QUEEN MOTHER: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore
ASHLEY D. FARMER
Pantheon Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now
A LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2025
Rating: 5* of five
The Publisher Says: From an award-winning historian of radical Black politics comes the definitive biography of Queen Mother Audley Moore—foremother of the Black Nationalism movement and trailblazer in the fight for reparations
In the world of radical Black politics, the name Audley Moore commands unquestioned respect. Across the nine decades of her life, Queen Mother Moore distinguished herself as a leading progenitor of Black Nationalism, the founder of the modern reparations movement, and a mentor to some of America's most influential Black activists from her homes in North Philadelphia and Harlem.
And yet, she is far less remembered than many of her peers and protégés—Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and Muhammad Ahmad, to name just a few—and the ephemera of her life are either lost or plundered. In Queen Mother, celebrated writer and historian Ashley D. Farmer restores Moore's faded portrait, delivering the first ever definitive account of her life and enduring legacy.
Deeply researched and richly detailed, Queen Mother is more than just the biography of an American icon. It's a narrative history of 20th-century Black radicalism, told through the lens of the woman whose grit and determination sustained the movement.
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My Review: Listen to the author on the Smarty Pants podcast!
Black nationalism. Reparations for slavery's ongoing horrors. A long lifetime of refusing to sit down and shut up, refusing to be a good girl, declining to accept partial and insincere and less-than sops and stop-gaps. "Queen Mother" is a very good title for Audley Moore and a good character analysis of her.
It pains me I knew little about her until now, until someone pulled together threads her proteges had deliberately unpicked and appropriated. She was truly unforgivable to the PTB within and without the Civil Rights movement because she was that powerless victim, a woman; yet her every act and every word gave the lie to that characterization. No one anywhere ever comes across less like a victim than Audley Moore.
She got done wrong to all the damn time, but that did not make her a victim...an identity she rejected, along with mainstreaming, assimilation, and capitalism. It's no wonder she was ignored by historians of the movement until now. She is guaranteed to scare, offend, and even radicalize the very kind of white guy who will commit racist violence. Since those guys are already doing it, empowered by the kakistocracy presently in government in the US, along comes Author Farmer to be introduced to Queen Mother Audley Moore as a child; galvanized by her Presence, her affect on those around her, Author Farmer became her biographer in due course. Outrage at not finding any records cache or archive of her life, the biographer took her considerable powers of persuasion and of study to pull back together the deliberately unpicked threads of an incredible life.
If you care at all about why, how, and at what our country needs to look honestly at itself, use some of your holiday pilf to procure this excellent, easy-to-read, necessary to understand book. Rescuing a major force from calculated desuetude is the act of a true apostle of truth.
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ENSHITTIFICATION: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It
CORY DOCTOROW
MCD x FSG (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$15.99 ebook, available now
A LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2025
Rating: 5* of five
The Publisher Says: Explaining the process of the “enshittification” of digital platforms over time and what to do about it.
Cory Doctorow's Enshittification takes a witty yet incisive look at the tech landscape, where platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Google start off great—before they inevitably turn terrible. In this contemporary moment of digital decline, Doctorow explores how tech giants lure users in with convenience and then degrade their services over time, squeezing profit at the cost of user experience. With a mix of sharp humor and deep insight, he unveils the slow creep of "enshittification," turning the online world into a worse place, one algorithm at a time.
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My Review: Enshittification...it's not just for tech anymore. Popularized by Author Doctorow beginning in 2022, the word appeared online in the teens and identified exactly the capitalist endgame of charging you more and delivering less for it.
The model's simplicity is its strength. It is really down to real, enforced regulation to prevent this appalling greed from costing the users huge sums of money.
As the tech scum were willing to share their stolen good with the regulators, guess what didn't happen. Ever. The current spate of online regulation is hunky-dory by the tech scum because it makes them in an even more powerful position, requiring more and more and more data to be collected...that they can use to surveil you,to extract ever more profit from surveiling you. Ten years ago, I reviewed David Brin's THE TRANSPARENT SOCIETY, his prescient 1999 warning about today's reality: NO PRIVACY only profit.
We weren't listening then, aren't listening to Author Doctorow's blaring klaxon now, and look where it's got us. Right about now is the time to read this book and heed its warning.
Please.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
READ THIS WHEN THINGS FALL APART: Letters to Activists in Crisis
KELLY HAYES (Editor)
AK Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.00 all editions, available now
Rating: 5* of five
The Publisher Says: From the co-author of Let This Radicalize You, a collection of letters to inspire activists to continue the fight
Organizers are well seasoned in defeat. We study movement histories, strategize collectively, and gather strength in direct action, knowing that liberation does not arrive overnight, but that the fight is worth it. But what happens when political and personal crises overlap, and the despair becomes overwhelming? Where do we turn when the process of organizing no longer feels like a site of refuge, but isolating, or even tragic?
