"Caste"

(The Origins of Our Discontents)

2020

-by isabel wilkerson

Through detailed comparisons of nazi Germany, classic India, and America's jim crow south, "Caste" deconstructs the function of caste in a society, and breaks down its elements. It contrasts caste with class, a fluid hierarchical tier in which anyone's status and wealth can (hypothetically, at least) rise or descend. Caste can exist simultaneously with class, but unlike class, caste is never fluid. If one is born into a caste, that is where they will live and die.

One anecdote refuses to leave my brain. In 1934, the nazis had ascended. They wished to enact laws that would codify the jews' status as second-class citizens. They sent a law student to America, to study the legal codes of the south. At the Reichstag meeting where the student gave his report, even the hardline nazis were stunned by the severity of the anti-black laws.

The nazis found America appalling.

Do you?

The depth of research in this book is simply stunning. Isabel's achievement stands alongside any work of nonfiction ever written, in essential understanding of America.

"Bad Feminist"

-by roxane gay

2014

My only complaint with this book is that for a while, it feels like false advertising. Big chunks of the middle section aren't about feminism really, just pop culture critiques. But relax, and embrace the fact that the piece is a collection of essays written as standalones...and eventually it all comes around to feminism (or maybe feminism/race). And all that is actually a nice parallel for roxane's problem with feminism - what IS it ? As soon as you try to capture "essential feminism", you're stumbling over your own feet. So instead of taking territorial poses, let's all just be ourselves and keep on striving for common ground. Pretty good message, and pretty great essays. Thank you, roxane.

"Factfulness"

(Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World - and Why Things are Better than You Think)

-by hans rosling, 2018

Hans was a doctor, professor of international health, and public educator. His biggest achievement was getting the World Bank to retire the racist and inaccurate terms "developed" and "developing" world, replacing those with a four-level wealth/poverty index. He spent a lifetime studying why the overwhelming majority of people score lower on a test of global knowledge then chimpanzees (or in other words, why all people would do better just randomly guessing, rather than THINK they know, as our guesses are overwhelmingly wrong, because of evolutionary cognitive biases).

The book begins with a multiple-choice quiz regarding global health, poverty, and education. The average person (including the highly-educated) scores a 2 out of 13. The average chimp, a 3. I scored a 9...but that was AFTER seeing the subtitle of the book.

Hans explores the biological instincts that prevent us from seeing the world as it is. The gap instinct, which makes us see only extremes, not the middle where the majority usually lies. The negativity instinct, which is why the news only serves up BAD stories. The fear instinct, a holdover from a time in evolution when danger was ever-present and to not be vigilant meant quick death. Plus seven other instincts that ill-serve us in achieving a global perspective. Don't fret, things are not "getting worse". In the big picture, living conditions for the majority of humyns are much better than they've ever been. And continue to improve at a startling rate. Within a few generations, poverty might be gone forever.

Even without the subtitle, i'd have scored better than a chimp...but i still had my blind spots, particularly regarding overpopulation.

Hans spares no one. On global warming, he recalls how al gore urged him to portray worst-case scenarios as the baseline. Perhaps in the big picture, gore was right to do so...but hans held fast to the truth, rather than succumb to the alarmist instincts that are present in us all.

Hans teaches us tools to overcome our ancient, faulty instincts.

So if i may make a recommendation (without falling prey to alarmist tactics myself), get this book for yourself. As quick as you can!

"The End of Bias: a Beginning"

(The Science and Practice of Overcoming Unconscious Bias)

-by jessica nordell

2021

It would be redundant for me to explain this book, as the title and subtitle perform that task admirably. The book lives up to its billing, in the best of ways.

So instead i'll mention some memories the book stirred up.

A few years back, a possible romance were sparking between me and a charming, brilliant black poet. One night, she said she had things to teach me. I nodded, and said we had things to teach each other.

I wasn't wrong...but i wish i could have that moment back, so i could keep my fool white mouth shut. Neither the friendship nor romance proceeded.

Many years ago, i was speaking with a new theater acquaintance, and gave him a playful punch on the shoulder. He looked at me witheringly, and said "don't do that". In the emotionless, patriarchal world into which i was born, any expression of affection between males had to be couched in mockery or pretend violence.

