Saturday, Feb. 29: Big Black: Stand at Attica by Frank “Big Black” Smith, Jared Reinmuth and art by Améziane, is the memoir of Frank Smith, a prisoner-negotiator during the Attica prison revolt.
Gaiman will soon be back, resuming his teaching responsibilities at Bard, and the Conversations are back on. Jemisin’s work is lauded by her peers at least as much for its elegant writing and powerful worldbuilding as for its thought-provoking treatment of politically and sociologically relevant issues such as genocide and climate change.
Monday, Feb. 3: In Yellow Earth, the site of Three Nations reservations on the banks of the Missouri River in North Dakota, Sayles introduces us to Harleigh Killdeer, chairman of the Tribal Business Council. “An activist in his way, a product of the Casino Era,” Killdeer, who is contracted by oil firm Case and Crosby, spearheads the new Three Nations Petroleum Company.
Sunday, Jan. 26: “My vision was: What if Aragorn had been a woman? What if a realm awaited the return of a queen?”
Wednesday, Jan. 22: In his new book Live Sustainably Now: A Low-Carbon Vision of the Good Life, Karl Coplan chronicles the joys and challenges of a year on a carbon budget: kayaking to work, hunting down electric vehicle charging stations, eating a Mediterranean-style diet and enjoying plenty of travel on weekends and vacations while avoiding long-distance flights.
Friday, January 17: Matthew Goodman reads The City Game at Oblong Books in Rhinebeck.
Uncle Skallywag is the latest collection of poems by Shivastan’s proprietor, tantric Buddhist/Hindu yogi, anthropologist, archivist, artist, photographer, publisher and poet Shiv Mirabito.
Sunday, Dec. 15: Pagels is best-known for research and publication involving a cache of over 50 ancient Greek texts discovered translated into Coptic in Upper Egypt in 1945. After completing her doctorate at Harvard University, she participated with an international team of scholars to edit, translate and publish several of these texts as The Gnostic Gospels. It was the loss of her young son that inspired her deep exploration on the questions asked in this illuminating book.
Saturday, Dec. 7: Cooper, the author of the much-loved, Newbery Medal-winning five-book series The Dark Is Rising, learned to love literature in the family bomb shelter as her mother read aloud by candlelight to pass the time during the Blitz.
Sometimes described as a “National Geographic for Millennials,” Atlas Obscura was founded in 2009 by journalist Joshua Foer and documentary filmmaker Dylan Thuras. In 2016, the company began organizing guided tours to some of the remarkable sites that it describes so enticingly. That same year, it also published its first book for the armchair traveler: Atlas Obscura: An Explorer’s Guide to the World’s Hidden Wonders (Workman). Now a brand-new Second Edition has just been released, adding more than 100 new places and featuring a dozen city guides and a fold-out map for a round-the-world dream itinerary. A version for younger readers, The Atlas Obscura Explorer’s Guide for the World’s Most Adventurous Kid, was released in the fall of 2018.