Read This When Things Fall Apart is a collection of letters written to organizers in crisis who are struggling with the conflicts, heartbreaks, and catastrophes that activists so often experience. From grief to exhaustion, fractured relationships, state violence and interpersonal violence, the struggle for justice can be tumultuous. Each letter invites the reader to the writer’s particular world in abortion defense, organizing within prison walls, recuperating from state repression after the 2020 uprisings, or as a new parent struggling to find their way in movement spaces, and offers an authentic account of moving through difficult times.
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My Review: Burnout to burning the candle at both ends, every human one of is hits the wall of what we can do eventually. Oftentimes that spells the end of that person's activism. It's hard to invent solutions to problems in yourself and your personal sphere that you've never faced before, all while trying to fix things The World℠ would prefer you left alone...and also shut up about so "They" don't have to hear it.
So what better self-gift than a collection of letters to you, teetering on the edge of or mired deep in the falling-apart of the world, that show you it's happened before and been overcome? Even if no idea in this book resonates with you...that would surprise me a lot...or you've already done it before, just the reminder that you are not the first to face this and it's been overcome before is hugely valuable. Support, understanding, fellow feeling, commiseration, are all available in these pages. It can do you a world of good just to know others are, were, have been where you are now.
We can not afford to let challenges met and surmounted by those who went on this journey of resistance to illegitimate authority before us halt our gift of energy and effort in bettering the world be snuffed out. We have a long way to go...we'll only get to the better, kinder, fairer world we want to see if we use every tool in the world's chest to make ourselves as capable and as forearmed as we can.
I recommend this read for its tonic properties because they worked on me.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
PERFECT VICTIMS AND THE POLITICS OF APPEAL
MOHAMMED EL-KURD
Haymarket Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now
Rating: 5* of five
The Publisher Says: Perfect Victims is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal―an ode to the steadfastness of a nation.
Palestine is a microcosm of the on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured—the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial.
Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? And what are the implications of such an infuriatingly impossible task? With fearless prose and lyrical precision, Mohammed El-Kurd refuses a life spent in cross-examination. Rather than asking the oppressed to perform a perfect victimhood, El-Kurd asks friends and foes alike to look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing both deference and condemnation.
How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple dignity for the Palestinian.
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My Review: Okay, I realize I'm unlikely to win this battle for your Yule gift card money. I'm gonna try because 2026 is not going to be an easy year for any of the warring parts of the world. In writing this book, Author El-Kurd did not use his polite appeaser voice. He does not pretend he is "reasonable" about the genocide being perpetrated on his people. He asks us to interrogate why this heinous act is not more in the foreground of our awareness. It is not the first time genocide has been perpetrated in this century. What allows that to continue?
How are good little capitalist consumers complicit in this media landscape that fails to condemn the crimes being committed? The mere mention of the crime of genocide is too divisive, is not acceptable discourse because...?
Those who dare to support Palestinians having full equal rights in their homeland are canceled, are required to prove they don't mean Israel should suffer consequences for committing this crime against humanity, and we accept it because...? Why is it The System℠ tells us what we may say about this ongoing crime against humanity and we obey?
It is time to interrogate our own (in)action regarding settler colonialism's record of injustices and crimes all over the world. Yes, that includes the US, Canada, Mexico, etc etc. This reckoning with the crimes committed by our ancestors, white people, will come no matter what. Get your mind ready by reading this book's very specific takedowns of the comfy little lies and ugly misdirections that have prevented a reckoning...but are failing at last, ever faster, ever more publicly to keep the cork in the bottle.
It's never a good idea to go into a discussion without any idea what you're discussing. Ignorance, in today's world, is a choice.
A very bad, stupid choice. Educate yourself before knowledge is thrust on you.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
ISRAEL ON THE BRINK: And the Eight Revolutions that Could Lead to Decolonization and Coexistence
ILAN PAPPÉ
Beacon Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now
Rating: 5* of five
The Publisher Says: A renowned Israeli-British historian argues Israel is fracturing, and considers the issues that must be centered for a peaceful future for Palestinians and Jews alike
In this timely book, historian Ilan Pappé argues that with the 2022 election of the most right-wing government in Israel’s history, the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and the subsequent Israeli war on Gaza, political fractures inherent in the Jewish state have expanded dangerously—and will potentially lead to Israel's collapse. With the goal of working towards a transition that is as peaceful as possible, Pappé sets out his thoughts about the risks and opportunities emerging from this historical moment.
Eight “mini-revolutions,” he argues, will be necessary for this more hopeful future to emerge, including:
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My Review: Ilan Pappé's PALESTINE IN A WORLD ON FIRE (q.v.) contained temperature-taking interviews with many of the world's eminent progressives on the subject of public perception of Palestine. Now there comes via Beacon Press the proposal for a roadmap out of this quagmire.
Considering more West Bank Jewish settlements were approved this week I don't foresee the proposals herein being enacted or taken seriously by Israeli officials.
Considering the state of the world's opinion of Bibi and his gang of thugs, it feels more like we should be preparing for a collapse of the state.
It is a good idea for honest, morally sound people to get their heads around what eminent and practical thinkers propose as the future course of this extremely troubled part of the world. Much disgusting vitriolic hysteria will be spewed as things change, so have the antidote in your head already so as not to add to the chaos that's coming.
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