As an adult, i almost never engage in shame or regret...almost.

The depth to which biases are baked into us by the time we're teens...well, i'll let the book speak for itself. Go find it.

"Woke Racism"

(How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America)

-by john mcwhorter

2021

This country does gobble up polemics, doesn't it?

I avoided this book for a long time because it seemed guilty of bad-faith rhetoric. And as it turns out...it is.

But it's also mostly correct.

Ditch some intentionally-inflammatory overstatement, and mcwhorter makes good points. But overstatement sells! Sigh. Perhaps just like ta-nehasi coates, mcwhorter is mostly correct, with one or two blind spots.

Why do we need to run to black and white, in a world of confusing complexity? Why are we all so uncomfortable with nuance and shades of grey?

It's not the writer's job to acquiesce to that, mr. mcwhorter. Your job is truth. So replace the titular word "religion" with "quasi-religion", and you'll do a service to the betterment of all. Religion requires magical thinking, something absent from the woke movement. Mcwhorter's language is propagandistic, designed to anger both people who love religion, and people who hate it.

Replace that one word, and you'd have a good little book.

You just wouldn't sell as many copies.

"Kindly Inquisitors"

(The New Attacks on Free Thought)

-by jonathan rauch

1993, revised 2013

Rauch is a formidable thinker and deft writer. In this book, he argues against free speech restrictions in the name of humanitarian tolerance. The book is a deep defense of the principles of liberal science, and fundamental to that is the necessity for completely free critical speech. Even if it's unkind or unfair, the moment you start to restrict critical speech (no matter how noble your intent) is the moment the dream of a free society dies, and fundamentalist totalitarianism rears its ugly head.

Yes, he's strongly targeting the excesses of the "woke" movement.

The most surprising thing about the book is his revelation in the last chapter that he's jewish and gay. One might think that would incline him toward restrictions on hate speech...but one would be wrong.

Are you going to agree with everything he writes? Perhaps, perhaps not...but if you disagree, you'd better bring deeply-considered counter-arguments. This book is everything a book should be.

"POVERTY, BY AMERICA"

-by MATTHEW DESMOND

2023

A brilliantly incisive summation of the whys and hows of american poverty, with a laughably simple plan for ending it, that avoids the revolutionary chaos that most disaffected, desperate people imagine the only way. Desmond puts a number on the amount needed, and it turns out to be less than 1% of the USA GDP...an amount that could mostly be scratched up through the wealthy actually paying their taxes. He deconstructs how the american economy is built to reward the rich and punish the poor. Desmond has made poverty his lifelong study, living or standing shoulder to shoulder with those whose lives are most searingly devastated. He avoids emotional pleading, and speaks with the voice of a finger-wagging economist (though he's a sociologist by training).

"ain't i a woman"

(black women and feminism)

-by bell hooks

1981

A stunningly insightful analysis of the place of black wimyn in America, covering all the changes in attitude and treatment over the past few centuries. Bell reserves her deepest analysis for how the civil rights movement of the 60s and the feminist movement of the 70s were both doomed to failure, for the same reason - erasing black wimyn from consideration. Furthermore, both movements were designed to fight discrimination, yet accept oppression as a whole.

The civil rights movement was content to embrace sexism, as long as the black man was elevated. The feminist movement was content to embrace racism. And both movements accepted classist patriarchy, as long as their core constituents were given more access to its fruits. Social movements throwing other disempowered groups under the bus, is sadly nothing new.

The book also made me see one of my own blind spots (for someone who has spent a lifetime trying to strip away the lies of sexism and racism, this was a tough pill to swallow). One of my favorite john lennon songs has always been "Woman is the [racist epithet] of the World". In applying the lens bell offers, i realized the song has an enormous cognitive disconnect, for it only makes sense if you equate "woman" with non-black wimyn. If you include black wimyn, the sentiment includes the thought "black wimyn are the [racist epithet] of the world", a thought that is logically incoherent. That's my own example, but bell offers many others which show how black wimyn, living at the intersection of racism and sexism, are culturally erased in ways that are so ingrained into our language and assumptions, you might miss them entirely even when you ARE looking. Bell acknowledges how these insidious erasures can arise unconsciously, even in movements with otherwise noble intent.

