Four really great books I didn't write

Jude is a book lover. Every few weeks, we walk a block down to the small library branch in our neighborhood, where he returns his cache and selects a half-dozen new ones to bring home. When we first started, I attempted to direct him to my favorite titles—children’s books by authors I love like Jacqueline Woodson. He was never interested. Instead, he gravitated toward two shelves of reference books about how machines work, what emergency room technicians do, and which emergency response vehicles respond to what types of accidents. Now, when we arrive, he selects all the titles on a particular topic, plants himself on the floor and studies them. Watching him is one of my greatest joys. It is a moment in which I realize that I have helped to create him, but he is his own person, with his own curiosities.

That’s a preamble to a letter about great books. This fall has a trove of releases that are worthy of your time and attention. Here are a few I have found valuable and compelling in equal measure. This list will also reveal exactly how wide my interests skew!

Okay, okay, I am starting with my own. If you haven’t yet, please consider pre-ordering The Family Outing. It publishes on October 4, which is right around the corner!

Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America by Dahlia Lithwick

Dahlia is the voice to which I turn whenever a current event shakes me to my core and I'm struggling with how to search for optimism in a changed and changing world. She is among the most important legal commentators of our time. In this book, she tells the “gripping and heroic story of the women lawyers who fought racism, sexism, and xenophobia of Donald Trump’s presidency - and won.” We share a community and a coach, the imitable Robin Rice. As Robin said earlier this week: "Buy it. Share it. Discuss it. Make it matter. Because it does."

On Repentance and Repair: Making amends in an unapologetic world by Danya Ruttenberg

Everyone does harm. Everyone has experienced being harmed, in large and small ways. The process of how we repair our relationships—within personal interactions, institutional settings, companies, and even our countries—is central to how we strengthen and preserve our communities. What’s the difference between an apology and a true effort to make amends? Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg draws on the work of a 12th-century philosopher, Maimonides, to bring to light a process of how we make right on the wrong we’ve done, and in the process, return to each other. Danya is a friend from college, and I just had her on the show to talk through how this work applies to our daily lives. It’s a strong episode!

Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America by Joan Donovan, Emily Dreyfuss & Brian Friedberg

How much do you really understand about how communication works in the digital word? This political thriller will school you. A media expert, a veteran tech journalist (Emily Dreyfuss!), and a cultural ethnographer explain exactly how a bunch of very savvy extremists are yanking our culture and politics to the right.

All This Could Be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews

I had no context for this book when I picked it up off a table at the American Library Association conference earlier this summer. I liked the cover. It was one of a dozen galleys I brought home, and as soon as I opened it, I couldn’t put it down. So I’m not shocked to see that it has been longlisted for the 2022 National Book Awards. This is a coming-of-age tale about a young college graduate who is also an immigrant and queer, trying to find her place in the world. It’s one of the best books about friendship I’ve read.

📘The Family Outing

I'll be speaking about the book, both virtually and in real life. I’m trying to keep my website up-to-date. If you’re in the New York area, you can purchase tickets for the October 3 event here. You can register for the October 6 event here. (And here’s a cool thing about that one: Richie Jackson, author of Gay Like Me, will join me for a conversation, and it’s his birthday!) And on October 8, I’ll be speaking at the Morristown Book Festival in nearby New Jersey.

The physical copies of the book have arrived, and the kids helped me tear into them last weekend. I’ll leave you with a photograph in which Jude is wondering why my photo is in the back of a book that he considers to be very much his own: