boxofdelights

Fourth category is Can Revolutions Change the World? Another option in an unbearable world is to force change upon it. These are all epic fantasies.

The Velocity of Revolution by Marshall Ryan Maresca, pub 2021, 364 pg.
Ziaparr: a city being rebuilt after years of mechanized and magical warfare, the capital of a ravaged nation on the verge of renewal and self-rule. But unrest foments as undercaste cycle gangs raid supply trucks, agitate the populace and vandalize the city. A revolution is brewing in the slums and shantytowns against the occupying government, led by a voice on the radio, connected through forbidden magic.

A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians by H.G. Parry, pub. 2020, 531 pg.
It is the Age of Enlightenment -- of the necromancer Robespierre calling for revolution in France to the weather mage Toussaint L'Ouverture leading the slaves of Haiti in their fight for freedom, to the bold new Prime Minister William Pitt weighing the legalization of magic amongst commoners in Britain and abolition throughout its colonies overseas.But amidst all of the upheaval of the early modern world, there is an unknown force inciting all of human civilization into violent conflict. And it will require the combined efforts of revolutionaries, magicians, and abolitionists to unmask this hidden enemy before the whole world falls to darkness and chaos.

The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri, pub. 2021, 533 pg.
Imprisoned by her dictator brother, Malini spends her days in isolation in the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once the source of the powerful, magical deathless waters — but is now little more than a decaying ruin.Priya is a maidservant, one among several who make the treacherous journey to the top of the Hirana every night to clean Malini’s chambers.But when Malini accidentally bears witness to Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled. One is a vengeful princess seeking to depose her brother from his throne. The other is a priestess seeking to find her family.

Ashes of the Sun by Django Wexler, pub. 2020, 592 pg.
Gyre hasn't seen his beloved sister since their parents sold her to the mysterious Twilight Order. Now, twelve years after her disappearance, Gyre's sole focus is revenge, and he's willing to risk anything and anyone to claim enough power to destroy the Order. Chasing rumors of a fabled city protecting a powerful artifact, Gyre comes face-to-face with his lost sister. But she isn't who she once was. Trained to be a warrior, Maya wields magic for the Twilight Order's cause. Standing on opposite sides of a looming civil war, the two siblings will learn that not even the ties of blood will keep them from splitting the world in two.


Maybe I'm just done with epic fantasies.

Fifth category is The Changes of Time: Time brings change to all people and all the world. There’s been a proliferation of books with parallel timelines (past, present and future) recently!

The Actual Star by Monica Byrne, pub. 2021, 624 pg.
This book takes readers on a journey over thousands of years and six continents —collapsing three separate timelines into one cave in the Belizean jungle.An epic saga of three reincarnated souls, this novel demonstrates the entanglements of tradition and progress, sister and stranger, love and hate. The book jumps forward and backward in time among a pair of twins who ruled a Maya kingdom, a young American on a trip of self-discovery, and two dangerous charismatics in a conflict that will determine the fate of the few humans left on Earth after massive climate change.

The Last Wild Horses by Maha Lunde, pub 2019 (orig, in Norwegian), 448 pg.
Mikhail lives in Russia in 1881. When a skeleton of a rare wild horse is brought to him, the zoologist plans an expedition to Mongolia to find the fabled Przewalski horse, a journey that tests not only his physicality, but his heart.In 1992, Karin, alongside her troubled son Mathias and several Przewalski horses, travels to Mongolia to re-introduce the magnificent horses to their native land. Europe’s future is uncertain in 2064, but Eva is willing to sacrifice nearly everything to hold onto her family’s farm. Then, a young woman named Louise unexpectedly arrives on the farm, with mysterious intentions that will either bring them all together, or devastate them one by one.

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu, pub. 2022, 304 pg.
Beginning in 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus.Once unleashed, the Arctic Plague will reshape life on earth for generations to come, quickly traversing the globe, forcing humanity to devise a myriad of moving and inventive ways to embrace possibility in the face of tragedy.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel, pub. 2022, 272 pg.
The award-winning, best-selling author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel returns with a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon three hundred years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space.

