"Integration at Second Base"

New from the University of Virginia Press: Integration at Second Base: Jackie Robinson and the Quest for Black Citizenship by Peter Eisenstadt.

About the book, from the publisher:

A new biography revealing the remarkable story of Jackie Robinson as a civil rights crusader

Jackie Robinson is one of the most enduring icons of the great American pastime―the man who broke baseball’s color line in the twentieth century, opening the door for his fellow professionals and allowing rising generations to dream of fame and glory on the diamond. But for number 42, playing for the Dodgers was just a beginning. As Peter Eisenstadt demonstrates in this compelling new biography, Robinson’s trailblazing journey was more than a role that fate thrust on him―it was politically informed and consciously connected in Robinson’s mind to a vision of integration and full Black citizenship.

When he ventured out of the Negro Leagues and into the majors, as the league’s sole Black player, his triumph could have stopped at mere tokenism. Eisenstadt reveals a more ambitious goal on Robinson’s part, as well as a side to the great sports hero we have never fully appreciated. This book explores the political and spiritual roots of Jackie Robinson’s quest for Black citizenship from his boyhood in Pasadena to his service days―during which he was court-martialed for refusing to change seats on a segregated bus―to a transcendent athletic career that included an MVP award, a World Series victory, and eventually a place in the Hall of Fame. In his life after baseball, Robinson went on to serve as a civil rights leader, columnist, and political advocate.

The determination that spurred his great achievements was always accompanied by an understanding of just how far society still needed to go: despite his success, at the end of his life he was convinced that he “never had it made.” In telling the story of Robinson’s remarkable life, this book sheds invaluable light on the complex meanings of integration.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Duke"

New from St. Martin's Griffin: The Duke: A Novel by Anna Cowan.

About the book, from the publisher:

Set in a world of powerful female nobles and the women who love them...

Kate, Duke of Howard, is known throughout Europe as a merciless autocrat not to be crossed. Consumed by a bitter rivalry, she avoids society and has vowed never to trap a woman into marriage with a monster like herself.

The beautiful, ambitious courtesan Celine Genet once threw herself on the mercy of the visiting Duke of Howard. She was desperate to escape the guillotine. But after a night of searing passion, the duke left her to the ravages of Revolutionary Paris and didn’t look back. Now Celine is in London and in possession of a dangerous letter that proves the Duke of Howard committed treason as a child - and possibly even murder.

Celine wants a titled husband in return for keeping the duke’s secret, leaving Kate no choice but to parade her around the most fashionable ballrooms. But as Celine takes society by storm, Kate finds herself growing fond of the woman set on destroying her. And as their attraction mounts, Kate faces an impossible choice: keep her childhood secret, or win the woman she loves.

Anna Cowan's The Duke is an utterly unforgettable, page-turning romance featuring two women who, separately, are a danger to each other, but together, could be the most powerful duo London has ever seen.

Visit Anna Cowan's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Turning Away"

New from the University of Chicago Press: Turning Away: The Poetics of an Ancient Gesture by Benjamin A. Saltzman.

About the book, from the publisher:

A sweeping account of how we are at our most human when we turn away from the pains of the world.

Why do we look away from the suffering of others? Why do we cover our faces in shame? Why do we lower our heads in grief? Few gestures are as universal as the averted gaze. Fewer still are as ambivalent and inscrutable. In this incisive study, Benjamin A. Saltzman reveals how the kaleidoscopic appearance of these gestures in art, poetry, and philosophy has turned them into an essential language for our uncomfortable engagements with the world, challenging us to reflect on the ways we fundamentally relate to others.

Into the horizon of contemporary discourse, Turning Away sets out from five influential scenes in which figures avert their gaze: Timanthes's Sacrifice of Iphigenia, Plato's Republic, Augustine's Confessions, Christ's Crucifixion, and the Fall and Expulsion of Adam and Eve. The gestures of aversion in these scenes refract across visual media, through philosophy and politics, into modernity and the present day, having been reimagined along the way by thinkers like Hannah Arendt, artists like Marc Chagall and Salvador Dalí, poets like Langston Hughes, and many others. Saltzman offers a timely critique of the privilege of turning away and of the too-easy condemnation of our tendencies to do so.

Visit Benjamin A. Saltzman's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"The Roaring Ridleys"

Coming May 1 from Thomas & Mercer: The Roaring Ridleys: A Novel by K.M. Colley.

