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Nonfiction Views: For Orwell's birthday, a review of Orwell's Ghosts, by Laura Beers [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-06-25  

Today, June 25th, is George Orwell’s birthday, born in 1903. This month is also the 75th anniversary of the publication of 1984, which all sides of the political spectrum are currently claiming as a foretelling of the evils practiced by their opponents. This is nothing new, of course. Five or so years so I engaged in a heated exchange in a Facebook political group about whether or not Orwell was a socialist. My opponent was outraged that I would say that he was, ignoring the fact that Orwell himself called himself that in his writings. No! this individual argued. 1984 and Animal Farm are anti-totalitarianism, and totalitarian equals Communist/Socialist countries, ergo, Orwell was totally anti-Socialism. This particular uber-MAGA individual continues to post Orwell quotes, believing these quotes own the libs by exposing their lies and Thought Police cancel culture. He is also, in my view, a personification of the sort of person Orwell would excoriate: posting a minimum of six times a day, every day, the most stunningly upside-down conspiracy theories and inane misinformation.

Even so, while I absolutely believe that Orwell today would find the acts and rhetoric of the right-wingers to be closest to the dystopia he imagined, I’ve never felt smug about that opinion. I’ve always recognized that Orwell was a complicated thinker with a complicated worldview. And so, it has been a pleasure to read Laura Beers’ Orwell's Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the Twenty-First Century, published June 11th. As she writes in her introduction, “What’s Orwellian”:

In the nearly seventy-five years since his death, the complexity of his political thought has been ironed out and replaced by a two-dimensional caricature of Orwell as an anti-totalitarian prophet. It’s a caricature that obscures much of the nuance that renders his writing worthy of rereading today….Orwell struggled to make sense of the chaos around him, or at least to chronicle that chaos with his trademark commitment to truth and plain speaking….While the past remains a foreign country, the uncanny parallels between the interwar decades and our present political moment give Orwell’s writing a renewed salience in the twenty-first century….Ever since Orwell’s death on January 21, 1959, politicians, scholars and pundits have reveled in asking, “What would Orwell think?” about current events. This book does not attempt to answer that question, not least because George Orwell was a notoriously mercurial writer who not infrequently changed his political opinions as his own understanding of events shifted. Instead of asking, “What would Orwell think?” the following chapters take Orwell’s writing on the interwar decades as a lens through which to re-examine the crisis of our own historical moment.

The opening chapter offers a brief biography, material that can be read more in depth in the numerous biographies written about him. Beers main intent with this chapter is to highlight some points in his life that helped shape him. His early schooling was a mix of middle-class snobbishness towards the lowers classes and resentment towards the upper classes, which he worked his whole life to resolve. He was raised largely by women, as his father continued to work in India until retirement (Orwell himself was born in India, returning with his family to England in his first year.) They were strong, feminist women as well, and Beers hypothesizes that this may have contributed to Orwell’s greatest blind spot in critiquing society: he was most definitely not a feminist, and never seemed to understand the influence patriarchy has in shaping society. Love of country remained a strong emotion in is life as well, despite his deep criticisms. As he confessed in a 1940 essay “My Country Right or Left,” “that long drilling in patriotism which the middle classes go through has done its work, and that once England was in a serious jam would be impossible for me to sabotage.” His participation in the Spanish Civil War grew from his democratic socialist beliefs and hatred of Fascism, but witnessing the harsh treatment dealt out by the Soviets there, particularly the Stalinist authoritarianism, imprisonment of political opponents and use of propaganda to manipulate public opinion. led him to his powerful writing against totalitarianism.

Indeed, it is that very dichotomy which best illustrates Orwell’s embrace of truth over ideology. Orwell’s first book, the semi-autobiographical Down and Out in Paris and London, was published by a socialist publisher, Victor Gollancz. Gollancz went on to publish a number of Orwell’s books, but when faced with The Road to Wigan Pier, he was less enthusiastic. Gollancz himself had commissioned Orwell to investigate the lives of the industrial working class of in Northern England, and was thrilled with the first half of the book, describing the plight of those workers, but was less happy with the second half, in which Orwell, while expressing his sympathy with socialist beliefs, also criticized most British socialists as intolerable “cranks.” Gollancz went ahead and published the book with minimal editing, though he wrote a foreword to it that disavowed the crankiness.

In 1937, Gollancz did indeed refuse to publish Homage to Catalonia. For Gollancz, the issue was not only that Orwell’s analysis of the dynamics on the ground was incorrect as much as that it cast a gray shadow over the black-and-white argument in favor of supporting the Spanish government’s battle against Franco.

An even bigger publication controversy arose with Animal Farm a few years later. The British government had asked publishers not to take on the book, based on the view that it might anger the Soviet leadership at a time the British were allied with them against Hitler.