I'm going to vote no on the Nagamatsu, due to this review by lightreads.

Last group is member recommendations.

A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark, pub. 2021, 396 pg.
When someone murders a secret brotherhood dedicated to one of the most famous men in history, al-Jahiz, Agent Fatma is called onto the case. Al-Jahiz transformed the world 50 years ago when he opened up the veil between the magical and mundane realms, before vanishing into the unknown. This murderer claims to be al-Jahiz, returned to condemn the modern age for its social oppressions. His dangerous magical abilities instigate unrest in the streets of Cairo that threaten to spill over onto the global stage.

Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline, pub. 2019, 300 pg.
Broken-hearted Joan has been searching for her husband, Victor, for almost a year--ever since he went missing on the night they had their first serious argument. One terrible, hungover morning in a Walmart parking lot in a little town near Georgian Bay, she is drawn to a revival tent where the local Métis have been flocking to hear a charismatic preacher named Eugene Wolff. With only the help of Ajean, a foul-mouthed euchre shark with a knowledge of the old ways, and her odd, Johnny-Cash-loving, 12-year-old nephew Zeus, Joan has to find a way to remind the Reverend Wolff of who he really is. If he really is Victor. Her life, and the life of everyone she loves, depends upon it.

Djinn City by Saad Z. Hossain, pub. 2017, 413 pg.
Indelbed is a lonely kid living in a crumbling mansion in the super dense, super chaotic third world capital of Bangladesh. When he learns that his dead mother was a djinn and that his drunken loutish father is a sitting emissary to the djinns (e.g. a magician), his whole world is turned inside out. Suddenly, and for reasons that totally escape him, his father is found in a supernatural coma, and Indelbed is kidnapped by the djinn and delivered to a subterranean prison.

Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder, pub. 2021, 256 pg.
At home full-time with her two-year-old son, an artist finds she is struggling. She is lonely and exhausted. One more toddler bedtime, and she fears she might lose her mind. Instead, quite suddenly, she starts gaining things, surprising things that happen one night when her child will not sleep. Sharper canines. Strange new patches of hair. New appetites, new instincts. And from deep within herself, a new voice...

I want all of these four!

Time to vote!

Our leader chooses six books. Her choices this year are:

Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki, pub 2021, 372 pg.
Unity by Elly Bangs, pub. 2021,304 pg.
Artifact Space by Miles Cameron, pub 2021, 400 pg.
Swamp Thing Book 1 by Alan Moore, Stephen R. Bissette, John Totleben, pub 1983 (orig.), approx. 180 pg.
She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan, pub. 2021, 416 pg.
Siren Queen by Nghi Vo, pub. 2021, 288 pg.

Then she offers us six groups to choose from. The first category is climate change-themed novellas. Choose two:

The Impossible Resurrection of Grief by Octavia Cade, pub. 2021, 82 pg.
With the collapse of ecosystems and the extinction of species comes the Grief: an unstoppable melancholia that ends in suicide. When Ruby’s friend, mourning the loss of the Great Barrier Reef, succumbs to the Grief, the letters she leaves behind reveal the hidden world of the resurrected dead.

Depart! Depart! By Sim Kern, pub. 2020, 82 pg.
When an unprecedented hurricane devastates the city of Houston, Noah Mishner finds shelter in the Dallas Mavericks' basketball arena. Though he finds community among other queer refugees, Noah fears his trans and Jewish identities put him at risk with certain capital-T Texans. His fears take form when he starts seeing visions of his great-grandfather Abe, who fled Nazi Germany as a boy.

The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay, pub. 2020, 288pg.
This book won the Arthur C. Clarke Award and Aurealis Award. As disturbing news arrives of a pandemic sweeping the country, Jean realizes this is no ordinary flu: its chief symptom is that its victims begin to understand the language of animals — first mammals, then birds and insects, too. As the flu progresses, the unstoppable voices become overwhelming, and many people begin to lose their minds.