About the novel, from the publisher:

In Jazz Age New York, a shocking murder shatters the privileged life of the city’s most elite family in a propulsive mystery-thriller debut from author K.M. Colley that spans from Harlem to Long Island’s Gold Coast and high society’s glittering world of deadly secrets.

In the glittering world of 1920s New York, the seven Ridley heirs seem to have it all: wealth, status, and protection as the city’s most powerful family. But when notorious gossip columnist Dale Caimen is found dead during their family’s renowned summer soiree, their carefully constructed world begins to crack.

Behind the champagne and jazz, each adopted Ridley sibling harbors secrets that could destroy them. There’s Amelia, the responsible eldest trying to hold it all together; Adesua, whose artistic ambitions in the Harlem Renaissance threaten her family’s expectations; and wild child Kavita, whose dangerous nights in speakeasies may have finally caught up with her.

As the murder investigation intensifies, long-buried tensions surface and family loyalties unravel. Someone knows the truth about the Ridleys―and they’re willing to kill to expose it. In a world where appearance is everything and power comes at a deadly price, the siblings must decide what matters more: protecting the family name or each other.

Follow K.M. Colley on Instagram.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Stop Saying Snip!"

New from Rutgers University Press: Stop Saying Snip!: The Rhetoric of Vasectomy by Jenna Vinson.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the US, the most common contraceptive methods rely on women’s time, labor, and vulnerability to risk. Comparatively few people rely on vasectomies as a means of preventing pregnancies. Something is happening rhetorically―through meaning-making symbols and the material practices they manifest―that sustains a collective disinterest in vasectomies. Jenna Vinson draws from her feminist rhetorical study of thirty-seven television and film representations, health insurance policies, and interviews with seventeen people who have experienced vasectomy, surfacing barriers to vasectomy uptake, including problematic tropes and practices that keep vasectomy unappealing, out of mind, and inaccessible. Stop Saying Snip! also illustrates tactics and circumstances that lead people to get a vasectomy, sharing real vasectomy stories and showing that women often play an important (and until now unheeded or pathologized) role in this communication process. This book intervenes in the misogynistic cultural expectation that it is women’s responsibility to endure the pain, labor, and risks of managing fertility by identifying the rhetorics that make men’s reproductive bodies seem unnatural sites for pregnancy prevention work. Fostering a persuasive vision of vasectomy is an urgent project that contributes to the movement toward reproductive justice.

Visit Jenna Vinson's website.

The Page 99 Test: Embodying the Problem.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Dreamt I Found You"

New from Little, Brown and Company: Dreamt I Found You: A Novel by Jimin Han.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the critically acclaimed author of The Apology comes a contemporary retelling of Korea’s Romeo & Juliet, as the cousin of the star-crossed lovers helps them avoid a tragic fate.

When Dahee Shin was nine years old, she made a promise to protect her favorite cousin, Channing, who has always been like a sister to her. Now, at thirty, Dahee has found herself in a Korean American community in a New England beach town, once more running to the rescue of her debt-ridden relative. Ever the idealist, Channing—who has spent her life haunted by the tragic story of Chunhyang and Mongryong, Korea’s parallel Romeo & Juliet—has fallen in love with Minjae Oh, all the while fending off the advances of powerful, manipulative Kent Cho, a local politician. As Channing and Minjae’s romance blossoms, and as Kent's suspicion and obsession grow, Dahee begins to realize that it may be up to her to make sure her cousin and beloved escape Chunhyang and Mongryong’s doomed end.

For fans of Hello Beautiful, Dreamt I Found You is a wondrous, tender retelling of Korea's most classic love story, steeped in the travails of a rigid class system, the power of premonition, and shot through with Korean folklore and magic.

Visit Jimin Han's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Urbanization from Within"

New from Oxford University Press: Urbanization from Within: A Theory of Urban Transition from 21st-Century India by Gregory F. Randolph.

About the book, from the publisher:

Urbanization is typically narrated as a tale of migration and industrialization--a mass exodus from rural areas to burgeoning cities with centripetal economies. Today, however, many rural settlements are not hollowing out. Rather, they are filling up and filling in, even far beyond the fringes of large metropolitan areas.

