WHAT NOW: On Palestine, Freedom, and Our Global Future, powerful alignment with anti-imperialism's historic chorus

WHAT NOW: On Palestine, Freedom, and Our Global Future
TAREQ BACONI
Washington Square Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, preorder now for delivery 3 November 2026

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: A soul-stirring philosophical and political treatise on what liberation for Palestine—and all people—will look like in the twenty-first century, in the vein of Frantz Fanon, Angela Davis, and Edward Said.

Palestine is a litmus test for our global future. The ongoing genocide is showcasing what it means for Palestinians to be taken to the brink of extermination. The outcome will have repercussions that will go beyond the Middle East, extending outward across the world, and will determine whether the struggle for decolonization will succeed or fail, whether our world will move toward collective freedom or fascism.

Drawing from Tareq Baconi’s extensive academic and organizing work with Palestinian and international activists, and from decades of long-standing strategies, What Now distills three strategic principles for a free Palestine to guide activists and allies: refuse the prospect of a divided homeland, reclaim the historic revolutionary politics at the heart of the Palestinian struggle, and decompose Zionism.

Imagining a free Palestine is a political act of resistance. This is not the same as turning back the clock to pre-1948, Baconi writes, but a new struggle for a just future. A free Palestine would heal the wounds left in the wake of the Second World War, by challenging and upturning the racism, colonialism, and imperialism that continue to animate global politics. It will tilt the world off its axis, away from annihilatory racism toward justice and peace.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: A grandson of refugees from Jerusalem and Haifa who were forced out of their homes in 1948, Author Tareq has lived in a diaspora much like the Jews have done since Rome evicted them in the first century CE. It is foundational to his identity as he's lived in foreign places like Ammann, Jordan, and Beirut, Lebanon. It might just be that these foreign cities would not feel like home for a young queer man, regardless of his family origins; but an out queer Palestinian can expect to be an outsider.

A lifetime spent Othered has made Author Tareq an activist to his bones. I suspect that would always have been his fate, but his need to usher justice into the conversation and into the world is the driver behind the decolonial jeremiad of this book. It is simply incredible that, as the English were being forced out of India, they were setting up a Zionist settler-colonial state in Palestine as part of the world's attempt to make amends to the Jews for the Holocaust. Why they didn't simply hand over Austria and Bavaria to the Jews, and shoo the Germans out, I have never understood. Those were the cradles of Nazism. The Palestinians did nothing to aid the Holocaust that I've ever heard of...why punish them?

Ahem. Back to the book.

Given Islamic polities were generally more accepting of Jewish populations in their midst, there is no reason to imagine the cohabitation of Jewish and Palestinian Muslim would not have worked fine apart from the rise of the apartheid state post-1948. I think Author Tareq is on to something when he says the return of Palestine to its original people is the opening salvo of a second wave of decolonization, contra the United States' hegemonic control of the world's economies and militaries. The recent war on Iran, and its startling evidence of the loss of that hegemony, makes this the perfect time for readers on all sides of the political argument to read about how the idea of fairness and justice can re-enter the convesation.

I guarantee you, the US reader, will not like everything in this book. It is entirely sure that you won't agree with all his poposals...I didn't either. But all of us in the world need to know what all sides of the questions facing us in the world think, feel, want...and how they came to those ideas...as we decide how to steer the world with our votes, our money, our time and attention.

Starting here is painless. Author Tareq writes, and thinks, at a high level.

WHY NOT MODERATION?: Letters to Young Radicals, using Rilke's model to equally good effect

WHY NOT MODERATION?: Letters to Young Radicals
AURELIAN CRAIUTU
Cambridge University Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$24.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Moderation is often presented as a simple virtue for lukewarm and indecisive minds, searching for a fuzzy center between the extremes. Not surprisingly, many politicians do not want to be labelled 'moderates' for fear of losing elections.