The Annual Migration of Clouds by Premee Mohamed, pub. 2021, 168 pg.
In post-climate disaster Alberta, a woman infected with a mysterious parasite must choose whether to pursue a rare opportunity far from home or stay and help rebuild her community.

Cradle and Grave by Anya Ow, pub. 2020, 115 pg.
In the distant dystopian irradiated future, Dar Lien is a professional scout for scavenger runs into the Scab, a ruined urban-zone badly infected by heavily mutagenic phenomena called the Change. When Yusuf and the mysterious Servertu employ her for an unorthodox run into the Scab, she finds herself embroiled in a conflict she didn’t expect.

After the Dragons by Cynthia Zhang, pub. 2021, 160 pg.
Jaded college student Xiang Kaifei scours Beijing streets for abandoned dragons, distracting himself from his diagnosis. Elijah Ahmed, a biracial American medical researcher, is drawn to Beijing by the memory of his grandmother and her death by shaolong. With the resources of Kai’s dragon rescue and Eli’s immunology research, can the pair find a cure for shaolong and safety for the dragons?

The Animals in That Country and The Annual Migration of Clouds were already on my to-read list, so I will probably vote for those, but the rest sound really good too. Have you read any of them?

Reading Writers Of Color

https://lonelycryptidmedia.com/tag/reading-writers-of-color/

The list is as follows:

January: Classical or foundational reading
February: A genre which is new to you
March: Social-justice oriented
April: By a global south or migrant author
May: Non-fiction
June: By a queer, trans, or nonbinary author
July: By a debut author
August: By an Indigenous, Aboriginal, or Native author
September: Speculative fiction
October: By a disabled author
November: A book which explores gender, sex, or sexuality
December: A book by one of your favorite authors


Academic Reading Challenge 2022

https://habitica.com/challenges/87a78a86-80d0-4fbb-94b8-58c4c8f701f8

This is a challenge for academics who want to read more literature for pleasure, who want to broaden the way they approach their own research and teaching, and who want to support their friends and colleagues by reading their books.

Read a book about images
Read a book on which a movie you love is based
Read a book about something or someone you hate
Read a book about something or someone you love
Read a book about or set in any country in the Southern hemisphere
Read a mystery novel where the detective is not a cop (extra points if also not a PI)
Read a book about unions or labor organizing
Read a classic of revolutionary political literature
Read a book about a forgotten scandal or 'crime of the century"
Read a practical book on political organizing (an organizing how-to book)
Read a book by an author from the Middle-East or North Africa
Read a book about a craft or trade (carpentry, plumbing, etc.)
Read a Book about a hobby or activity that you already do or would like to try
Read Book related to a subject that you research, but in a discipline you don't normally read
Read an academic book on genre fiction
Reread a book or writer you loved earlier in your life
Read a book recommended by a friend
Read a book by a friend, colleague, former teacher, or former student


[I am not an academic. I don't know what "discipline" means in the sentence "Read Book related to a subject that you research, but in a discipline you don't normally read."]

I enjoyed this account of John Colapinto's learning and thinking about the fascinating subject of the human voice. But science journalism is hard, and Colapinto is not a science journalist, so I did quibble with those areas where I had some previous knowledge.

Colapinto says that Chomsky is wrong that children learn to speak without being taught; he says that we do teach children to speak, by speaking to them in Motherese, and that "these prosodic exaggerations are adopted by parents in all cultures and languages and that every adult uses them when talking to babies (whether they are aware of it or not)." (p. 36) But the Tsimané, in Bolivia, do not use Motherese, and do not talk to small children much at all, and their children learn to speak by listening to fluent speakers talking to each other.

