(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Nonfiction Views: The week's notable new nonfiction (including a book on pooties and one on woozles) [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-17 Here is a selection of this week’s notable new nonfiction. But first...Jane Austen meets the digital age. BOOK NEWS More book fun with Artificial Intelligence: Facebook's AI-Powered Jane Austen Is Already Overrun by Spam. And why is she blonde!? Adding insult to injury, Zombie Austen's limited engagement is comprised of befuddled Facebook users who don't seem to understand that she's AI-generated and outright spam that the company's filters seem helpless to catch. The social profile of Zombie Austen is eyebrow-raising. Her profile picture, for instance, depicts an influencer-looking woman wearing a smirk and a fuzzy headband over blonde hair, even though the real Austen was brunette . And that only foreshadows the account's vapid posts, which range from AI-generated pictures of dusty libraries to uninspiring book stacks . Along with AIs based on the likes of Tom Brady, Kendall Jenner, or James "MrBeast" Donaldson, Meta has also given new life to one of the most famed English novelists: Jane Austen. My current 20% promo at The Literate Lizard is my annual Scary/Even Scarier feature: one list of scary horror books for Halloween, and one list of even scarier Current Affairs books for Election Day. There are over 50 books in all between the two lists, and discounts stack, so your DAILYKOS coupon code gets you another 15% off the already discounted prices. THIS WEEK’S NEW NONFICTION The Hidden Language of Cats: How They Have Us at Meow, by Sarah Brown. Well, this is Daily Kos, so I guess I’ll start off with this one. Descended from shy, solitary North African wild cats, domestic cats set up homes with devoted owners all over the world by learning how to talk to us. This book translates—in case you missed anything. Each chapter dives into a different form of communication, including vocalizations, tail signals, scents, rubbing, and ear movements. The iconic meow, for example, is rarely used between adult cats—cleverly mimicking the cries of a human infant, the meow is a feline invention for conversing with people. Through observing the behavior of two cat colonies in rural England, readers will also have the opportunity to glimpse into the lives of some of the cats behind Dr. Brown's science. Can we understand what cats’ meows and other signals mean? How do cats actually perceive us? And how can we use this information to inform how we talk back to our feline friends? Hope - How Street Dogs Taught Me the Meaning of Life: Featuring Rodney, McMuffin and King Whacker, by Niall Harbison. And in the interests of equal time…Niall Harbison is a dog hero based in Thailand. He spends his days feeding, caring for and rescuing the many street dogs he comes across. With every rescue there's a story. Like the sweet gentle McMuffin who was found with many tumors and hours from death, only to be nursed back to health. She now lives with Niall and is a popular member of the pack. Then there is King Whacker - who escaped a vicious attack and is now ruling the nest living up to his name as the king of the all good dogs. And who could resist the puppy eyes of little Rodney, the beautiful dog with big paws who is melting millions of hearts around the world. The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind, by Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean. In 2020, the novel coronavirus pandemic made it painfully clear that the U.S. could not adequately protect its citizens. Millions of Americans suffered—and over a million died—in less than two years, while government officials blundered; prize-winning economists overlooked devastating trade-offs; and elites escaped to isolated retreats, unaffected by and even profiting from the pandemic. The Big Fail is an expansive, insightful account on what the pandemic did to the economy and how American capitalism has jumped the rails—and is essential reading to understand where we’re going next. Ignition: Lighting Fires in a Burning World, by M.R. O'Connor . The author ventures into some of the oldest, most beautiful, and remote forests in North America to explore the powerful and ancient relationship between trees, fires, and humans. Along the way, she describes revelatory research in the fields of paleobotany and climate science to show how the world's forests have been shaped by fire for hundreds of millions of years. She also reports on the compelling archeological evidence emerging from the field of ethnoecology that proves how humans were instigators of forest fires, actively molding and influencing the ecosystems around them by inserting themselves into the loop of a natural biological process to start “good fires.” As she weaves together first-hand reportage with research and cultural insights, O'Connor also embeds on firelines alongside firefighters and “pyrotechnicians.” At the heart of Ignition is a discussion about risk and how our relationship to it as a society will determine our potential to survive the onslaught of climate change. Our