Typically, Orwell held a nuanced and complicated view of this censorship issues. In a letter to another publisher after Gollacz rejected Homage to Catalonia: “I do not agree with this view, because I hold the outmoded opinion that in the long run it does not pay to tell lies, but in so far as it was dictated by a desire to help the Spanish Government, I can respect it.” Elsewhere, he wrote: It is a sort of charm or incantation to silence uncomfortable truths. When you are told that by saying this, that or the other you are ‘playing into the hands of some sinister enemy,’ you know that it is your duty to shut up immediately.” It was, in fact, a ‘duty’ that Orwell was not inclined to accept, but about which he did waver at times.

Indeed, one of Orwell’s most controversial acts was to comply with a request t by the Information Research Department within the British Foreign Office compile a list of authors who lacked sufficient anti-communist ideals. The request was made to winnow out inviting any such authors to contribute to the British government’s own anti=Soviet writing. Orwell had often criticized writers for being overly subservient to Soviet propaganda, and he did create such a list for the IRD. While the names of these authors and Orwell’s opinions of them were readily available through his published writing and notebooks, the list itself was not released by the British archives until 2003. An example of the notes Orwell provided to the government referred to Kingsley Martin: “?? Too dishonest to be outright ‘crypto’ or fellow-traveller, but reliably pro-Russian on all major issues.”

Many severely criticized Orwell for contributing to a blacklist for the government. Beers grapples with it:

Orwell’s willingness to take part in a similar exercise [to the Hollywood blacklist] in Britain reflects the same conviction and reveals his privileging of truth over freedom of speech when the two came into direct conflict. While Orwell abhorred censorship, he was willing to do his part to ensure that authors whom he perceived to be knowingly mendacious were not offered a platform to voice their untruths, because truthfulness was, in Orwell’s estimation, the highest virtue.

A seemingly slippery slope, but Beers connects it to 1984’s depiction of freedom being the right to say 2 + 2 = 4, but not the right to say 2 + 2 = 5.

Yet, here the weight and consistency of the evidence is overwhelming. In a free society, citizens should theoretically be able to proclaim 2 + 2 to be whatever they want it to be. But that is not Orwell’s idea of freedom from censorship. Orwell believed in liberty above all else, but liberty, in his view, was predicated on an assumption of personal and social responsibility.

But all this is just a small taste of what Beers offers in this book. She digs deeply into all of his writing, connecting, as she had promised in her introduction, to the issues of our day, including the blatant disregard for truth in today’s politics. Orwell thought deeply on these subjects, and at times could seem to contradict himself, but beneath it all was a bedrock of ethical devotion to the truth.

The book uses Orwell’s writing to interrogate many of our modern political issues, with chapters like The Thought Police: Censorship, Cancel Culture and “Fake News, ISMS: Populism and Tyranny, and Patriarchy: The Vote, Equal Pay and Reproductive Rights. (In that last mentioned chapter, she expands on the use of the word ‘cranks,’ which gave his publisher pause about The Road to Wigan Pier. In that book Orwell defined those cranks as “every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.” Makes you wonder what Orwell might have written if he had lived in the 1960s and 1970s.)

In all, an interesting, challenging and enlightening book. As I said at the outset, while I firmly believe that Orwell would be appalled by the Republican Party and its unending devotion to debasing truth in subservience to MAGA authoritarian leanings, and to the rise of authoritarian populism around the world, and would be a ferocious opponent, I refuse to be smug about my belief. As Orwell complained about some of the leftists of his era, they too often took an approach “sufficient to alienate plenty of decent people.” With truth on our side, there is a better way, and Orwell has much to offer.

THIS WEEK’S NOTABLE NEW NONFICTION

All the Worst Humans: How I Made News for Dictators, Tycoons, and Politicians, by Phil Elwood . After nearly two decades in the Washington PR business, Elwood wants to come clean, by exposing the dark underbelly of the very industry that’s made him so successful. The first step is revealing exactly what he’s been up to for the past twenty years—and it isn’t pretty. Elwood has worked for a murderer’s row of questionable clients, including Gaddafi, Assad, and the government of Qatar. In All the Worst Humans , Elwood unveils how the PR business works, and how the truth gets made, spun, and sold to the public—not shying away from the gritty details of his unlikely career. "If Hunter S. Thompson billed clients by the hour, it would look like All The Worst Humans by Phil Elwood. The pacing and storytelling propel the book's epic sweep across the darkside of DC and global hotspots. Even the most experienced in PR will learn things they did not know, and Elwood's gripping personal story is an unexpected and wild ride." — Bill McCarren, former Executive Director, National Press Club