A towering book.

"Last Ape Standing"

(The Seven-Million-Year Story of How and Why We Survived)

-by chip walter

2013

Science journalist walter synthesizes our knowledge of all humyn species (27 and counting), and asks "Why, when there are multiple species of big cat, elephant, monkey, and innumerable others, is there only ONE humyn species left alive?" (although considering that there were denisovans as recently as 10,000 years ago, it's possible that there are yet pockets of non-sapiens out there in some isolated corner of the world). He takes a look at what made us successful - an adaptability that exponentially dwarfs any other creature, and attempts to explain how that came to be (lonnnnng extended childhoods), what are its strengths...and weaknesses (schizophrenia, autism, depression). He speculates on our evolutionary future, and the possibility that that which made us so successful may easily kill us as well. As shatner said, this is a book to make you jump up and say "YES".

"Women After All"

(SEX, EVOLUTION, AND THE END OF MALE SUPREMACY)

-by melvin konner, M.D.

2015

Wimyn have bigger brains. Not in absolute size, but relative to body size (which is the key measure biologists use to assess intelligence).

Wimyn are better drivers.

Wimyn have a more efficient, humane management style. The floodgates keeping wimyn from the highest levels of business and government are opening much quicker than expected, because boards are realizing wimyn are better administrators. It's easy to predict that within a century at most, wimyn will be running the world.

And not one second too soon.

In the big picture, the differences between men and wimyn are tiny.

But what a difference. Men lead with aggression and impulsiveness.

Konner uses biology, sociology, and psychology to speculate on a future where men will no longer exist, either through evolution (it's happened with certain species of lizard), or engineering. Within a few decades, two wimyn will be able to have a baby with no male contribution. Within a century or two, we will have such incomprehensible control of our genetic fate that we will face the question of whether males have a place at all. And the laughably obvious conclusion will be no. Males are useful for a species whose survival is reliant on physical control of a hostile environment.

Such conditions have nothing to do with where we're headed.

Will wimyn evolve (or have engineered) a penis-sized clitoris like the hyena, for sexual pleasure (and perhaps procreation)? That's my question, not konner's.

Watch this video, and try to doubt that wimyn will soon take over the world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDWq1TIkaOQ

Okay, that's still me, not konner. And i'm being a bit intentionally obtuse, in employing such patriarchal/hierarchical "world-dominating" language. Silliness aside, the larger point is worth making.

Wimyn are the first gender biologically, and given the emaciated status of the Y chromosome, the superior gender.

The truth has always been before us, waiting for 10,000 years of brutal hyper-patriarchy to dissipate.

"You Are Your Best Thing"

(Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience)

-edited by tarana burke & brene' brown

2021

If you're not reading books that are hard to read, you're not reading the right books.

And by hard, i mean kind that hits your stomach and makes you want to run away, because you know it's literally unhealthy to absorb too much of what you're reading, if your heart is open.

This book's subtitle eliminates any need to explain what it's about, except to say that the authors are all of color.

Instead, i'll share my personal resonances. One point the book makes is that the only way for a white person to truly understand black trauma, is by offering love and friendship to a person of color. I have two such recent experiences...and the fact that both of them blew up in my face is perhaps evidence that black trauma is not to be taken lightly. One was a friendship i'd cultivated for five years, a man a bit older than me, and sometimes more conservative and angry. I always knew his friendship was no bargain, but felt he was worth it. We shared artistic tastes, and i held the hope that our familiar friendship would eventually lead to him to share his deepest self. It never came to that, for i recently said something in complete innocence and goodwill, that triggered a huge anger response. Without letting us talk about it, he ended our friendship. I think his rage was significantly about some ancient trauma that my comment made him relive.