Ancient Lakes: A Natural History, by Jeffrey McKinnon. Most lakes are less than 10,000 years old and short-lived, but there is a much smaller number of ancient lakes, tectonic in origin and often millions of years old, that are scattered across every continent but Antarctica: Baikal, Tanganyika, Victoria, Titicaca, and Biwa, to name a few. Often these lakes are filled with a diversity of fish, crustaceans, snails, and other creatures found nowhere else in the world. In Our Ancient Lakes, Jeffrey McKinnon introduces the remarkable living diversity of these aquatic bodies to the general reader and explains the surprising, often controversial, findings that the study of their faunas is yielding about the formation and persistence of species. How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World, by Deb Chachra. A soaring bridge is an obvious infrastructural feat, but so are the mostly hidden reservoirs, transformers, sewers, cables, and pipes that deliver water, energy, and information to wherever we need it. Engineer and materials scientist Deb Chachra takes readers on a fascinating tour of these essential utilities, revealing how they work, what it takes to keep them running, just how much we rely on them—but also whom they work well for, and who pays the costs. Across the U.S. and elsewhere, these systems are suffering from systemic neglect and the effects of climate change, becoming unavoidably visible when they break down. Communities that are already marginalized often bear the brunt of these failures. But Chachra maps out a path for transforming and rebuilding our shared infrastructure to be not just functional but also equitable, resilient, and sustainable. The cost of not being able to rely on these systems is unthinkably high. We need to learn how to see them—and fix them, together—before it’s too late. Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism, by Rachel Maddow. Charts the rise of a wild American strain of authoritarianism that has been alive on the far-right edge of our politics for the better part of a century. Before and even after our troops had begun fighting abroad in World War II, a clandestine network flooded the country with disinformation aimed at sapping the strength of the U.S. war effort and persuading Americans that our natural alliance was with the Axis, not against it. It was a sophisticated and shockingly well-funded campaign to undermine democratic institutions, promote antisemitism, and destroy citizens’ confidence in their elected leaders, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the U.S. government and installing authoritarian rule. While the scheme has been remembered in history—if at all—as the work of fringe players, in reality it involved a large number of some of the country’s most influential elected officials. Their interference in law enforcement efforts against the plot is a dark story of the rule of law bending and then breaking under the weight of political intimidation. Sedition Hunters: How January 6th Broke the Justice System, by Ryan J. Reilly. The basic concept of law enforcement--investigators find criminals and serve justice--quickly breaks down in the face of such an event. The system has been strained by the sheer volume of criminals and the widespread perception that what they did wasn't wrong. A mass of online tipsters--"sedition hunters"--have mobilized, simultaneously providing the FBI with valuable intelligence. In this work of extraordinary reportage, Ryan Reilly gets to know would-be revolutionaries, obsessive online sleuths, and FBI agents, and shines a light on a justice system that's straining to maintain order in our polarized country. From the moment the police barriers were breached on January 6th, 2021, Americans knew something had profoundly changed. Sedition Hunters is the fascinating, high-stakes story of what happens next. Fragile Neighborhoods: Repairing American Society, One Zip Code at a Time, by Seth D. Kaplan. Readers will meet the innovative individuals and organizations pioneering new approaches to everything from youth mentoring to affordable housing: people like Dreama, a former lawyer whose organization works with local leaders and educators in rural Appalachia to equip young people with the social support they need to succeed in school; and Chris, whose Detroit-based non-profit turns vacant school buildings into community resource hubs. Along the way, Kaplan offers a set of practical lessons to inspire similar work, reminding us that when change is hyperlocal, everyone has the opportunity to contribute. Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine, by David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts. Two leading authorities—an acclaimed historian and the outstanding battlefield commander and strategist of our time—collaborate on a landmark examination of war since 1945. Conflict is both a sweeping history of the evolution of warfare up to Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine, and a penetrating analysis of what we must learn from the past—and anticipate in the future—in order to navigate an increasingly perilous world. The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination, by Stuart A. Reid. A spellbinding work of history that reads like a Cold War spy thriller—about the U.S.