In Urbanization from Within, Gregory F. Randolph challenges our conventional understanding of how humans are becoming an increasingly urban species, revealing an alternative pathway of urban transition. Drawing on research in the Indian state of Bihar, Randolph shows that agrarian villages are transforming into urban towns through internal population growth, a bootstrapped non-farm economy, and interwoven processes of social change--a phenomenon he terms urbanization from within. In this account, urbanization is still linked to rural-urban mobility, but rather than the migrant's destination, it is the migrant's origin that is urbanizing, fueled by the circular flow of people and the skills, resources, and expectations they carry and transmit to their hometowns. While rooting his study in a specific region, Randolph connects urbanization from within to a set of global forces shaping twenty-first century urban transitions in and beyond India.

Urbanization from Within provides an in-depth understanding of these mechanisms as well as the consequences and future of new urbanization patterns--integrating qualitative interviews, analysis of geospatial data and large-scale surveys, econometric modeling, and insights from a wide range of disciplines. Like other pathways of urban transition, urbanization from within generates possibilities and constraints for human agency and fulfillment. To imagine a role for planning and policymaking institutions in shaping this process, Randolph provides an assessment of these tradeoffs, which are different from those generally associated with urbanization. Ultimately, Urbanization from Within fundamentally reshapes our understanding of how the world is urbanizing, with important insights for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners.

Visit Gregory F. Randolph's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"They Want Us Dead"

New from Wednesday Books: They Want Us Dead: A Novel by CL Montblanc.

About the novel, from the publisher:

In this new mystery from CL Montblanc, the author of Pride or Die, two internet enemies are forced to work together after a true crime meetup turns into a deadly case of its own.

Seventeen-year-old Sam Tombs hopes to get more eyes on the videos they make to raise awareness of crimes against LGBTQ+ teens. A true crime content creator event seems like the perfect opportunity to grow their channel—until the group becomes stranded at an eerie Victorian mansion, and one of them is killed in the night.

Sam’s alibi, and the only person they can trust, happens to be their mean, dorky internet nemesis Dylan. But the two must now put aside their rivalry and use their investigative skills to figure out who among the remaining teens is the killer, before their own deaths become tomorrow’s trending content.

Visit CL Montblanc's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Stealing America"

New from Liveright: Stealing America: The Hidden Story of Indigenous Slavery in U.S. History by Linford D. Fisher.

About the book, from the publisher:

Epic and groundbreaking, Stealing America boldly rewrites American history by putting Native enslavement and rampant land theft at the epicenter of our nation’s past.

Indigenous enslavement was a colossal phenomenon of almost unimaginable consequences that ensnared nearly 600,000 Native Americans in North America. In a saga that predates 1619, this double–stealing of Indigenous people and their lands upends virtually every known narrative of American history. Captured Natives, often deliberately misidentified as Black slaves, were used not only on southern plantations, but on small northern farms, and were routinely shipped overseas. While the American Revolution pealed the bells of freedom for colonists, it paved a larcenous trail of westward expansion that decimated tribes and plundered Indigenous lands. Even after Congress outlawed Native slavery in 1867, Americans forced Indigenous children into boarding schools and white homes, where they labored under forced assimilation. This practice was not outlawed until the latter twentieth century, when Indian nations finally secured increasing rights and self–determination. The most comprehensive work of its kind, Stealing America presents a five–century genocidal history, more commonly known as the “American dream.”

Visit Linford D. Fisher's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Anna-Jane and the Endless Summer"

New from Random House Books for Young Readers: Anna-Jane and the Endless Summer by Paige Classey.

About the book, from the publisher:

Anna-Jane couldn’t wait for camp. But when the outside world goes dark, she and her friends soon realize they’re in for the adventure of their lives this summer—and maybe even beyond.

Anna-Jane is thrilled to be back at Camp Chester—the one place she feels like she belongs. She’s excited to swim in the lake, read in her favorite chair, and swap secrets with her best friend under the stars. But not long after Anna-Jane unpacks her trunk, weird things start happening.

First, townspeople near camp begin disappearing. Then, the internet, cell service, and all other forms of communication are cut off. Soon, Anna-Jane and the residents of Camp Chester realize they are completely alone.

Or so they think. Across the lake, the kids spot a strange flashing light. And when animals begin turning up with yellowed eyes and disfigured limbs, it is clear the dangers are only growing. Most alarming of all, though, is the deepening distrust among the campers themselves, which could have deadly consequences. Anna-Jane knows what to expect from a summer at camp . . . but what happens when camp lasts well beyond the summer?

Captured in Anna-Jane’s diary, discover the poignant journey of a young girl’s fight to survive in the face of the unknown.

Visit Paige Classey's website.

--Marshal Zeringue