Especially when you're talking about sex, it's way too easy to oversimplify things you read and stitch them together to make a good story. Like, "With their evolved attraction to voices that are low (but not too low), women have dialed-up the average pitch of the male voice from that of our primate ancestors, even at the cost of a slightly weaker immune system in their offspring." (147) Earlier, Colapinto said that testosterone makes your immune system stronger. Here, he's talking about a study that says women prefer low male voices during the more-fertile part of their menstrual cycle, but not the rest of the time. Papers about female sexual preferences are way out on the hinky end of the reproducibility crisis to begin with, and once you mush that into "voices that are low (but not too low)", you're really not talking about science at all any more.



This week my library twin is reading The Chronology of Water, by Lidia Yuknavitch, and I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness, by Claire Vaye Watkins.

• What are you reading?

The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls, by Mona Eltahawy, for Sirens book group.

I wrote this book with enough rage to fuel a rocket. I knew I had to write it while I was still high on the glory of beating up a man who had sexually assaulted me. Who was this woman I had become, who looks men in the eye, seizing their gaze with my fury until their fear tells me they understand not to fuck with me? I wanted to figure her out. For years I had been shedding shame and gaining fury. For years I had been thumping away at patriarchy, like a piñata hanging tantalizingly just out of reach. It was stubborn, but my tenacity and ferocity became my ladder. this book is my instruction manual for smashing that piñata.

• What did you recently finish reading?

The Line Tender, by Kate Allen. This book, like The Thing About Jellyfish, understands how weird grief is, and how weird kids are. Lucy, the protagonist, does get some good advice about grief from the other characters, but her story doesn't get its weird bits trimmed off to make it a better illustration for the good advice. And none of the characters is there just to teach a lesson: we see Lucy working to make her drawings more lifelike, and we can see that Kate Allen has done that work for her characters.

The Line Tender reminded me of this quote, and now I want to reread The Once and Future King

The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

• What do you think you’ll read next?

The Outside, by Ada Hoffmann, for SF book group.
The Cold Millions, by Jess Walter, for Tawanda book group.

• What are you watching?

Mare of Easttown. I have a question that I don't think was answered in the show:( Not exactly a spoiler )

I love all my book groups, but my SF book group is the one that has both good book talk and a feeling of community.

It's time to pick our next year's book list. Our theme this year is: Learn, Build, Explore!

[We have six months picked by our fearless leader:]

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, pub. 1950, 241 pg. Ray Bradbury is a SFWA Grand Master. I thought this would be a good classic for this year because we’re trying out short stories and this book is a collection of connected short stories. Plus it’s about exploring new worlds!

New Suns, ed. By Nisi Shawl, pub. 2019, 384 pg. This book is the other collection of short stories we’ll read. It’s won the World Fantasy Award, British Fantasy Award and Locus Award for anthology. It’s a great way to be introduced to more diverse new authors, and some well known names like Rebecca Roanhorse, Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Steven Barnes also have stories in this anthology.

Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky, pub. 2020, 640 pg. This looks like a lot of fun and it’s about exploring multiverses. This book has been nominated for the British SF Association Award and the Philip K. Dick Award. We’ve read and enjoyed the author’s Children of Time.

The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow, pub. 2020, 528 pg. This author has been nominated for 16 different awards and won the Hugo for Short Story. I think it’s kind of hopepunk.

Deeplight by Frances Hardinge, pub . 2020, 432 pg. This author has been nominated for 15 different awards and has won the British Fantasy Award. Plus, dead gods dreaming under the ocean whose body parts can be stolen and used to make magic items. Nothing could possibly go wrong!

A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers, pub. 2021, 160 pg. and The Four Profound Weaves by R.B. Lemberg, pub. 2020, 192 pg. Here’s a pair of novellas for us! Tea monks, self-aware robots and magic carpets.

[Then we get to choose from her suggestions for the other six months:]

First choice: Exploring New Planets
Exploring strange new worlds is part of the DNA of science fiction.

Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang, pub 2020 (in the USA), 624 pg. This author has won the Hugo and Seiun awards for her short story “Folding Beijing”. This is her first novel translated into English. A century after the Martian war of independence, a group of kids are sent to Earth as delegates from Mars, but when they return home, they are caught between the two worlds, unable to reconcile the beauty and culture of Mars with their experiences on Earth. Nope, no analogies here!

