Articles

Lisa Comstock, director of the Connecticut Center for the Book at Connecticut Humanities

The Weight of Zero, by Karen Fortunati

The very public reports of the deaths of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain have brought international attention to what seems a senseless waste of life to those who do not suffer from mental illness of one sort or another. This story of a young woman struggling with bipolar disorder help readers young and old begin to get a hint of understanding about what on earth that really means and why a person would feel the need to commit suicide.

It's not as much of a downer to read as you might expect given the subject matter. High-schooler Catherine Pulaski is learning to cope with bipolar disorder while keeping her diagnosis from her peers and hiding her pain from her worried mother. She is terrified of the illness that runs her life and could ultimately claim her. You'd think that would be an almost unbearable read, but at the end of the day the message of friendship, strength, survival, and hope wins through. 

Steven M. Seibert, executive director at Florida Humanities Council

The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, by Jack E. Davis

Davis is a professor of history and sustainability studies at the University of Florida and both disciplines are highlighted in this Pulitzer Prize-winning book. Davis brilliantly weaves issues of science, policy, and politics into a cogent explanation of how important the Gulf of Mexico is to the nation and the world. 

Son of Real Florida: Stories from My Life, by Jeff Klinkenberg

For almost four decades, Klinkenberg traveled the state, interviewing and then retelling the stories of Florida's most interesting inhabitants. A skilled journalist, Klinkenberg compiled the best and most personal stories for his most recent book, Son of Real Florida. Klinkenberg received the 2018 Lifetime  Achievement Award for Writing from the Florida Humanities Council. 

A Land Remembered, by Patrick D. Smith

If you only have the time to read one book about Florida, read Patrick Smith's novel A Land Remembered. Published in 1984, it is a mesmerizing tale of historical fiction following the lives of the MacIvey family, through the state's remarkable trajectory from the mid-1800s to 1968. We consider this book a treasure.

Robert Buss, executive director at Hawai'i Council for the Humanities

What We Must Remember: Linked Poems, by Ann Inoshita, Juliet S. Kono, Christy Passion, and Jean Yamasaki Toyama

A book of linked poems by four very talented women writers tells the story of two of Hawai'i's most notorious murders. Based on the racism of the times, the two cases of murder defined local identity in Territorial Hawai'i, and this retelling of the story through the eyes of four local women is a powerful way to reflect.

Honor Killing: How the Infamous "Massie Affair" Transformed Hawai'i, by David E. Stannard and Local Story: The Massie-Kahahawai Case and the Culture of History, by John P. Rosa

For those interested in the history of the case and its national American newspaper coverage in 1931, the best book is still Honor Killing: How the Infamous Massie Affair Transformed Hawai’i. A more recent retelling of the cultural history of the case, Local Story: The Massie-Kahahawai Case and the Culture of History, is also a great read.

Gary Sheppard, program and grants officer at Humanities Iowa

The First Paper Girl in Red Oak, Iowa: Stories, by Elizabeth Stuckey-French

These stories are set in the author's home state of Indiana and in Iowa, where she attended the famed Iowa Writers' Workshop. And they are as exuberant, angsty, and beautifully understated as any you're likely to find. Her characters are zany and spectacularly unconventional while retaining resilience despite the impending ruin they face. That is to say true Iowans. In the collection's title story, Cherry sees her children "playing divorce," which awakens her to the instability of her own marriage and charts a reckless course for adventure with a teenage gas attendant. In "Junior," thirteen-year-old Sophie St. John completes her term at reform school only to be placed in the care of her psychic aunt who forces her to be an accomplice in a lucrative but shady dog-finding scheme. And in "Leufredus," a rehab counselor lives vicariously through her already pregnant stepdaughter's love affair with a drunk who spends his days in recovery and his nights in the bar. This is a book of wonderful peculiarities, which is its own pleasure, but it also delivers wise lessons about longing and compassion.

Storm Lake: A Chronicle of Change, Resilience, and Hope from a Heartland Newspaper, by Art Cullen

Art Cullen won a Pulitzer Prize in 2017 for his editorial writing at the Storm Lake Times, a tiny twice-weekly with a circulation of just three thousand that he co-owns with his brother John, and where he works alongside his son Tom (reporter) and wife Delores (photographer/reporter). This book is a story of determination, reinvention, environmental and economic struggle, and surprising diversity in a small Iowa town. Storm Lake's people take center stage: the family that swam the Mekong River to find Storm Lake, the Latina with a baby who wonders if she'll be deported from the only home she has known, and the farmer who watches markets in real time and operates inside a relentless supply chain that seeks cheaper pork, prepared foods, and ethanol. Storm Lake may be a community in flux—occasionally in crisis—but it's not disappearing like many other Midwestern towns of similar size. In fact, its population is growing, with immigrants from Laos, Mexico, and elsewhere. Thirty languages are spoken there, soccer is more popular than football, and nearly 90 percent of students in local schools speak English as a second language. Iowa plays an outsize role in national politics—it introduced Obama and voted for Trump. Is it a bellwether for America? A nostalgic mirage from The Music Man or a harbinger of our future? Cullen’s answer is complicated but with the wry stubbornness that is still the state's, and his, dominant quality. Though Storm Lake will not be released until October 2018, this truly inspiring story of American resolve is something to look forward to.

Paul Doiron, vice chair of the board of directors at Maine Humanities Council

River Talk: Stories, by CB Anderson

The short stories in CB Anderson's River Talk are about Mainers: folks you went to school with and have known forever, others you hear speaking in foreign tongues on the street, newcomers, neighbors, maybe even yourself. What makes this book so special, so moving, is Anderson's passionate commitment to making all of these people not just recognizable but relatable. If you're looking for a book about the ways people in Maine actually live, now, today, you need to read this small masterpiece.

Settled in the Wild: Notes from the Edge of Town, by Susan Hand Shetterly

More than in other places, Maine people live close to nature—some by accident, others by design. Susan Hand Shetterly's collection of lyrical short essays, Settled in the Wild: Notes from the Edge of Town, is therefore a book intended for all of us. It's about watching deer drift through the field at dusk and about leaving the window open in April to hear spring arrive with the first piping of the peepers. It's about the familiar, the secret, and the strange, written by an artist whose gift it is to help us see our shared environment as we've never seen it before.

John Sieracki, director of development and communications at Massachusetts Humanities

The Autograph of Steve Industry, by Ben Hersey

It's a bittersweet and relentlessly funny examination of the life of a lost working-class Eastern Massachusetts man in the early twenty-first century that richly reflects the values and thinking of his culture. Strap yourself in: it's a wild ride of language experimentation, often poetic, while at the same time engrossing and easy to read. Last year, I read it aloud to my partner, who then taught it to her undergrads at Amherst College, and they fell in love with it.

David O'Fallon, president and CEO at Minnesota Humanities Center

The Round House: A Novel, by Louise Erdrich

An exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family.

One of the most revered novelists of our time—a brilliant chronicler of Native American life—Louise Erdrich returns to the territory of her bestselling Pulitzer Prize finalist The Plague of Doves.

Karen Louise Erdrich is an American author of novels, poetry, and children's books. Her father is German American and mother is half Ojibwe and half French American. She is an enrolled member of the Anishinaabe nation (also known as Chippewa). She is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant Native writers of the second wave of what critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance.

Kim Anderson, director of programs and grants at Humanities Montana

Winter in the Blood, by James Welch

James Welch has long been recognized as a great American writer and his first novel, Winter in the Blood, is both an unsettling story of a young Native American man on the Fort Belknap reservation adrift between two cultures, and a lyrical portrait of one kind of Montana landscape.

Montana 1889: Indians, Cowboys, and Miners in the Year of Statehood, by Ken Egan Jr.

Montana 1889, by Humanities Montana executive director Ken Egan Jr., is the second of his innovative popular histories of the state (Montana 1864 was published in 2014). Month by month, Egan unfolds the stories of some of the state's most colorful and important figures in the year the territory becomes a state.

Susan M. Hatem, director of programs and grant making at New Hampshire Humanities

Either The Beginning or the End of the World, by Terry Farish

The small coastal city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, flows through this novel like the river that flows through the city's harbors and coves into the Atlantic Ocean. Either The Beginning or the End of the World, though, takes you to a Portsmouth that many tourists would not see, from the fisherman's co-op to Atlantic Heights, a community of tiny brick townhouses built during WWI to house shipbuilders, to Caffe Kilim, the local coffee place on Islington Street. In this city, Either the Beginning or the End of the World, "examines the intersections of love and war in a family's history" as an American Library Association reviewer writes.