Why Not Moderation? challenges this conventional image and shows that moderation is a complex virtue with a rich tradition and unexplored radical sides. Through a series of imaginary letters between a passionate moderate and two young radicals, the book outlines the distinctive political vision undergirding moderation and makes a case for why we need this virtue today in America. Drawing on clearly written and compelling sources, Craiutu offers an opportunity to rethink moderation and participate in the important public debate on what kind of society we want to live in. His book reminds us that we cannot afford to bargain away the liberal civilization and open society we have inherited from our forefathers.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: In our time of polarization and extremism, being "moderate" is seen as synonymous with being indecisive, wishy-washy, uncommitted or non-committal; likely to be an untrustyworthy ally against the Hated "Them." I'm guilty of seeing the moderate in this light myownself, so I get it. I chose to read this political version of Letters to a Young Poet for that reason.

It begins by outlining moderation as a state or condition of its own, not merely something that is not radical. Like its cousin "liberalism" that shares it desuetude, moderation is a central virtue of inclusivity. Author Aurelian makes the point in his tendentious letters to the imaginary young radicals that the society within which they exercise freedom of conscience safely was founded on principle of moderating passions through discussion.

Civil discourse is both senses of civil before it can be effective. In advocating for the benefits of moderation, Author Aurelian offers competing conflation/separation paradigms when each suits his purpose; he seems to conflate throughut the existence of moderation with the ability to compromise and creates straw men to suit the needs of the moment in his argument. I say this not because I disagree, but because I know some academic or another is going to point out the "structural deficiency" of the technique. That might well be relevant when a book is written for a panel of dissertation judges. This is much more a book meant to reach the recent graduate from either secondary (better) or college (good) education. I doubt it will do much to persuade radicalized people. It is a psychic vaccine against the seductive allure of being Right that is so extremely addictive.

I'd encourage my readers to think about gifting this book to grands/niblings/young people between sixteen and twenty-four or so. We need, as a society as well as in our office as Old Authority Figures, to damp down the terrible destructive misuse of young people's passionate feelings. Providing them with an alternative that is not the squishy bland tedious thing they're taught it is, we stand a chance of keeping the best of our present society.

When the alternative is clashing authoritarianisms, the urgency becomes clear to y'all...or so I hope, since it only just happened to me.

IS IT TOO LATE TO MAKE A RUN FOR IT?, Dench at her storytelling best

IS IT TOO LATE TO MAKE A RUN FOR IT?
JUDI DENCH with Brendan O'Hea
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$15.99 ebook, preorder now for delivery 3 November 2026

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Judi Dench and Brendan O’Hea chat about her life on the stage, on the screen, and, above all, behind the scenes…

In Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It? Judi Dench and Brendan O’Hea take us on a heartfelt and hilarious tour of her extraordinary life and career. From growing up in York and being miffed at not getting the part of Mary in the school Nativity play, to playing before sold-out houses on Broadway and in London’s West End, she’s done it all. She walked the red carpets of Hollywood, turned James Bond’s M into the most astute, unflinching Head of MI6 anyone could ever have imagined, and won an Oscar, a Tony, Golden Globes, Oliviers, and BAFTAs along the way.

Yet despite the accolades, she has been accompanied by doubt. From the movie producer who said she had “everything wrong” with her face, to the theatre director who advised her against doing sitcom. Is it any wonder she leaves a bag by the rehearsal room door in case she has to make a run for it?

But stepping out of her comfort zone has been Judi’s guiding principle and in Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?, she reveals all to Brendan - her friend and writing partner. She tells stories of pranks (both onstage and off), dissects her greatest screen roles, shares tales of her joyful marriage to actor Michael Williams, and talks about her passion for nature and animals.