And then a more recent acquaintance, a womyn for whom i'd had a breathtaking attraction response. We texted for a few weeks...she said she'd like to get together, but it didn't happen. I kept offering her my new mantra - no secrets, no expectations. I hate texting - it's the enemy of real communication. And i soon realized there was a huge imbalance - i was emotionally open, and she was closed off. I suggested we back off from each other, but she encouraged me to keep writing. I finally wrote something about my attraction response that hit her so wrongly she wrote hurtful words, and walked away. My triggering words weren't anything i hadn't already expressed, but i used language that was more vivid - the word "cock" in particular. Still, her reaction seemed to come out of nowhere.

But it was through reading this book, that i was soon at peace with what happened. This book teaches that the only way to earn someone's trust is to be radically vulnerable...which was exactly what i'd been doing. And i was ultimately grateful she'd felt safe enough to hurt me, as that's a crucial step in healing. Many people who have been traumatized never even feel safe enough to hurt someone.

Feeling safe enough to NOT hurt someone is, of course, the goal.

Would she say that race trauma had anything to do with her reaction? I don't know.

And another resonance, that illuminates how permanently crippling trauma can be. I have a brother who was mugged violently by black men, and it might be fair to say it has forever poisoned his feelings toward people of color. He says and does things that feel more racist than anyone in our family since my grandfather. One specific? He followed the 49ers devotedly his whole life...until colin kaepernick. Just like that, he adopted a new team.

It's all just heartbreaking. And his mugging was NOTHING compared to the thousands of tiny and huge violences people of color absorb every day.

So these things take time. And yes, fellow foolish white people, if black trauma burns you...do your best to swallow it and try again.

"The Right to Sex"

(Feminism in the Twenty-First Century)

-by amia srinivasan

2021

Reading this book is like having a conversation with your five best friends.

That is, if your five best friends are all smarter than you.

But the title stinks! The subtitle should be the title, and the title should disappear. Perhaps i'm just not bright enough to grasp its significance, but it feels entirely misleading.

The book itself is one of the most exhilarating reads i've had in a long time. Amia gives startling clarity to the challenges and contradictions that feminism faces. When she doesn't have the answer, you at least come away knowing the correct questions.

On issues of intersectionality, she removes the emotional from the essential.

On the question of revolution vs. reform, she offers hard, uncomfortable truth.

If you cherish your foibles and hypocrisies, stay away.

Brilliant.

"THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING"

(CAPITALISM vs THE CLIMATE)

-by naomi klein

2014

The hardest book you'll ever read?

For most of the first half, it was a struggle. I felt viscerally sickened.

The second half isn't so grim. It's even occasionally uplifting, with tales of how the best part of the humyn spirit struggles on, even against incomprehensible odds.

The book details how in the 90s, when world governments finally agreed that climate change was a dire threat, business and government paid some self-serving lip service (especially the villainous branson), then...did absolutely nothing. In fact, they decided to make matters worse. As one example, big fuel doubled down on dirtier extraction processes, with fracking and coal and offshore drilling, all of which indicated that they expect no regulatory interference for the next fifty years (by which time, the oceans will likely be long dead). BP disaster? Phoooey. Here's bigger, DEEPER rigs!

The book articulates how obama might have been the last humyn being who could have saved the world, as he had public opinion on his side and the banks and auto industry in his debt with government bail-outs. But instead of heroism, he climbed into big fuel pockets and cowered.

Learn how environmental groups came into real power for the first time...then climbed into the pockets of big fuel and hid. As the most horrific example, big fuel gave The Nature Conservancy a huge chunk of land in order to protect an endangered bird. The Nature Conservancy...drilled their OWN oil well. The bird? Gone.

The second half of the book details grass roots reactions, with unprecedented protests worldwide. Blockadia is born. One of our few hopes lies in the unexpected rights of first nations, as many old treaties actually cede them more authority over uncontested land than you'd imagine.

But the odds are beyond grim, as the world prepares to burn.

"Stiffed (The Betrayal of the American Man)"

-by susan faludi

1999

Towering...almost breathtakingly so.

