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Nonfiction Views: This week's notable new nonfiction [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-07-22
Good evening, everyone. Just the basics this evening. Here are my picks of notable nonfiction published this week.
The Almightier: How Money Became God, Greed Became Virtue, and Debt Became Sin, by Paul Vigna. The pursuit of wealth is considered an essential function of human nature, and greed is an unspoken civic virtue. Many of us revere billionaires and Wall Street rain-makers, then complain about “the system” being rigged, and wonder why the country doesn’t seem to work for the little guy anymore. Some blame the Deep State for income inequality and corruption, and others blame capitalism, but the truth is that these issues have much deeper roots: our devotion to money is a manmade invention that has transformed over thousands of years to replace religion as the foundation of our society, and it is tearing civilization apart. Through engaging anecdotes, original research, and fresh perspectives on the causes of the many challenges we face today, Vigna makes a compelling argument that money has no power apart from the power we give it.
Don't Talk About Politics: How to Change 21st-Century Minds, by Sarah Stein Lubrano. Democracy is dying because we are clinging to a dangerous and outdated myth: talking about politics can change people's minds. It doesn't. Drawing from ancient philosophy to modern neuroscience and social science, Dr Sarah Stein Lubrano reveals the surprising truth about how people think and behave politically. From friendship to community organizing and social infrastructure, she explores the actions that actually do change minds. In a world where politics keeps getting more irrational, dishonest, violent and chaotic, it's getting much harder to reach people with words alone. So people who really care about democracy must ask: how can we stop arguing and do the deep work to build stronger foundations for political life, and a better world for us all? “A timely and hopeful critique of today's political culture, Sarah Stein Lubrano challenges us to rethink politics – placing interpersonal activism and community-building above performative outrage.” —Alice Cappelle, author of Collapse Feminism: The Online Battle for Feminism's Future
The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne, by Chris Sweeney. In 1960, an Eastern Airlines flight had no sooner lifted from the runway at Boston Logan Airport when it struck a flock of birds and took a nosedive into the shallow waters of the Boston Harbor, killing sixty-two people. This was the golden age of commercial airflight—luxury in the skies—and safety was essential to the precarious future of air travel. So the FAA instructed the bird remains be sent to the Smithsonian Institution for examination, where they would land on the desk of the only person in the world equipped to make sense of it all.
Her name was Roxie Laybourne, a diminutive but singular woman with thick glasses, a heavy Carolina drawl, and a passion for birds. Roxie didn’t know it at the time, but that box full of dead birds marked the start of a remarkable scientific journey. She became the world’s first forensic ornithologist, investigating a range of crimes and calamites on behalf of the FBI, the US Air Force, and even NASA. “A timely story about the benefits of government-funded science, the invisibility of public safety's most important workers, and a fascinating—and peculiar—ecosystem: one woman, and lots and lots of birds.” —NPR
Mother of Methadone: A Doctor's Quest, a Forgotten History, and a Modern-Day Crisis, by Melody Glenn. Dr. Melody Glenn was a burned-out emergency physician who had grown to resent the large population of opioid dependent patients passing through her ER. While working at a methadone clinic, she realized how effective harm reduction treatments could be and set out to discover why they weren’t used more broadly. That’s when she found Dr. Marie Nyswander.
In the 1960’s, Nyswander defied the DEA and medical establishment to co-develop methadone maintenance as a treatment for heroin addiction. According to some addiction specialists, its discovery could be considered as monumental as the discovery of penicillin. Yet, it still carries a stigma today.
Deftly weaving together interviews, media coverage, and historical documents, Glenn recovers Nyswander’s important legacy and reveals how the forces of racism, fearmongering politicians, and misinformation colluded to set us back decades in our understandings of opioids. “A fascinating, hidden story of the woman behind the medication that, even now, is the best treatment we have for opioid addiction—and why, despite the fact that this drug cuts the death rate by 50 percent or more, it is still so difficult to get.” —Maia Szalavitz, author of Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction
You Have a New Memory, by Aiden Arata. A deeply human inventory of the digital sphere, a searing analysis of the present and a prescient assessment of the future. In her highly anticipated debut, Aiden Arata brings us raw reportage from the liminal space between online and offline worlds, illuminating how we got here and where to go next.
With high-res, cosmic vision and razor-sharp wit, this kaleidoscopic collection of essays artfully explores what it means to exist on the internet. Arata exposes influencer grifts from the perspective of a grifter, digs into the alluring aesthetic numbness of stay-at-home girlfriend content creators, and interrogates our online fetishization of doom to grapple with the real-world apocalypse. Arata is the wry, unexpected voice we need to navigate existing simultaneously as creators, consumers, and products in our increasingly braver and newer world. “ Aiden Arata’s You Have a New Memory mines the origins of digital personhood, riding the line between high and low, humor and hopelessness, the search for the self in the mirror of our screen, all without turning away from the radical rawness of the human soul. The result is wholly original and achingly honest, the truth of our current moment telegraphed by an artist uniquely positioned to foretell our future. I couldn’t put it down."— Allie Rowbottom, author of Aesthetica and Jell-O Girls
Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource, by Sam Bloch. Shade was once a staple of human civilization. In Mesopotamia and Northern Africa, cities were built densely so that courtyards and public passageways were in shadow in the heat of the day, with cool breezes flowing freely. The Greeks famously philosophized in shady agoras. Even today, in Spain’s sunny Seville, political careers are imperiled when leaders fail to put out the public shades that hang above sidewalks in time for summer heat.