As told to Brendan O’Hea, this is Judi Dench’s story—funny, honest, intimate, enlightening, surprising, moving, and deeply inspiring. Over ninety years in the making, Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It? is the story of the world’s most beloved actor.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: The key word in the publisher's synopsis above is "chat"...it is a delight to be with Judi and Brendan as they sit at a comfy table, pretty flowers in the middle, an endlessly full teapot and cakestand between them, and reminisce, gossip, rehash, generally chat about Dame Judi's life and times. What times! Enough Oliviers to bowl into...BAFTAs galore...a Tony, an Oscar, some Golden Globes. Considering her career began seventy years ago, one would think she is living out her nineties in the comfort and quiet she's earned.

Nope. The lady says of that idea: "Don't retire, do not go gentle, and don't even think about going quietly."

Absolutely.

I'm extra impressed by this memoir's title because Dame Judi still suffers from performance anxiety, which leads to her keeping her bag by the rehearsal room door in case she is compelled to run! She puts it succinctly: "Every time I'm offered a new job it's like starting from scratch." That's a daunting thought for someone a lot younger, and with better eyesight, than Dame Judi has (macular degeneration takes more and more acuity as time passes). Nevertheless, she persists. It is so very heartening to me to hear this from a still-working ninety-one year old. While it is no longer safe for her to be on stages live or for films, she has transitioned into voice acting, with 2026's The Magic Faraway Tree's fridge being her latest role.

In going round the houses the structure of this memoir is more inviting, more personal than a chronological autobiography could ever be. It gives her space to discuss the late Michael Williams, husband for thirty years, partner to this day through fathering Finty (their daughter) and thus grandfathering Sam, her adored...adorable!...grandson. It's the best way for her to remember her departed friends like Maggie Smith, fellow actor and fellow Dame; her associations with renowned director Sam Mendes, musical legend Stephen Sondheim; her discomfort at doing a nude scene with Jeremy Irons in Langrishe, Go Down (though it doesn't keep her from discussing him!); all in an organic, messy, fun way.

Her sense of humor, bawdy and earthy and honest, has her reveling in how she's been able to have fun in her work by playing pranks on fellow cast and others. It's obvious she succeeds at life and at memoir for the same reasons: do it, go all-in, do the work and the fun with equal commitment. Her late-life partnership with a conservationist, David Mills, is less discussed, though as it is a current relationship with a living person this made sense to me; it isn't ignored or minimized, it's discreet. A classy way to behave as one would expect from Dame Judi.

Fellow actor Brendan O’Hea, in his role as catalyst of and amanuensis for her reminiscences, served the same function in 2023's Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent with the same aplomb and finesse. As a fellow actor, thus one familiar with the stage and the world of the theater, so it was predictable that their chats would go into details of theater life that might be of lesser interest for casual fans. His friendship with Dame Judi makes perfect sense given his lengthy involvement with Shakespeare's Globe, the theater and the acting company. They're very easy with each other because they love so much of the same cultural furniture...easy to find a nice place to sit and talk.

We're very lucky indeed they've invited us to join them again.

ARCHITECTS OF AUTHORITARIANISM: The Claremont Institute and the Making of the MAGA New Right

ARCHIECTS OF AUTHORITARIANISM: The Claremont Institute and the Making of the MAGA New Right
F. DARRELL MUNSELL
University Press of Kansas (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: The eye-opening story of how a conservative think tank of political philosophers dedicated to the founding principles of the United States became the base of operations for Trump’s agenda of destroying civil rights and undoing American democracy.

From the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and the Federalist Society’s decades-long campaign to shape the judiciary, private think tanks have long been the shadowy intellectual engine driving conservative politics. But the Claremont Institute remains the most consequential organization in shaping the MAGA agenda. Founded in southern California in 1979, Claremont’s original mission was “to restore the principles of the American Founding to its rightful, preeminent authority” in American society. Now, historian Darrell Munsell uncovers how the Claremont Institute went from being a home for erudite political philosophers to serving as the base camp for the January 6 insurrection, Project 2025, and President Trump’s authoritarian agenda.