Faludi turns her eye on what it means to be an american male, and how that has evolved (or devolved) in the media, corporate-capitalist age. The last male generation to stand on seemingly-solid ground were those who came of age during post-WWII prosperity. For anyone of the 60s or beyond, only shifting sand beneath. Once, employment loyalty was a two-way street, providing meaning and security for a lifetime. Now, downsizing. Once, the image of the father figure was strong, and war films celebrated brotherhood. Now, father figures are more distant or absent, and war films focus on the individual. Once, men knew it was THEIR job to provide, and the american mission was to conquer a continent (and ultimately the world). Now, those paradigms are obsolete, if not painful. And in the new world economy, most workers live with the conscious (or subconscious) awareness of producing nothing tangible.

In America, male success is measured by impossible standards of wealth, plus a beauty requirement heretofore only expected of females.

Faludi's perspective is by no means the only one by which to understand male alienation. You could discuss an ape evolutionarily designed for tribal sharing, thrust into a paradigm of individualism...

You might not agree with her every interpretation, but in the big picture, as no less a humynitarian than arnold schwarzenegger attests. faludi "hits the nail on the head".

The breadth of this book is stunning (and often surprising). There are sections on sports fandom, the male-dominated construction industries, gangbanger celebrity, the corporatizing of the military, the significance of "Rambo", the Promise Keepers, the porn industry, and astronaut as "hero". The only minimally-relevant section is Waco - it's okay to skip that one.

Faludi's eye can be startling and terrifying...yet ultimately hopeful, as she speculates on how men can reclaim their identity by joining the community of life.

"autobiography of a blue-eyed devil"

(my life and times in a racist, imperialist society)

-by inga muscio

2005

Be sure you get the updated 2014 edition.

I despair of doing justice to this brilliant, essential book. Not every author has two great books in them - indeed, a reasonable expectation is otherwise. But inga has scaled the same heights she took her debut, "Cunt". Superlatives fail. This book is a hardcore eye-opener.

I'm not one for self-recrimination. I try to lead all my interactions with radical forgiveness...for myself included. But this sweeping, scathing book had me looking hard at my own life. My reaction to living in this morally bankrupt society has always been non-cooperation. Do NOT chase the money and privilege my birth status prepared for me. Do not follow the hypocritical religion foisted upon me as a child. Do NOT grab a high-status job - leave that slot for someone with ovaries or differing pigmentation. Do NOT marry a white womyn or make white babies, to keep the money in the white world.

That's well and good...

But inga has me facing how pathetically little i've done to proactively dismantle white patriarchy.

This is one of the few books i've ever read, which i won't immediately pass on to someone else. Oh, i'll find other copies to give to those i love, but i might need to re-read the glossary of examined terms, for a hard reminder of what sane sensitivity feels like. If you don't have time to read the book yet, just read that glossary...

You might find yourself doing so again and again.

"The Cafe on the Edge of the World"

(a Story About the Meaning of Life)

-by john strelecky

2020

Now translated into 42 languages! (though one might have been more than enough)

I probably shouldn't hate too hard on this book...especially when a small part of my ire is that the writer is reaping huge societal rewards, despite being largely talentless. Unlike (ahem) myself.

But this book is so badly written, that one must acknowledge the possibility that it's intended as a joke, a parody of self-help philosophy. Will people desperate for meaning believe anything, the writer wonders? The dialogue is horrible...just winky and wooden. If you met people who actually talked like this, you might smack them.

Let's assume, however, it's sincere! Its core message, that we all live unfulfilled, materialistic, fear-based lives, and that the solution is to find the activity that fills you with desire and purpose, and DO that, regardless of where it goes or what it pays...

Well, that's not patently wrong. In and of itself, it's reasonably wise.

The problem is strelecky's painful simplism. Like all self-help, the book is founded on the premise that the problem is in YOU. But the problems of our culture are not individual, they're systemic, and focusing on YOU won't mean a piss against that.

Strelecky then descends into drivel, such as "we each control our own destiny, and seemingly-magical coincidences happen for those who are deeply committed to their purpose". Well, no. Humyns are social creatures, YOU do not control your destiny. And anyone who understands statistics and probability knows that "magical-feeling" things happen to everyone, about once a month. If you start to believe those things have grander, deeper meaning, you're onboard the woo-woo train.

