistance to the Atlantic slave system constituted “perhaps the largest, longest-running, and most diverse ongoing insurrection the world has ever known,” according to this magisterial account from historian Gibson (El Norte). To highlight the continuous and singular nature of the struggle, she tracks it from beginning to end—starting with the initial resistance to the slave trade that took place in Africa, mutinies on slave ships (of “an estimated 36,000 voyages... at least 3,500” had on-board rebellions), and the first slave revolt in the Americas: the 1521 Christmas Day uprising on a plantation owned by a son of Christopher Columbus. The latter, Gibson remarks, “bore the hallmarks of rebellions to come, taking place on a holiday when officials were distracted.” This kind of focus on military strategy suffuses the book, as Gibson points to the ways the resistance learned and adapted. The most important such development was the emergence of “marronage,” wherein enslaved people would abscond to the wilderness, ally with Indigenous people, and launch raids on plantations. Gibson goes on to analyze the Haitian Revolution’s success and its significance to the resistance as a whole (it was a “volcanic explosion” whose “hot ash... ignit[ed] more blazes”), before tracking the arduous path to total abolition. Digesting vast amounts of information, Gibson constructs a sweeping vision of resistance to slavery as a defining element of Western history that made “abstract concepts of freedom concrete.” Expansive and elegant, this is a marvel. (Jan.)

Reviewed on 10/10/2025 | Details & Permalink

Starr (Entrenchment), cofounder of The American Prospect, offers a perceptive history of the past eight decades of U.S. partisan politics. Outlining the ideological paths taken by the “progressive left,” the “mainstream” center, and the “reactionary” right, he pinpoints the Black civil rights movement as the prime driver of events to come. The progressive left, inspired by the civil rights fight, began to (rightfully, Starr asserts) see America as profoundly unequal, and supported more and more minority groups in demanding their fundamental rights. The center, however, preserved its reverence for American “exceptionalism”—the idea that America has “unique values and institutions” which ensure “openness, tolerance, and pluralism” as well as economic “dynamism”—and began to frame the left as “illiberal.” Meanwhile, the reactionary right nurtured its grievance against racial equality, pointing to the decline of American manufacturing and the subsequent suffering of the working class as evidence that pluralism had fundamentally failed. Among Starr’s aims is to prove to the left and center that they should concede one another’s points about America’s true nature—because both have merit, but also because neither ideology alone can achieve victory over President Trump and the reactionary right. To make his point, he astutely breaks down specific historical instances of left and “mainstream” victory, from the establishment of the EPA to the election of President Obama, to show how they were born of broad center-left consensus. The result is a persuasive call for unity. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/10/2025 | Details & Permalink

“The internet has made us all amateurs,” asserts artist and critic Walsh (Girl Online) in this perceptive but meandering philosophical survey of Web 2.0. Walsh examines how the user-centric internet of the 2000s and 2010s “opened up creative practice on a huge scale to those without money, training, or access.” Ruminating on phenomena as varied as LOLcats and the entry for “dark academia” on Aesthetics Wiki, Walsh not only reveals how these amateur aesthetics shaped and were shaped by the internet but how they “blur[red] the lines between.... the experience of producing and consuming.” The author’s interpretations are fresh and insightful, like when she pinpoints Tumblr users’ love of “cursed images” of red-eyed people and animals—a common effect in amateur flash photography—as evincing a “nostalgia for the failed.” Her choice in subjects, too, is pleasantly surprising, like when she discusses the era’s proliferation of simplistic vaporwave music (“elevator music without an occupant”). However, the book’s sharpness is dulled by copious quotes from other theorists. It’s strongest during more focused moments, among them an impassioned defense of the “trash essay”—Walsh’s term for the frequently maligned confessional essays that flourished during this period—and her spot-on articulation of AI art’s “uncanny” depiction of “not offscreen reality” but “reality as depicted via common media aesthetics.” Despite the title, this is best suited for those well-versed in the subject. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 10/10/2025 | Details & Permalink