The institute’s political activism began with its endorsement of Donald Trump for president in 2016, followed quickly by its entry into the cultural battles against Black Lives Matter, multiculturalism, critical race theory, and the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in public universities, government agencies, and commercial enterprises. By the end of Trump’s first term, Claremont believed that “wokeism” was an existential threat to the Founders’ Constitution and was fighting to win the culture war at any cost—including attempting to reverse the results of the 2020 election.

In the wake of Trump’s 2020 defeat, Claremont lurched further rightward toward populism, Christian nationalism, and illiberalism. Led by John Eastman, Charles Kesler, Thomas D. Klingenstein, and a new generation of young, conservative activists—some from the furthest fringes of the far-right—the Claremont Institute is shaping the movement of National Conservatism with its devotion to replacing constitutional democracy with an authoritarian system of government. Claremont joined forces with the Heritage Foundation and other groups to draft Project 2025, the now-infamous blueprint for the second Trump administration.

Munsell’s revelatory history of the Claremont Institute pulls back the curtain on one of the most influential organizations in American politics and a driving force of the MAGA ascendency. A must read for anyone seeking to understand the hidden forces behind Trump’s agenda.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Founded in 1979, the Claremont Graduate University professor Harry Jaffa with four students from his tenure at Claremont Men's College. Shortly after the school became coeducational, he led the establishment of the think tank, naming it "Claremont" despite it having no official ties to the conservative school consortium he left; the name does not reflect the Institute's present headquarters location in Uplands, California. In fact neither the school he left not the city the Institute is located in make any mention in their Wikipedia pages of Jaffa himself or the Claremont Institute. Telling, no?

The Institute was founded to provide the burgeoning conservative movement of Reagan/Falwell/Dobson times with intellectual underpinnings rooted in the political philosophy of Leo Strauss. I will leave you to slug your way through verbiage like "paleoconservative versus neoconservative" and a most rigororous discussion about how the 1980s and 1990s were watershed moments for conswervative political philosophy. The radical right was born in places like the Claremont Institute, perhaps even principally there; reading about them made every ounce of my intolerance for this brummagem "philosophy" peddled by this Institute awaken and roar in blood-pressure spiking rage.

I am not neutral on this subject, this entire topic of human endeavor, but virulently opposed to it, so I took over five weeks to read the book. I feared for my brain's health more than once. As Author Munsell details how the Institute's truly reprehensible prioritization of cultural issues particularly their obsession with dismantling the teaching of Black history, as well as other elements of educational policy it saw as "left-wing indoctrination in our schools", he pays careful attention to explaining the Institute's complete domination over mainstream Republican Party economic policy.

It is genuinely sick-making for me to read that.

I did not vet all 600+ endnotes, because why? This is Kansas' most respected intellectual institution publishing a book criticizing fellow conservatives. I trust their ducks are in a row. I did very much appreciate Author Munsell's calm and even tone as he catalogs things done, things taught and "supported, that would inspire me to revive the jeremiad.

The Institute was a big contributor to Project 2025, which apparently y'all didn't read carefully enough...they laid out the agenda that Trump's second administrationused to set policies. which, Author Munsell, an historian by trade, says these policies have taken an increasingly authoritarian turn, which is really really worrying coming from a guy who achieved emeritus status at West Texas A&M.

Author Munsell, then, is to be reliably considered a more conservative person than I am, so when he contends (with supporting examples and endnotes) that both Trump and the Claremont Institute have embraced the notion that "...extreme, even anti-democratic measures {are} needed to achieve their policy goals," I read between the lines and start to feel very afraid. It's clear Author Munsell's understanding of the historical context of modern conservatism that informs his worries for our country's future as a democracy. He's written a nuanced examination of an important player on the paleoconservative side. It is also an accessible text that's supported by the previously mentioned mountain of endnotes. Architects of Authoritarianism: The Claremont Institute and the Making of the MAGA New Right is both an exhaustive, definitive history of the Claremont Institute, and damning indictment of the modern right (perhaps unintentionally) from within.