Sofie, the daughter of a hardscrabble fisherman and a Cambodian immigrant, falls into love with a young Army medic returned from Afghanistan. Raised by her father alone on the New Hampshire Seacoast, she "grew up a tall Scottish girl—my father's side—who chanced to have Cambodian eyes." With the soldier, Sofie journeys into her own heritage of war. "I don't want you for ancestors. I don't want that story," she tells her mother when she listens to the truth of the Khmer Rouge regime. But it flashes bright, like a monk in his saffron-colored robe in New Hampshire snow. Through Cambodian myth, ocean lore of a fisherman's family, and the awe of love, Sofie is drawn into extraordinary worlds she had not imagined. 

This crossover young adult/adult novel also brings the reader into the life of a New England fisherman trying to survive in an industry facing tighter and tighter regulation. You meet Johnny through his daughter's eyes, and see how she watches the leaves of the trees to predict the wind and her father's return from the sea.

Bustle writes, "Author Terry Farish's stories about refugees and immigrants have been informed by her extensive work with the Red Cross in Vietnam, and you can feel that raw, authentic care given to her characters in Either the Beginning or the End of the World. It's a love story, but it's also a story of generations of a family, each affected by war and loss in their own ways." Farish is also the author of the award-winning novel in verse The Good Braider, a story of a girl's journey out of war in South Sudan to Maine.

Antonio Pontón-Núñez, development officer at Humanities New York

When I Was Puerto Rican: A Memoir, by Esmeralda Santiago

This memoir chronicles Santiago's life as a young girl in Puerto Rico and her leaving to New York City. Following the recent events in Puerto Rico, including Hurricanes Irma and Maria and the forced migration of more than 200,000 Puerto Ricans to the mainland USA, the book resonates now more than ever.

Ann Thompson, executive director at Oklahoma Humanities

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, by David Grann

Oklahoma Humanities recommends Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, by David Grann. This nonfiction book recounts the lengths to which unscrupulous, murderous individuals went to cheat Osage Indians in Oklahoma from their oil rights. Oklahoma Humanities recently funded community programs based on the book, at which the author spoke, but even more importantly, the Osage Tribe told its history. Descendants of those murdered were able to have a voice. The book not only addresses these appalling injustices but also recounts the murder investigations by the nascent FBI. 

Sonya Canetti, director of the regrants office at Puerto Rican Endowment for the Humanities

José Pinta a la Virgen and Pauet quiere un violonchelo, by Carmen L. Rivera-Lassen

For those who read Spanish, I share two fabulous titles from the university of Puerto Rico Press, José pinta a la Virgen and Pauet quiere un violonchelo, which are respectively the childhood stories of Puerto Rican eighteenth-century master portraitist José Campeche and of world class Catalan cellist Pablo Casals, who lived in Puerto Rico for many years. Both books are by Carmen Leonor Rivera Lassén and beautifully illustrated by Mrinali Alvarez. Both are fun and interesting books to introduce children to the history of the arts and especially of great figures of our Hispanic cultural heritage. They are also make a fantastic tool to promote further independent research and appreciation of both artists.

En busca del Maestro Rafael Cordero / In search of The Master Rafael Cordero, by Jack and Irene Delano

For those who do not read Spanish, I suggest another excellent children's book in its bilingual edition: En busca del Maestro Rafael Cordero / In search of The Master Rafael Cordero. Cordero was an Afro-Boricua free man, a self-taught teacher who established a free school for children in his house. He taught all children regardless of race and social status. There he taught reading, calligraphy, mathematics, and religious instruction. Among the distinguished alumni of Maestro Rafael are abolitionists Román Baldorioty de Castro and José Julián Acosta. Cordero kept his school opened for fifty-eight years at Luna Street in Old San Juan. His sister, Celestina Cordero Molina, was also a great teacher, and had a school for girls at the time. These Afro-Puerto Rican brother and sister are pioneers of the cause for public education and access to learning for all. The book on Maestro Rafael was first initiated by the great illustrator Irene Delano. After her death, the book was finished by her beloved husband, Jack, a musician, filmmaker, and a brilliant photographer. The couple first came to Puerto Rico when Mr. Delano was hired to be part of a project for the Farm Security Administration and made the island their home.