The prevalence and impact of racism in North American hockey are explored by sports journalist Sandor (Called Up) in this noteworthy interrogation. In 2023, around 5% of National Hockey League players were Black, Indigenous, or people of color. Though often seen as a “white man’s game,” hockey has a history of trailblazing players of color, according to Sandor, who spotlights prominent players like Willie O’Ree, the first Black player in the NHL, and the Colored Hockey League, which began in 1895, decades before baseball’s Negro Leagues. Today, costly gear and ice rink time are financial barriers for young athletes of color interested in the game (“The rink is a place that screams wealth and privilege,” Sandor writes). When these players do make it to the upper tiers of hockey, like star defenseman P.K. Subban, they are asked to play stereotypically violent roles on the ice, according to Sandor. The author does a solid job of laying out possible solutions, detailing how organizations like Apna Hockey are involving more people of color in the game through youth camps, but, as he astutely demonstrates, part of the issue lies in the lack of BIPOC owners in the NHL. This is a clear-eyed and important call for an institutional reckoning. (Sept.)

Reviewed on 10/10/2025 | Details & Permalink

In this solid autobiography, Dance Moms cast member Sioux (Today I Dance, a picture book) opens up about her experience as the reality show’s only Black dancer. She first joined the Abby Lee Dance Company at age three, six years before the show—which followed the company—premiered. By the time Dance Moms was in full swing, Sioux was regularly singled out as the company’s weak link, frequently coming last in coach Abby Lee Miller’s weekly rankings. Sioux, who spent seven seasons on the show, recalls her desperate attempts to stay in Miller’s good graces, despite constant dismissal and racist microaggressions (“Don’t you just wish you had white-girl hair,” Miller asked her at one point). To cope, she drew strength from her tight-knit family and the therapeutic power of writing down her experiences. After leaving the show before its final season, Sioux pivoted to acting, starring in The Bold and the Beautiful and 2024’s Mean Girls remake. Sioux’s harrowing reality TV ordeal cuts deep, and her subsequent self-assurance is endearing and infectious. It adds up to an inspiring account of reclaiming artistic agency. Agent: David Doerrer, Platform Agency. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 10/10/2025 | Details & Permalink

Jacobs’s debut is a sumptuous feast for new adult romantasy fans. Clía has been raised to be a perfect princess for the kingdom of Álainndore, with the understanding that one day she’ll be married to Prince Domhnall of Scáilca, one of her closest friends. But as rumblings of war stir in the kingdoms, Domhnall abruptly ends their betrothal agreement, citing his need for a queen who can hold her own on the battlefield, not just the ballroom. Determined to prove herself, Clía follows Domhnall to Caisleán Cósta, an elite warrior training academy. Also at the academy is Ronan Ó Faoláin, Domhnall’s closest friend and the captain of his guard, who has long dreamed of studying under his idol, General Kordislaen. Chance and political machinations bring princess and captain together as he agrees to tutor her in the art of war. However, Domhnall’s presence and whispers of betrayal and danger threaten their budding military careers—and their budding relationship. It’s essentially Legally Blonde transported to a medieval fantasy setting—and the result is exactly as delightful as that sounds. Jacobs’s knack for characterization and irreverent tone add to the fun. This hits all the right notes. (Oct.)

Reviewed on 10/10/2025 | Details & Permalink

Debut novelist Costa sets this astounding tale of alchemy, prophecy, and adventure in Washington’s Olympic Peninsula in 1889. Gentle Montgomery and his mentor, Liam O’Kelly, make their living as embalmers while Liam endeavors to complete the Great Work of alchemy, “the conquest of death.” When Liam drowns in Dalton Lake, the rumored home of a water-dwelling dragon, Gentle is determined to carry on Liam’s work and certain that the dragon’s own blood is the final ingredient necessary to resurrect his dead friend. His 14-year-old nephew, Kitt, arrives unexpectedly from Ohio, fleeing his abusive father, Gentle’s brother, and insists on hunting the monster with Gentle. The pair embark on their quest with a goal but no determined path, plagued along the way by disturbing dreams and accompanied by their faithful mule, Abe, who carries Liam’s embalmed body in a casket. What follows are a series of wonderfully strange episodes, reminiscent in timbre of The Odyssey or Huckleberry Finn. Colorful characters met as they track the monster through the Pacific Northwest include “unlikely hunter” Hercules Belmont and the Sons of Adam, a group who believe themselves to be the “Leviathan’s chosen.” This is a weird western done right: surprising, bizarre, occasionally grim, but ultimately life-affirming. (Nov.)

Reviewed on 10/10/2025 | Details & Permalink