DECOLONIZING WEALTH, Second Edition: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance, & WEALTH SUPREMACY: How the Extractive Economy and the Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today’s Crises

WEALTH SUPREMACY: How the Extractive Economy and the Biased Rules of Capitalism Drive Today’s Crises
MARJORIE KELLY (foreword by Edgar Villanueva)
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A powerful analysis of how the bias towards wealth that is woven into the very fabric of American capitalism is damaging people, the economy, and the planet, and what the foundations of a new economy could be.This bold manifesto exposes seven myths underlying wealth supremacy, the bias that institutionalizes infinite extraction of wealth by and for the wealthy, and is the hidden force behind economic injustice, the climate crisis, and so many other problems of our day:

The Myth of Maximizing: No amount of wealth is ever enough.

The Myth of Fiduciary Duty: Corporate managers’ most sacred duty is to expand capital.

The Myth of Corporate Governance: Corporate membership must be reserved for capital alone.

The Myth of the Income Statement: Income to capital must always be increased, while income to labor must always be decreased.

The Myth of Materiality: Profit—material gain—alone is real, while social and environmental damages are not.

The Myth of Takings: The first duty of government must be the protection of private property.

The Myth of the Free Market: There should be no limits on the field of action of corporations and capital.

Kelly argues instead for the democratization of ownership: public ownership of vital services, worker-owned businesses, and more. And she sketches the outlines of a non-extractive capitalism that would be subordinate to the public interest. This is an ambitious reimagining of the very foundations of our economy and society.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: My essential problem with the thinking about climate change in the world today...and a lot of thinking is taking place, including bolstering "it's inevitable, we're doomed, nothing can fix this"...is that it's successful at only one thing: obscuring the causal role untrammelled, unregulated capitalism has played in causing it in the first place.

Author Kelly rips that band-aid off, and then dismantles capitalism's supporting mythology. It's thorough. it's detailed, and it's endnoted. There are also resources given, so there is no lack of detail to feed your curiosity and bolster your ability to argue the topic with a friend of a differing opinion.

I suspect the prose will be a sticking point for many of y'all. The scholarly will want the tedious, excruciatingly boring details spelled out in Scholarspeak, dismissing this as written for a magazine; the magazine-reading folk will seriously exoerience MEGO on every page.

What I'll offer is this: If a reader in the MEGO population will read one chapter at a time, on one topic of pernicious misdirection or manipulation of your attention away from alternative modes of action, then sit to really *think* about it for a day, looking up stuff you need to, then move forward (or quit) you'll get more out of it. Worst-case reading ie picking up a sample and throwing up your hands because it's talking about stuff you've been told you don't understand, will short-change you. Author Kelly does a really good job of explaining the complicated ideas in an urgent way...communicating urgency, not sounding breathlessly upset, to be clear...and it's literally existential to our society to find new ways and new thoughts to guide us before the climate really gets weird.

We can't stop what's already in progress. We can and should and must act now to save millions, billions, of lives even at the expense of lifestyles.

Please, whenever you think "too hard" and walk away, imagine firing a gun into a crowd: You'll hit someone, no knowing who, and deliberately, negligently change or end their life.

The stakes are that high.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

DECOLONIZING WEALTH, Second Edition: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance
EDGAR VILLANUEVA (foreword by Bishop William J. Barber II)
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$16.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Decolonizing Wealth is a provocative analysis of the dysfunctional colonial dynamics at play in philanthropy and finance. Award-winning philanthropy executive Edgar Villanueva draws from the traditions from the Native way to prescribe the medicine for restoring balance and healing our divides.