The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal, pub. 2020, 544 pg. This is the third book in the Lady Astronaut series, but the narrator is different from the first two books and it works as a standalone.

Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald, pub. 2015, 416 pg. This book is gonzo, it’s family dynasties and backstabbing, in an anything-goes Old-West style rush to stake your claim, all on the deadly airless Moon.

Do You Dream of Terra-Two? By Temi Oh, pub. 2019, 544 pg. “When an Earth-like planet is discovered, a team of six teens, along with three veteran astronauts, embark on a twenty-year trip to set up a planet for human colonization—but find that space is more deadly than they ever could have imagined. “

Second choice: Traversing the Multiverse
The only thing better than exploring one new world is exploring multiple new worlds!

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson, pub. 2020, 336 pg.

The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher, pub. 2020, 352 pg.

The Unspoken Name by A.K. Larkwood, pub 2020, 464 pg.

Doors of Sleep by Tim Pratt, pub 2021, 272 pg.

Third choice: Dark Academia

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, pub. 2019, 480 pg.

Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko, pub 2018 (USA), 416 pg. This is a very difficult book to describe. It takes place in Russia. The main character is Sasha, a young girl who receives a strange invitation to attend a very strange school. “As she quickly discovers, the institute’s "special technologies" are unlike anything she has ever encountered. The books are impossible to read, the lessons obscure to the point of maddening, and the work refuses memorization. Using terror and coercion to keep the students in line, the school does not punish them for their transgressions and failures; instead, their families pay a terrible price. Yet despite her fear, Sasha undergoes changes that defy the dictates of matter and time; experiences which are nothing she has ever dreamed of . . .”

Lobizona by Romina Garber, pub. 2020, 416 pg.

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik, pub. 2020, 336 pg.

Fourth choice: Hopepunk
Hopepunk says that kindness and softness doesn’t equal weakness, and that in this world of brutal cynicism and nihilism, being kind is a political act. An act of rebellion.

The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow, pub. 2020, 416 pg.

Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee, pub. 2020, 464 pg.

A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker, pub. 2019, 384 pg.

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, pub. 2020, 576 pg.

Fifth choice: Cities and Communities
Cities are not only a place where we live but also a place where humanity evolves. For this category, pick one of the pairs I’ve listed. I tried to group them by format and theme. If we want to break up pairs and put them together differently, we can do that too!

Abbot by Saladin Ahmed, pub. 2018,128 pg and LaGuardia by Nnedi Okorafor,pub. 2019, 136 pg. In the uncertain social and political climate of 1972 Detroit, hard-nosed, chain-smoking tabloid reporter Elena Abbott investigates a series of grisly crimes that the police have ignored (Abbott).  Set in an alternative world where aliens have come to Earth and integrated with society, LaGuardia revolves around a pregnant Nigerian-American doctor, Future Nwafor Chukwuebuka, who has just returned to NYC under mysterious conditions. (LaGuardia). These are both graphic novels.

City Monster by Reza Farazmand, pub. 2020, 112 pg, and Tales from the Inner City by Shaun Tan, pub. 2018, 224 pg. City Monster is set in a world of supernatural creatures and follows a young monster who moves to the city. As he struggles to figure out his future, his new life is interrupted by questions about his mysterious roommate--a ghost who can't remember the past. Tales from the Inner City is a collection of short stories and illustrations. And they're all about people and creatures living in close proximity and specifically in cities - crocodiles on the 87th floor of a skyscraper or bears in a courtroom. These books are also graphic novels.

A Luminous Republic by Andres Barba, pub 2020 (USA), 208 pg. and In the Watchful City by s. Qiouyi Lu, pub. 2021, 208 pg. A new novel from a Spanish literary star about the arrival of feral children to a tropical city in Argentina, and the quest to stop them from pulling the place into chaos (Luminous Republic). The city of Ora uses a complex living network called the Gleaming to surveil its inhabitants and maintain harmony. Anima is one of the cloistered extrasensory humans tasked with watching over Ora's citizens experience through the Gleaming. Anima takes pride and comfort in keeping Ora safe from all harm. (In the Watchful City). These are two novellas.

