Whether you're interested in history, politics, memoirs, or light reads by the pool, our listeners have recommendations for you:

"Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil" by Susan Neiman

“In the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neiman’s Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings.”

"Against Fascism and War" 

A report to the 7th Congress of the Communist International, 1935 that includes a 1936 speech on the People's Front and a short speech to Young Communist International. Foreword by James West, then a U.S. youth delegate to the 7th Congress. 

"Dreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West" by H.W. BrandsIn Dreams of El Dorado, H. W. Brands tells the thrilling, panoramic story of the settling of the American West.

"The Soul of America" by John Meachum

Meachum writes about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the birth of the Lost Cause; the backlash against immigrants in the First World War and the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s; the fight for women’s rights; the demagoguery of Huey Long and Father Coughlin and the isolationist work of America First in the years before World War II; the anti-Communist witch-hunts led by Senator Joseph McCarthy; and Lyndon Johnson’s crusade against Jim Crow. Each of these dramatic hours in our national life have been shaped by the contest to lead the country to look forward rather than back, to assert hope over fear—a struggle that continues even now.

“Waterman’s Song” by David Cecelski

The first major study of slavery in the maritime South, The Waterman's Song chronicles the world of slave and free black fishermen, pilots, rivermen, sailors, ferrymen, and other laborers who, from the colonial era through Reconstruction, plied the vast inland waters of North Carolina from the Outer Banks to the upper reaches of tidewater rivers.

"Four Funerals, No Marriage: A Memoir" by Mike Keren                                                                           

Author Mike Keren gives his readers an inside look at his unexpected foray into caregiving to his sick and dying parents and in-laws. Often funny and always poignant, the story begins when his loving but difficult parents announce they are moving back to New Jersey from their retirement home in North Carolina because they “never really liked it there.” Within days of arriving on a house-hunting trip, his father is hospitalized with a stroke and his mother with another in a series of heart attacks. At the same time, his partner’s mother is recuperating from a hysterectomy and struggling with chemotherapy after a diagnosis of uterine cancer. Additionally, he must deal with the unhappy marriage between his parents, sibling relationships that have often been his undoing, a homophobic world, and his own lifetime of affective dysregulation.

"The Gown" by Jennifer Robson'It is about two young women who work for a dress designer just after World War II, and they were involved in making the gown for Queen Elizabeth's wedding.'

"How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us Versus Them" by Jason StanleyAs the child of refugees of World War II Europe and a renowned philosopher and scholar of propaganda, Jason Stanley has a deep understanding of how democratic societies can be vulnerable to fascism: Nations don’t have to be fascist to suffer from fascist politics. In fact, fascism’s roots have been present in the United States for more than a century. Alarmed by the pervasive rise of fascist tactics both at home and around the globe, Stanley focuses here on the structures that unite them, laying out and analyzing the ten pillars of fascist politics—the language and beliefs that separate people into an “us” and a “them.” He knits together reflections on history, philosophy, sociology, and critical race theory with stories from contemporary Hungary, Poland, India, Myanmar, and the United States, among other nations.