Though it seems counterintuitive, the philanthropic industry has evolved to mirror colonial structures and reproduces hierarchy, ultimately doing more harm than good. After 14 years in philanthropy, Edgar Villanueva has seen past the field's glamorous, altruistic façade, and into its shadows: the old boy networks, the savior complexes, and the internalized oppression among the "house slaves," and those select few people of color who gain access. All these funders reflect and perpetuate the same underlying dynamics that divide Us from Them and the haves from have-nots. In equal measure, he denounces the reproduction of systems of oppression while also advocating for an orientation towards justice to open the floodgates for a rising tide that lifts all boats. In the third and final section, Villanueva offers radical provocations to funders and outlines his Seven Steps for Healing.

With great compassion—because the Native way is to bring the oppressor into the circle of healing—Villanueva is able to both diagnose the fatal flaws in philanthropy and provide thoughtful solutions to these systemic imbalances. Decolonizing Wealth is a timely and critical book that preaches for mutually assured liberation in which we are all inter-connected.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: The US midterm elections are 3 November 2026, four days from now. No matter how they turn out...please, please turn out to vote!...there are issues now on blatant display that need to be addressed. Awareness of these issues, the extreme polarization of wealth centrally, is higher than it's been in over a generation.

You won't buy and read this book before the election. It's a topic that, now foregrounded in the awareness of many, needs thinking about as we head into the 2028 election without an incumbent. The old saying, "think before you speak; read before you think" has absolutely always been true. It is urgent now. What kind of world are you hoping to live in, from 2028 to your personal end? You should always vote with that in mind. The next few years are your chance to get ideas that resonate with you, then look for candidates running for office that best align with that world coming into being.

Edgar Villanueva, a charitable foundation consultant on Indigenous affairs and enrolled in the Lumbee tribe, offers a careful consideration of the manifold and manifest failings of a philanthropic solution to economic justice. As a Lumbee man he has seen philanthropies and social programs fail in their efforts to stem the submergence of Indigenous Americans into systemic poverty. Author Villanueva contends, with highly persuasive arguments, that this is all part of a system designed to support colonial, extractive economic activity. It is inherently racist, as it is controlled exclusively by white men, whether by birth or by training.

"If we are to escape the insidious hold racism has on our society, we must be intentional about truth and reconciliation. In Decolonizing Wealth, Edgar {Villanueva} lays a foundation that not only explains the history of wealth and racism but also provides a pathway to healing that we all need," reads Ibram X. Kendi's (National Book Award–winning author of Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist blurb for this read. It is a better distillation of Author Villanueva's purpose and intent than anything I could come up with. I know that I needed to see the techniques of wealth and resource extraction put into clear structures so I could perceive them as the problems for economic and social justice I want to live with for my remaining days.

It won't change my vote in 2026 because it changed me in 2022 when I read the book. I did not publish a review before the 2024 election because the fix was already in. Now is the time to buy or check out from the library this kind of reading. We need all hands on deck. We need informed, appalled, engaged citizens to *act* on their dissatisfaction, their offended sense of fairness and morality.

#ReadingIsResistance because and when it leads to actions. Like voting.

AN INCONVENIENT WOMAN: The Extraordinary Life of Lillian Smith, the Southerner Who Defied Jim Crow America

AN INCONVENIENT WOMAN: The Extraordinary Life of Lillian Smith, the Southerner Who Defied Jim Crow America
KERI LEIGH MERRITT
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$15.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A revelatory and immersive biography of a white Southern woman who was a key figure in the early civil rights movement, devoting her life to ending segregation in America only to be forgotten by history.

Born in Florida to a religious family, Lillian Smith (1897-1966) was a white Southern woman living in the Jim Crow South who defied all stereotypes: She lived with her lover, Paula, first running a summer camp in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, and then a magazine, devoted to creating a new vision of the South, one that passionately championed equality and integration. Smith published Black and white writers, a rare feat in those days, and herself wrote articles instructing white Southerners on why they shouldn’t support segregation—Smith firmly believed racism hurt white Americans, too. In 1944 she published a bestselling novel, Strange Fruit, which became a national sensation and was banned in Boston and Detroit. The FBI began a file on her, she received death threats, and her house caught fire three times, twice intentionally, resulting in the loss of all her works-in-progress and her correspondence.