-sanctioned plot to assassinate the democratically elected leader of the newly independent Congo. Within a year, everything would unravel. The CIA plot to murder Lumumba would fizzle out, but he would be deposed in a CIA-backed coup, transferred to enemy territory in a CIA-approved operation, and shot dead by Congolese assassins. UN Secretary-General Hammarskjöld, too, would die, in a mysterious plane crash en route to negotiate a cease-fire with the Congo’s rebellious southeast. And a young, ambitious military officer named Joseph Mobutu, who had once sworn fealty to Lumumba, would seize power with U.S. help and misrule the country for more than three decades. For the Congolese people, the events of 1960–61 represented the opening chapter of a long horror story. For the U.S. government, however, they provided a playbook for future interventions. Her Space, Her Time: How Trailblazing Women Scientists Decoded the Hidden Universe, by Shohini Ghose. In each chapter of the book , Ghose explores a scientific topic and explains how the women featured in that chapter revolutionized that area of physics and astronomy. In doing so, she also addresses particular aspects of women’s experiences in physics and astronomy: in the chapter on time, for instance, we learn of Henrietta Leavitt and Margaret Burbidge, who helped discover the big bang and the cosmic calendar; in the chapter on space exploration, we learn of Anigaduwagi (Cherokee) aerospace scientist Mary Golda Ross, who helped make the Moon landings possible; and in the chapter on subatomic particles, we learn of Marietta Blau, Hertha Wambacher, and Bibha Chowdhuri, who contributed to the discovery of the building blocks of the universe, and, in doing so, played a crucial role in determining who gets to do physics today. The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA, by Liza Mundy. Created in the aftermath of World War II, the Central Intelligence Agency relied on women even as it attempted to channel their talents and keep them down. Women sent cables, made dead drops, and maintained the agency’s secrets. Despite discrimination—even because of it—women who started as clerks, secretaries, or unpaid spouses rose to become some of the CIA’s shrewdest operatives. They were unlikely spies—and that’s exactly what made them perfect for the role. Because women were seen as unimportant, pioneering female intelligence officers moved unnoticed around Bonn, Geneva, and Moscow, stealing secrets from under the noses of their KGB adversaries. Back at headquarters, women built the CIA’s critical archives—first by hand, then by computer. And they noticed things that the men at the top didn’t see. As the CIA faced an identity crisis after the Cold War, it was a close-knit network of female analysts who spotted the rising threat of al-Qaeda—though their warnings were repeatedly brushed aside. The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman's Narrative, by Gregg Hecimovich. In 1857, a woman escaped enslavement on a North Carolina plantation and fled to a farm in New York. In hiding, she worked on a manuscript that would make her famous long after her death. The novel, The Bondwoman’s Narrative, was discovered by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and first published in 2002 to great acclaim, but the author’s identity remained unknown. Over a decade later, Professor Gregg Hecimovich unraveled the mystery of the author’s name and, in The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts, he finally tells her story. In this remarkable biography, Hecimovich identifies the novelist as Hannah Bond “Crafts.” She was not only the first known Black woman to compose a novel but also an extraordinarily gifted artist who honed her literary skills in direct opposition to a system designed to deny her every measure of humanity. After escaping to New York, the author forged a new identity—as Hannah Crafts—to make sense of a life fractured by slavery. Hecimovich establishes the case for authorship of The Bondwoman’s Narrative by examining the lives of Hannah Crafts’s friends and contemporaries, including the five enslaved women whose experiences form part of her narrative. By drawing on the lives of those she knew in slavery, Crafts summoned into her fiction people otherwise stolen from history. I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country, by Elena Kostyuchenko. A fearless, cutting portrait of Russia and an essential cri de coeur for journalism in opposition to the global authoritarian turn. I Love Russia stitches together reportage from the past fifteen years with personal essays, assembling a kaleidoscopic narrative that Kostyuchenko understands may be the last work from her homeland that she’ll publish for a long time—perhaps ever. It exposes the inner workings of an entire nation as it descends into fascism and, inevitably, war. She writes because the threat of Putin’s Russia extends beyond herself, beyond Crimea, and beyond Ukraine. We fail to understand it at our own peril. The