So what happened in the U.S.? The arrival of air conditioning and the dominance of cars took away the impetus to enshrine shade into our rapidly growing cities. Though a few heroic planners, engineers, and architects developed shady designs for efficiency and comfort, the removal of shade trees in favor of wider roads and underinvestment in public spaces created a society where citizens retreat to their own cooled spaces, if they can—increasingly taxing the energy grid—or face dangerous heat outdoors. “Shade is my favorite kind of book: a history of something seemingly niche that secretly explains the entire world. Sam Bloch connects the decisions made by people hundreds and thousands of years ago to our present planetary crisis of heat and does so in a way that’s both informative and super entertaining. I never thought I’d enjoy learning so much about shade!”—P. E. Moskowitz, author of How to Kill a City
Stan and Gus: Art, Ardor, and the Friendship That Built the Gilded Age, by Henry Wiencek. Stanford White was a louche man-about-town and a canny cultural entrepreneur—the creator of landmark buildings that elevated American architecture to new heights. Augustus Saint-Gaudens was the son of an immigrant shoemaker, a moody introvert, and a committed procrastinator whose painstaking work brought emotional depth to American sculpture. They met when Stan was walking down the street and heard Gus whistling Mozart in his studio. They pursued their own careers in Italy and France, then came together again in New York, where they maintained an intimate friendship and partnership that defined the art of the Gilded Age. Over the course of decades, White would help sustain his friend's troubled spirits and vouch for Saint-Gaudens when he failed to complete projects. Meanwhile, Saint-Gaudens would challenge White to take his artistic gifts seriously—and so it went amid brilliant commissions and sordid debaucheries all the way to White’s sensational murder by an enraged husband in 1906.
In Stan and Gus , the acclaimed historian Henry Wiencek sets the two men’s relationship within the larger story of the American Renaissance, where millionaires’ commissions and delusions of grandeur collided with secret upper-class clubs, new aesthetic ideas, and two ambitious young men to yield work of lasting beauty.
The Girl Who Baptized Herself: How a Lost Scripture About a Saint Named Thecla Reveals the Power of Knowing Our Worth, by Meggan Watterson. A teenage girl named Thecla is sitting at her bedroom window listening to a man share stories nearby. Her mother and fiancé order her to stop. But Thecla, trapped in a world that expects her to marry and have children, refuses. This man, Paul, is talking about a world she wants to believe in: an inner world of freedom to define her own life. And he’s talking about a kind of love she hasn’t known before—a love that asks her to be true to who she is within.
For Meggan Watterson, a Harvard-trained feminist theologian, Thecla’s story in The Acts of Paul and Thecla has everything to do with power. Thecla’s refusal to be controlled, as well as the authority she reclaims by baptizing herself, reads like a lost gospel for finding our own source of power within—a power that allows us to know who we are and to make choices based on that knowing. This hidden scripture suggests that Christianity before the fourth century was about defying the patriarchy, not deifying it. But early church fathers excluded The Acts of Paul and Thecla, along with other sacred texts such as The Gospel of Mary, from the New Testament.
Nothing Compares to You: What Sinead O'Connor Means to Us, edited by Sonya Huber and Martha Bayne. More than thirty years ago, Sinéad O’Connor shocked the world by tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II in an act of protest against the violence perpetrated by the Catholic Church. This single act cemented O’Connor’s place as a fearless voice and activist that would later push even further as Sinead became an advocate for HIV/AIDS awareness, the LGBTQ+ community, and abortion rights. Here in Nothing Compares to You , a renowned and multi-generational group of women and non-binary authors come together to pay tribute to O’Connor’s impact on our world and in their own lives and development as humans and artists.
Nothing Compares to You is a loving and accessible reconsideration and entry point for understanding the Irish icon. Exploring themes such as gender identity, spirituality, artistic expression, and personal transformation, this collection shows that Sinead’s voice continues to ring on even after her death and brilliantly illustrates the power of creative expression to inspire far beyond any presumed lines of age, culture, or class.
Sharing in the Groove: The Untold Story of the '90s Jam Band Explosion and the Scene That Followed, by Mike Ayers. The wild, untold oral history of the unlikely rise of Phish, Dave Matthews Band, Widespread Panic, Blues Traveler, and numerous other bands that helped define the 1990s Jam band scene. Sharing in the Groove is a rich examination of an underdog genre that helped define the 1990s musical landscape—a scene that paved the way for modern-day cultural institutions such as the Bonnaroo Music Festival and kept the Grateful Dead ethos alive. It was also a world with its own values and its own unique interactions with fame, record labels, MTV, drugs, and success. Filled with anecdotes and stories directly from the musicians, promoters, managers, roadies, producers, label executives, and fans who lived this scene, Sharing in the Groove is a fun, fast-paced oral history that will appeal to music lovers everywhere. "God bless Mike Ayers for giving the vibrant, raucous, bizarre, wildly lovable, and absolutely ungovernable ‘90s jam band scene the love and devotion it deserves, from coast to coast, from the mushrooms to the hippie communes to the firearms to the shock hit singles to the spectacular flameouts to the beavers, all of it straight from the mouths of the goofballs and tyrants and jokers and geniuses who lived it. Get ready to have 10 new favorite bands." —Rob Harvilla, host and author of 60 Songs That Explain the '90s
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