Undaunted, she continued her ardent fight against segregation, maintaining correspondence with some of the great leaders of her day, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr, W.E.B Dubois, Paul Robeson, and Pauli Murray. She continued to fight for both civil and human rights throughout the 1960s, helping nurture many of the activists in SNCC and CORE, only to succumb to cancer in 1966.

Drawing on previously unpublished archival research, and with a modern appreciation of Smith’s complex identity, An Inconvenient Woman is the definitive account of a woman who defied all expectations and dedicated her life to racial equality.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: We need another Lillian Smith after the upcoming midterms, regardless of the outcome. We need...have always needed...many Lillian Smiths, people willing to buck their systemic privilege to join the struggle for equity and equality.

She came by it honestly. Raised in a Methodist household that practiced (in theory) "love, acceptance, and understanding," Smith spent time doing missionary work in China where the actions of the white people often resembled their behaviors in her Georgia homeland. Awareness, once begun as a habit of mind, can not turn off or cease until death. Even a serious personal campaign to ignore awareness of injustice..."go along to get along"...is not turning awareness off, merely ignoring it. Lillian Smith remained fully aware of what she had seen, neither ignoring or avoiding her her perception guiding her actions in daily life. She was born into privilege, into a family whose wealth...in spite of their avowed christianity...was based on the exactions of slavery, and she was born with a voice.

Beginning at roughly the same moment as her forties, Lillian Smith began to pour out eloquent, cogent words against segregation and its legal and illegal rules, laws, customs. She and her lifelong partner, Paula Snelling, published a literary magazine called various things over its decade of issues. The women accepted submissions from Black writers, and submissions that quietly dealt with same-sex attraction. It became Lillian's conviction that she needed to write honestly about a miscegenous relationship. Thus was born her three-million-copy seller, Strange Fruit. (She insisted the title was unrelated to Billie Holiday's hit song {my favorite version from 1959 linked} but...)

Lillian Smith kept her romantic partnership with Paula Snelling masked until her death. It only made sense for them to do so in the Jim Crow South, riddled with hatred and violence as it was. They would've been in grave danger of death by mob. It was a worse time than any we've seen in the US until the invention of ICEstapo. It's been sixty years since Lillian Smith died of cancer. I like to think that her lesbian reincarnation was born on her centenary in 1997, and is preaparing to burst into outraged fury like Lillian Smith did, to goad decent but lazy or fearful people into action.

We need her. I think her biographer here has made a very good story out of Lillian Smith's life, filled with citations and with them, evidence of how important and inspiring Lillian Smith was to people across the spectrum of US society.

OBSOLETE: The AI Industry’s Trillion Dollar Race to Replace Us―and How to Stop It, BOO!!

OBSOLETE: The AI Industry’s Trillion Dollar Race to Replace Us―and How to Stop It
GARRISON LOVELY
O/R Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: The biggest companies in history are racing to build a machine that replaces human labor—all of it. And, as this provocative new book insists, the only thing that can stop them is us.

Many people today don’t get further than regarding AI as a boondoggle—a new shiny shareholding for techno-capitalists to sink their cash into. Obsolete sees something more sinister, not to say scream-out-loud alarming: A tiny group of people, backed by the richest companies in the world, is attempting to render humanity obsolete.

Their project is unimaginably vast in scope. What we previously thought of as big—the Gilded Age monopolies, the Manhattan Project, the Apollo program—doesn’t even come close to capturing its size. Almost none of us want this vast transformation to succeed. Yet it is proceeding virtually unchallenged. Why? Because we don’t know it’s happening, we don’t believe it will work, or we don’t think we can stop it.