Jo Angela Edwins, member of the board of directors at South Carolina Humanities

The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature, by J. Drew Lanham

Lanham's book describes his growth as a naturalist and lover of the land through the lens of the place he grew up, his family farm outside Edgefield, South Carolina. The book beautifully describes the natural world of Lanham's upbringing, the complex cultural heritage his African American family of farmers passed on to him, and the decline of the family farm as a way of life in America. The Home Place also explores what it means to be an African American in a scientific field dominated by whites. Lanham is a biologist at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina.

John Kerr, chair of the board of directors at Humanities Texas

The Which Way Tree, by Elizabeth Crook

Elizabeth Crook's The Which Way Tree is a remarkably original story set in the Texas Hill Country just after the Civil War. Narrated by a teenaged boy who witnessed an atrocity committed by Confederate soldiers and a terrifying attack on his mixed-race sister by a mountain lion, the novel combines elements of Moby Dick and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in a fascinating tale.  

G. Hughes Abell, secretary of the board of directors at Humanities Texas

The Great Deluge, by Douglas Brinkley

Having grown up in Louisiana and with family and friends in New Orleans, I watched with more than casual interest as Hurricane Katrina drew a bead on New Orleans. Over the course of a week, I watched as, for once, the weather event was as bad as advertised. Then, it was over. Most of us not directly involved or affected moved on. It was only after a chance visit with Douglas Brinkley (professor of history at Rice University in Houston) this spring that I suddenly felt the need to retreat and read The Great Deluge for an historical look back at the catastrophe that was Katrina. Once I started, I could not put it down.

With The Great Deluge, published in 2006, Brinkley addresses several key themes, in no particular order or rank of impact, but in a very orderly way nonetheless. The author describes the physical characteristics of the Lower Mississippi and New Orleans, which was naturally predisposed to inundation in the event of a major storm, and how the natural and man-made alterations in the basin had made it all the more vulnerable. He further illuminates the nature of the storm, how it developed, and how it came ashore to unleash its fury. He outlines the history of the design and construction of the levees and flood control structures, followed by a lack of funding and misappropriation of funds meant to care for and update the system over the years preceding Katrina. Then, having set the stage, Brinkley addresses in detail the response and reaction of the many people responsible for just what to do when "The Big One" arrived. In brief, that preparation and response from many of the local, state, and federal officials fell way short.

Finally, Brinkley reports on the citizens of New Orleans, describing the tragic loss of loved ones, personal hardships, financial loss or total ruin, and a shattered society. He describes violence and a breakdown of human behavior and the inability or disinterest of those charged with maintaining order to deal with such hardships. Thankfully, he was also able to write about the many heroic, unselfish, and devoted individuals—both private citizens and public servants—who gave their all to help their fellow citizens and society. Brinkley's chronicle provides a comprehensive look at a complex natural and man-made catastrophe.

Michael L. Gillette, executive director of Humanities Texas

God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State, by Lawrence Wright

Lawrence Wright's new book, God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State, is an incisive examination of Texas's history, music, politics, culture, literature, and diverse regions. But it is also much more. Readers join the Pulitzer Prize-winning author as he encounters some of the state's most powerful, most gifted, and most ethically-challenged personalities. We accompany Wright to such remarkable destinations as the San Antonio missions, Roy Hofheinz's suite in the Astrodome, Willie Nelson's motor coach, and S. H. Griffin No. 4. Along the way, the author candidly shares defining moments from his own extraordinary life—all in Wright's beautifully crafted narrative.

Ryan Newswanger, director of communications at Vermont Humanities Council

In the Fall: A Novel, by Jeffrey Lent

This enthralling novel touches on the legacy of race and the Civil War in rural Vermont, New Hampshire, and North Carolina as seen through several generations of a single family. Lent skillfully weaves together the strands of three stories from three different eras. The middle story takes place in Barre, Vermont, which is also the setting of our 2018 Vermont Reads book, Bread and Roses, Too by Katherine Paterson.

A River Trilogy: A Fly-Fishing Life, by W. D. Wetherell

This collection of three books of essays includes the now out-of-print Vermont River, an appreciation and elegy for the Waits River in northeastern Vermont—"the lyric, fragile Waits, my home river." Excellent writing about sports is about much more than sports alone, so I believe Vermont River will appeal to anyone who loves wild and/or beautiful places, not just people who fly-fish. But those who do fish will really love this book.