Sixth choice: Group Favorites
These are some of the books we enjoyed the most last year.

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones, pub. 2020 336 pg. Four young Indian men transgress and kill animals that were not their rightful prey. In response, a long revenge cycle begins.

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune, pub. 2020, 400pg. When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist.

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse, pub. 2020, 496 pg. This is the first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas and woven into a tale of celestial prophecies, political intrigue, and forbidden magic.

All Systems Red and Artificial Condition by Martha Wells, pub. 2017 and 2018, 160 pg. apiece. The Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells, is an action-packed, cerebral science fiction series about a murderous, self-hacking robot searching for the meaning of life.


[If you've read any of these, would you recommend or disreccomend them?]

https://lonelycryptidmedia.com/2020/12/11/reading-writers-of-color-2021/

For the year 2021 read the work of Black, Indigenous, and people of color that fit the following prompts:

January: By a woman of color
February: By a scientist
March: A work of fiction
April: By a queer or trans author
May: About a radical social movement or historical event
June: On your “to be read” list
July: Collection of short stories, poetry, or essays
August: By an award winner
September: In translation
October: Memoir, biography, or creative nonfiction
November: By a local author
December: Published 2021
Which month looks most exciting for you? Which month are you most uncertain about?

I am most excited about getting to discuss Their Eyes Were Watching God with my Classics book group in April. Zora Neale Hurston was not queer or trans as far as I know, so I will read it in March for "A work of fiction."

I am most uncertain about November: By a local author. ETA: Stephen Graham Jones lives in Boulder. That's local enough.

Growing Good Food: A citizen's guide to climate victory gardening, by Acadia Tucker

Your own personal Climate Victory Garden can suck tons of carbon out of the air and store it in the soil and in the bodies of plants, animals, and all the other kingdoms. This is carbon storage, not carbon sequestration, because all those carbon atoms are still part of the carbon cycle; but the actions of each gardener can keep carbon in the carbohydrate step of the cycle for years or centuries, instead of sending them to the landfill, where they will undergo anaerobic decomposition and turn into methane.

Eating fresh tomatoes from your garden is also good. Tucker talks a bit about how to do both, producing tomatoes out of the soil while still driving carbon into the soil.

Half of the life of trees takes place underground, and almost all of it happens too slowly to catch our attention. Trees communicate with each other and with other species through chemical signals and soundwaves that we need instruments to detect.

Wohlleben draws on the scientific literature and his life's work as a forester to talk about what's going on with trees. Trying to take the tree's point of view of those facts does lead him to anthropomorphize, but that mostly shows up in adjectives: he'll call a tree's behavior "loutish" or describe salt spray as "painful".

The 36 short chapters are perfect for reading at bedtime, then turning out the lights and imagining what it is like to be a tree.

The University of Chicago Press offers a free e-book every month. This month it is The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence by Laurence Ralph.

https://t.e2ma.net/click/0pq3ij/sv1hvzb/0h4sheb

Chicago has a long history of police violence. The starkest evidence is seen in the hundreds of recent cases of torture of suspects in custody—overwhelmingly African-American men. Our latest free e-book, available until noon on June 6, is The Torture Letters: Reckoning with Police Violence by Laurence Ralph. The book is based on ten years of interviews and archival research and takes the form of open letters to victims, witnesses, participants, activists, mayors, and police. With compassion and careful skill, Ralph traces institutional racism through law enforcement, the political machine, and the courts in Chicago, amplifying the voices of torture victims who are still with us and lending a voice to those deceased.
“A deeply caring work.… An essential primer on the roots of police violence.”—Publishers Weekly
Get this important work free for five days.
The paperback is available at 20% off with promo code AD1862.