I can understand why this book was recommended to me, by someone who thought they'd found a deep insight into MY personality. Yes, there's a seed of truth there. But if this book affects you deeply...please go deeper!

"Work"

(A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots)

-by james suzman, 2020

This book doesn't crack the list of "16 books every humyn should read".

But maybe it should.

A sweeping study of homo sapiens' relationship to labor, from forager to hunter to farmer to factory to information age and beyond. The not-so-secret revelation is that we were much happier before our cleverness got cooking. Foragers work only two to three hours a day, have deeply satisfying community relationships, and no ulcers/suicide/income inequality.

The central thesis of suzman's work is that we need to return to some form of that reality, if we would save our sanity. For the thousands of years since the agricultural revolution, our lives have been a crucible of overwork (which is already an official cause of death in some countries, notably Japan). This may have been necessary when we didn't have enough resources for everyone, but around fifty years ago, our food-producing brilliance surpassed even our exponentially-expanding population. We now have enough food and resources for everyone.

More than enough.

It's time to stop pretending we don't.

Suzman's eye scans every "advancement" that changed how we work, from the rise of cities to the paradigm of scarcity to the birth of the service economy (and what that represents, a shift to an era when most workers don't produce anything tangible, because we don't NEED to - yes, i'm looking at you, you feckless financial advisers), to automation and the incipient age of robots.

He looks at the economists and philosophers who have commented on our progress, or predicted what's next.

He pulls it all together, with a plea to reclaim our lost humynity. A wonderful work.

"The Stranger in the Woods"

 (The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit)

-by michael finkel

2017

Be prepared to not believe.

Then be prepared to not be able to stop reading.

In 1986, twenty year-old chris knight drove his car through central Maine past the point of no return, then walked into the woods...and didn't come out for twenty-seven years. By "come out", i mean dragged out by the authorities who finally found him after more than a thousand petty larcenies. He would emerge from the woods in the dead of night, to burgle books, batteries, and food from empty vacation homes.

In all those years, he had but one accidental conversation with another person, a two-word exchange with an unknowing hiker.

He survived all those Maine winters without a fire for heat...coming close to death from freezing or starvation numerous times.

He wasn't writing a best-seller. He left a job and functioning childhood family behind, without a word. He intended to live in his hermit's camp, until he died.

The story of chris knight may upend your beliefs about modern society, companionship, and sanity. It may shake you to your core, with both horror AND envy.

Much of the credit for that goes to finkel, whose narrative is little short of perfect. After chris's capture, michael was the only journalist he allowed in his presence. The depth of research is breathtaking, from interviews to analyses of the history and psychology of "solitaries". The hermits of America actually have a dues-paying organization (with website)...and i'm sure chris would have just as much disregard for them as he does for relative dilettantes such as thoreau. When America became fascinated with the chris mccandless saga, knight had already lived utterly alone for a decade...and would continue so for almost two more.

As the story unfolds, HOW and WHY will clang inside your head...though perhaps not everyone will feel resonances of themself in knight's story. And that's just one more facet of the modern humyn tragedy.

"When God was a Woman"

 -by merlin stone

1976

Historian stone looks at the archaeological/textual evidence for the argument that 3000-2000 years ago, invading indo-european patriarchal religions conquered matriarchal religions. Early judaism and christianity existed side by side with goddess religions, and were instrumental in erasing them. Stone contends that the matriarchal religions were more peaceful, sex-positive, and literate - a claim that may only be a projection of feminist wishful thinking...but no one can argue that patriarchal religions aren't hotbeds of violence, womyn-hating, and sex-shaming, and it's disturbing to see how deeply biblical scripture is both an overt and veiled degradation of half the humyn race. Were these earlier religions truly matriarchal, or just matrilineal/matrifocal? In any event, it's fascinating to see how patriarchy co-opted and re-wrote the myths of these earlier religions.

"A Short History of Nearly Everything"

 -by bill bryson

2003

Bill tackles the entire history of advanced humyn scientific thought, audaciously attempting to encapsulate it all in a single volume. If you ever have a friend who loses their sight for a week or two, and needs the best distraction imaginable, you'll never find a more perfect book to read them, than this one here.