Reviews and Comments

I confess that I would not normally pick up a book about zombies, but I'm working my way through Whitehead's corpus, and here we are. Whitehead's normal verbal pyrotechnics are on full display here -- the random people that emerge as zombies over the course of the novel, as well as the apocalyptic landscape, give Whitehead plenty of opportunity to demonstrate his descriptive prowess and sense of humor. The world he imagines seems internally coherent, and we follow one character (called Mark Spitz) as he attempts to navigate the horrific world that has emerged in the wake of a cruel plague. Whitehead delivers a twist late in the novel that forced me to reconsider all of Mark's previous interactions and my assumptions about him and his actions ... but on the whole I would not say that this is Whitehead's strongest work, and I can't imagine returning to this novel again.

Stanley's book was written before the 2024 election, which makes its message and his predictions all the more chilling. The book gives a brisk overview of how authoritarian governments around the world bend historical knowledge and teaching to their own purposes. For many years now, we have heard a relentless drumbeat about how it is important that students develop skills in STEM. But authoritarians know the value of history -- that's why they relentless try to erase pasts of groups they wish to harm and shore up a version of history that suits their political purpose. Stanley's book demonstrates that in order to shore up democracy, we need citizens to have the skills that come from humanistic disciplines.

I do not recall reading this book when I was a youth, but picked it up recently on the recommendation of a good friend. This is a bracing, unflinching look at Black life in the U.S. South on the cusp of the Great Depression. Taylor does not condescend to her young audience; the horrors of racism (including lynching) are on full display, even as they are viewed through the eyes of the protagonist, a nine-year-old girl, Cassie Logan. But the heart of the novel was Cassie's loving and supportive family, who refuse to be beaten down by circumstance and fight tenaciously to hold on to what is theirs. The novel pulls no punches on the grim reality of white racism in the United States, but also demonstrates the powerful bonds that keep the Logan family united, and the painful sacrifices they make to preserve their livelihood.

Many books are about something that happened ... Lepler's intriguing study is about something that didn't. There is no canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans via Nicaragua. But it certainly was not for a lack of effort by nineteenth century dreamers, government officials, and charlatans. Lepler has done a lot of deep investigatory work in multiple archives on multiple continents, and I was patricianly grateful for the close attention that she paid to the mechanics of diplomacy during a time when slow communication meant that people in the field had much more leeway to execute plans.

This marvelous novel is like picking up an object and turning it over in one's hands, seeing different aspects from different angles which make one appreciate the whole in new ways with each turn. Adichie writes about four women, living variously in Nigeria, Guinea, and the United States, and the ways in which their lives intersect. Different chapters take up each character and we see events from their own vantage point as well as the gradual reveal of a larger story based on a horrific moment in one of the characters' lives. Each character reflects on the men that they have dated, married, loved, rejected, accommodated, or resigned themselves to. Adichie is a brilliant writer, and I am particularly stuck by how she writes about the expectations of individual characters, and how they balance their own internal feelings with the demands of the community around them -- sometimes supportive, sometimes incredulous. Each character has to deal with their own assessment of what they want, which can be difficult to articulate but always worth pursuing. Adichie is also wonderful in the details — that sense of dread one can feel before clicking “join” on a Zoom meeting, for example.

Takei's first graphic memoir, They Called Us Enemy, dealt with a specific, harrowing moment in his life: his family's internment during World War II. By contrast, It Rhymes with Takei is far more sweeping since it covers his entire life, but focuses on the theme of his life as a gay man attempting to live within a career and country that demanded he stay in the closet. Takei writes honestly about his emotions, his relationship with his family, falling in love with his now-husband, and his personal journey to becoming a more outspoken advocate for gay rights in the United States. I feel that artist Harmony Becker spread her wings a bit more in this volume compared to the first one, and it is also published in vibrant color. Star Trek fans will enjoy Takei recounting how he got the role of Sulu and some of his later conversations with Gene Roddenberry, but this is not a Hollywood tell-all. Rather, Takei delves into his own personal journey of coming to terms with his identity, with great effect.

Whitehead's vivid imagination is on full display in this novel, which creates a fanciful world of elevator inspectors as an allegory for American race relations. When the inspector Lila Mae is thrust into controversy over an elevator accident, she goes on a dangerous journey in which she comes to question what she thought she knew about "intuitionism," her methodology for inspecting elevators (as opposed to the "empiricists"). The plot has enough twists and turns to keep things moving for the reader, and the world that Whitehead builds is both internally coherent and wholly original.

Companies We Keep is an interesting look at converting an existing business to a worker-owned cooperative. It is NOT a how-to manual on this process; if you are interested in pursuing such a conversion (or starting a cooperative from scratch) you'll need to look elsewhere for more technical support. But Abrams gives numerous anecdotes about the process and the principles behind it, and is open and honest about his own intellectual journey towards the conversion and the challenges and benefits that emerged. The conversion did not create a utopia, but it did broaden possibilities and create new opportunities, and hopefully this story can inspire others to embrace the same path.

This novel is replete with Whitehead's usual inventiveness and curiosity. The novel got me thinking about a number of themes with respect to names -- what does the act of naming represent, who gets to decide what something is named, and what meaning do names have? The fact that the thing being named in the book is a town founded by freedpeople means that the significance of the book has not died down almost 20 years after it was written.

Covers the fascinating history of reservation land in Oklahoma, up to two very recent Supreme Court cases which had profound implications for Native rights on their own land. Nagle's alternating chapters chronicle the development of the cases and the long history of dispossession up to the present day. Her own familial connection to historical figures who negotiated with the U.S. government in the nineteenth century, as well as white people who rushed to claim land in Oklahoma when it became a state, give the book a more personal angle than one might expect on a book about sovereignty. The U.S. government's actions from decades ago still reverberate today, and she shows how the arguments employed by modern politicians grotesquely echo the racist arguments from long ago.

This is a densely packed novel, full of keen, witty observations. Whitehead sets us up with a series of characters and reveals a good chunk of the denouement early in the novel, so the pleasure comes from seeing how all of the threads he has laid out eventually get braided together. The short chapters jump around chronologically with John Henry himself and all of those who have followed in his wake: balladeers, memorabilia collectors, the US postal service, and the freelance writer J., our protagonist. It is a joy to read Whitehead's descriptions of individuals or crowds, all of which lend an air of realism to what otherwise might seem like some rather absurd events.

Two of my favorite Voyager episodes are "Blink of an Eye" and "Distant Origin," both of which are (effectively, in my view) framed from perspectives other than that of our main cast. Similarly, that is one of the benefits of this short story collection, in which we get plenty of perspectives that we wouldn't normally get on the shows, about which I can't say much more without spoiling. Plenty of familiar faces here, but also some great stories focusing on unusual characters, all centered around the Dominion War.