Great 2023 Nonfiction From The New School Community
Here are some of the books that caught our attention this year.
An Asian American A to Z, by Cathy Linh Che and Kyle Lucia Wu (Lecturer, School of Public Engagement), Haymarket Books.
A playfully rhyming, brightly illustrated children’s introduction to essential and memorable stories of struggle and achievement. “This is the book I wish I had when I was growing up,” blurbs Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen. “It’s the book I’m glad I have now, one that I can read to my own children.”
All the Gold Stars: Reimagining Ambition and the Ways We Strive, by Rainesford Stauffer (BA Liberal Arts, 2017), Hatchette Book Group.
In a follow-up to her widely praised An Ordinary Age, Stauffer now takes a hard look at the psychic and social price overworked Americans pay in the quest for success. A “lively read about a little-discussed problem,” writes noted labor journalist Stephen Greenhouse, “this book sounds an important alarm – it’s time to work less and enjoy life more.”
A Strange Celestial Road: My Time in the Sun Ra Arkestra, by Ahmed Abdullah (Faculty, School of Jazz and Contemporary Music) with Luis Reyes Rivera, Blank Forms.
For decades, Afrofuturist composer and avowed space traveler Sun Ra mentored, and confounded, members of his mold-shattering big band. “There are other worlds they have not told you of,” he said. Now a longtime Arkestra trumpeter’s richly illustrated memoir has, as the London Review of Books adds, “journeyed through those extraterrestrial worlds of sound, and returned to Earth to tell the tale.”
The Story of Pasta and How to Cook It!, by Steven Guarnaccia (Emeritus Professor of Illustration, Parsons School of Design) with recipes by Helen Thomas, Phaidon.
Aimed at readers age 7-11 (along with their adult kitchen supervisors), this book combines clever illustrations, fascinating facts, obscure origin stories, and kid-friendly recipes for 35 pasta varieties. “If you’ve got a little pasta lover in the house,” writes the Washington Post, “this cookbook might be just the thing.”
Wigging Out, by Jessica Glasscock (Assistant Professor, Parsons School of Design), Running Press.
Starting in ancient Egypt and ending on the Met Gala red carpet, Wigging Out features capsule fashion histories and images of real and synthetic wigs worn by everyone from Roman emperors to 21st century drag queens. Including interviews with modern wigmakers, stylists, and braiders, Wigging Out is a joyful romp through the annals of fake hair.
And don’t forget these previously highlighted titles:
Global Queens: An Urban Mosaic, by Joseph Heathcott (Chair of Urban and Environmental Studies), Fordham University Press.
For over a dozen years, Heathcott has roamed the streets of his adopted home, camera in hand. The resulting delightful and often astonishing photos collected here beautifully capture the pace and feel of the tight-knit urban villages, rugged industrial zones, and suburban-style communities making up New York’s most diverse borough.
A Brighter Choice: Building a Just School in an Unequal City, by Clara Hemphill (Founding Director of the InsideSchools project at the Center for New York City Affairs), Teachers College Press.
No one writes about New York City public schools more deftly than our friend and former colleague Clara. In A Brighter Choice, called a “fascinating, stirring book” by one reviewer, she skillfully describes how, against a backdrop of poverty, gentrification, and Covid-19, parents of different races and income levels have created an effective elementary school in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant community.
Unequal Cities: Overcoming Anti-Urban Bias to Reduce Inequality in the United States, by Richard McGahey (Senior Fellow at the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis and the Institute on Race, Power, and Political Economy), Columbia University Press.
Although cities are overwhelmingly the source of the nation’s prosperity, persistent inequality mars their economic vitality. And, McGahey adds, anti-urban and racially discriminatory Federal and State policies stymie efforts to solve that problem. “Unequal Cities,” writes fellow New School economist Darrick Hamilton, “will help policy makers and change advocates … devise solutions for a more inclusive future.”
The Never End: The Other Orwell, the Cold War, the CIA, MI6, and the Origin of Animal Farm, by John Reed (Director, MFA in Creative Writing Program), Palgrave MacMillan.
Was a celebrated parable of revolution and betrayal actually based on an uncredited Russian short story? Was the author something of a Cold War snitch? IS NOTHING SACRED? Well, if you were George Orwell, you’d probably say “no,” and might even applaud this stylish takedown and send-up by a consummate investigator and iconoclast.
Lauren Leiker is a research assistant and Bruce Cory is editorial advisor at the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School.
Next week: Our picks of fiction and poetry.