Obsolete investigates each of these reasons for inaction and brings together key information from top researchers, advocates, and industry insiders to show why we really can’t afford to sit this one out.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Pause your reflexive eyerolling at the topic of AI's existential hsrms for a moment. Before acting on your "I am SO.SICK. of this scare-tactic crap!" and scrolling away, look at the author's bio as provided by the publisher:

Garrison Lovely is an AI expert and freelance journalist based in Brooklyn. In 2025, he was identified by the Pulitzer Center {on Crisis Reporting} as an AI journalist worth following. Lovely is known for his cover stories in The Nation ("Confessions of a McKinsey Whistleblower") and Jacobin ("Can Humanity Survive AI?"), as well as writing in The New York Times, BBC, Nature, MIT Technology Review, Bloomberg, Foreign Policy, TIME, The Guardian, The Verge, and elsewhere. He was previously a Reporter in Residence at the Omidyar Network.

This is a very serious person's resume. Author Lovely is, for my money, more credible on the subject at hand because of his "Road to Damascus" moment while working for McKinsey. His evident chops in journalistic thinking as applied to the social issues raised by new, fast-developing technologies mean that he puts topics into understandable combinations. He treats the reader as you would an intelligent non-expert, going to the trouble of explaining his parallelisms. It gives the anxious reader a chance to see unsensationally why the relationships of technology to humanity are developing the way they are.

When heading into a frontier area of science, technology, and culture, some degree of fuzziness is inevitable. Author Lovely distinguishes among who is being fuzzy of necessity (techologists,researchers on creating AI technology), who is using fuzziness to grift (banksters, CEOs), and who's using fuzziness to distract everyone else from a social-restructuring agenda (tech bros, Aynholes, fascists, et alii). It's a big part of this book just to explain who's got this technology in its sights to misuse it for appalling and unprecedented control over us, the ordinary people.

I was sobered, alarmed, and angered by the sheer scope of the latter group's ambitions for controlling us. It truly is unprecedented what AI by its mere existence as an attainable technology has elicited from the base of these people's very base personalities, and let's not shy away fro the calling it the darkness of their souls. It pays to remember, when contemplating this subject, that "They" are not all the way to true AI...yet. There are institutions and laws we can enact that will slow down application of AI in the real world, and that must be part of any concerned person's agenda when voting on Tuesday, 3 November 2026 in the US.

But the fight to save our literal freedom as human beings can't be thought of as complete until we come up with ways, enforceable, verifiable, visible ways to use this technology...we can't turn it off, as proved by the hugging-face incident, which Open AI itself (see article at link) thinks is a problem and admits to the validity of people's concerns, demonstrated. One of the most worrying yet most heartening sections of the book is "Too Big to Guardrail". It outlines the complexity of oversight on the frontiers of society and technology. Author Lovely proposes using US anti-trust laws to accomplish the purpose. I'll confess that I think y'all won't read the details, I had to force myself to because the amount of googling I had to do was breathtaking, so let me put it in a nutshell for you: I'm on his side, and following his note-links never took me to any weird, out-there places with fringe ideas. Everything Author Lovely proposes can be argued from serious establishment principles to be implemented in existing frameworks of law and precedent.

That means it could realistically be sold to the pooh-bahs of the world. No factor of this argument as he made it heartened me more. No hectoring, out-there (but correct IMO) newfangled thinking needed. The Economic Royalists will fight dirty, hard, and long to stop anything from getting in the way of their greed being primary to the world's societies running...but the way Author Lovely lays out to defeat them can work.

We need to gain power in US politics, yes; but we need to get people concerned about the actual survival of people, not only societal structures, to support this agenda. Author Lovely is sharp-tongued in his criticisms of both US political parties, with truth and justice on his side. I think, however, many readers on both sides of this divide will switch off because the tone he uses is strong. Advocating for change is never effective when done politely, far as I know. Please look past any hurt feelings to see what is presented, and decide if it is a solution you can support.

Then it's time to do the work of supporting it.