Slavic Myths, by Noah Charney and Svetlana Slapšak. In the first collection of Slavic myths for an international readership, Noah Charney and Svetlana Slapšak expertly weave together the ancient stories with nuanced analysis to illuminate their place at the heart of Slavic tradition. While Slavic cultures are far-ranging, comprised of East Slavs (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus), West Slavs (the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland), and South Slavs (the countries of former Yugoslavia plus Bulgaria), they are connected by tales of adventure and magic with roots in a common lore. In the world of Slavic mythology we find petulant deities, demons and fairies, witches, and a supreme god who can hurl thunderbolts. Gods gather under the World Tree, reminiscent of Norse mythology’s Yggdrasill. The vampire—usually the only Serbo-Croatian word in any foreign-language dictionary—and the werewolf both emerge from Slavic belief. Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country, by Patricia Evangelista. Journalist Patricia Evangelista came of age in the aftermath of a street revolution that forged a new future for the Philippines. Three decades later, in the face of mounting inequality, the nation discovered the fragility of its democratic institutions under the regime of strongman Rodrigo Duterte. Some People Need Killing is Evangelista’s meticulously reported and deeply human chronicle of the Philippines’ drug war. For six years, Evangelista chronicled the killings carried out by police and vigilantes in the name of Duterte’s war on drugs—a war that has led to the slaughter of thousands—immersing herself in the world of killers and survivors and capturing the atmosphere of fear created when an elected president decides that some lives are worth less than others. “My job is to go to places where people die. I pack my bags, talk to the survivors, write my stories, then go home to wait for the next catastrophe. I don’t wait very long.” Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia, by Gary J. Bass. A landmark, magisterial history of the trial of Japan’s leaders as war criminals—the largely overlooked Asian counterpart to Nuremberg. “Exhaustive and fascinating. . . . Placing the trial firmly in the context of colonialism, racial attitudes, the Cold War, and post-colonial Asian politics, Bass argues, quite rightly, that the trial ‘reveals some of the reasons why a liberal international order has not emerged in Asia.’ ” —Ian Buruma, The New Yorker How to Be: Life Lessons from the Early Greeks, by Adam Nicolson. Before the Greeks, the idea of the world was dominated by god-kings and their priests. Twenty-five hundred years ago, in a succession of small eastern Mediterranean harbor cities, a few heroic men and women decided to cast off mental subservience and apply their own thinking minds to the conundrums of life. These great innovators shaped the beginnings of western philosophy. Through the questioning voyager Odysseus, Homer explored how we might navigate our way through the world. Heraclitus, in Ephesus, was the first to consider the interrelatedness of things. Xenophanes of Colophon was the first champion of civility. On the Aegean island of Lesbos, the early lyric poets Sappho and Alcaeus asked themselves, “How can I be true to myself?” On Samos, Pythagoras imagined an everlasting soul and took his ideas to Italy, where they flowered again in surprising and radical forms. The Dish: The Lives and Labor Behind One Plate of Food, by Andrew Friedman . Now that you've finished binge-watching The Bear , feast your mind on The Dish ! You'll be introduced to all the people and processes that come together in a single restaurant dish. As various components of this one dish are prepared by the kitchen team, Friedman introduces readers to the players responsible for producing it, from the chefs who conceived the dish and manage the kitchen, to the line cooks and sous chefs who carry out the actual cooking, and the dishwashers who keep pace with the dining room. Readers will also meet the producers, farmers, and ranchers, who supply the restaurant. The Dish will ensure that readers never look at any restaurant meal the same way again. Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant: A Memoir, by Curtis Chin. Nineteen eighties Detroit was a volatile place to live, but above the fray stood a safe haven: Chung’s Cantonese Cuisine, where anyone—from the city’s first Black mayor to the local drag queens, from a big-time Hollywood star to elderly Jewish couples—could sit down for a warm, home-cooked meal. Here was where, beneath a bright-red awning and surrounded by his multigenerational family, filmmaker and activist Curtis Chin came of age; where he learned to embrace his identity as a gay ABC, or American-born Chinese; where he navigated the divided city’s spiraling misfortunes; and where—between helpings of almond boneless chicken, sweet-and-sour pork, and some of his own, less-savory culinary concoctions—he realized just how much he had to offer to the world, to his beloved family, and to himself. 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