. After nearly two decades in the Washington PR business, Elwood wants to come clean, by exposing the dark underbelly of the very industry that’s made him so successful. The first step is revealing exactly what he’s been up to for the past twenty years—and it isn’t pretty. All the Worst Humans All The Worst Humans The New Breadline: Hunger and Hope in the Twenty-First Century, by Jean-Martin Bauer . At the turn of the twenty-first century, more than 150 countries pledged to eradicate hunger by 2030. But with only a few years left, we’re far from reaching that goal. Instead, hunger is on the rise—America itself recently experienced levels of food insecurity not seen since the Great Depression. How could the richest nation in the world have so many people going hungry? Drawing from his fieldwork in the most hunger-prone countries across the globe—from Haiti, where elites hoard imported French cheese, to Madagascar, where foreign corporations are snatching up valuable land from local farmers, to right here in America, where the lines at food banks continue to grow—Bauer weaves profound personal insight with a keen understanding of the structural systems of racism, classism, and sexism that thwart true progress in the battle against hunger. "In the midst of the global food crisis, I find myself searching for stories of hope with tangible solutions now more than ever. In The New Breadline, Jean-Martin Bauer draws upon a lifetime on the frontlines of fighting hunger to deliver a must-read handbook that will inform, inspire, and ignite action to repair our broken food system." — José Andrés, Chef and Founder of World Central Kitchen

. At the turn of the twenty-first century, more than 150 countries pledged to eradicate hunger by 2030. But with only a few years left, we’re far from reaching that goal. Instead, hunger is on the rise—America itself recently experienced levels of food insecurity not seen since the Great Depression. How could the richest nation in the world have so many people going hungry? Drawing from his fieldwork in the most hunger-prone countries across the globe—from Haiti, where elites hoard imported French cheese, to Madagascar, where foreign corporations are snatching up valuable land from local farmers, to right here in America, where the lines at food banks continue to grow—Bauer weaves profound personal insight with a keen understanding of the structural systems of racism, classism, and sexism that thwart true progress in the battle against hunger. "In the midst of the global food crisis, I find myself searching for stories of hope with tangible solutions now more than ever. In The New Breadline, Jean-Martin Bauer draws upon a lifetime on the frontlines of fighting hunger to deliver a must-read handbook that will inform, inspire, and ignite action to repair our broken food system." — John Quincy Adams: A Man for the Whole People, by Randall Woods . In this masterful biography, historian Randall B. Woods peels back the many layers of John Quincy’s long life, exposing a rich and complicated family saga and a political legacy that transformed the American Republic. Born the first son of John and Abigail Adams, he was pressured to follow in his father’s footsteps in both law and politics. His boyhood was spent amid the furor of the American Revolution, and as a teen he assisted his father on diplomatic missions in Europe, hobnobbing with monarchs and statesmen, dining with Ben Franklin, sitting by Voltaire at the opera. He was intertwined with every famous American of his day, from Washington to Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, Jackson, Calhoun, Clay, and Webster. He was on stage, frequently front and center, during the Revolutionary Era, the fractious birth of American party politics, the War of 1812, the Era of Good Feelings, and the peak of Continental Expansion. It was against this backdrop that he served as an ambassador, senator, secretary of state, and, unhappily, as president. “Beautifully written biographies are rare gems, and Randall Woods’s John Quincy Adams is truly one of the most exquisite. In this contemporary moment when our democracy feels so fragile, and when the question of what defines us a nation—what will make us the most egalitarian, the most just—feels so pressing, this vibrant and rich look at the life of a man who was at the very center of an earlier so-similar moment in our nation’s past is sobering, hopeful, and needed.” —Heather Ann Thompson

. In this masterful biography, historian Randall B. Woods peels back the many layers of John Quincy’s long life, exposing a rich and complicated family saga and a political legacy that transformed the American Republic. Born the first son of John and Abigail Adams, he was pressured to follow in his father’s footsteps in both law and politics. His boyhood was spent amid the furor of the American Revolution, and as a teen he assisted his father on diplomatic missions in Europe, hobnobbing with monarchs and statesmen, dining with Ben Franklin, sitting by Voltaire at the opera. He was intertwined with every famous American of his day, from Washington to Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, Jackson, Calhoun, Clay, and Webster. He was on stage, frequently front and center, during the Revolutionary Era, the fractious birth of American party politics, the War of 1812, the Era of Good Feelings, and the peak of Continental Expansion. It was against this backdrop that he served as an ambassador, senator, secretary of state, and, unhappily, as president. John Quincy Adams Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life, by Ferris Jabr . One of humanity’s oldest beliefs is that our world is alive. Though once ridiculed by some scientists, the idea of Earth as a vast interconnected living system has gained acceptance in recent decades. We, and all living things, are more than inhabitants of Earth—we are Earth, an outgrowth of its structure and an engine of its evolution. Life and its environment have coevolved for billions of years, transforming a lump of orbiting rock into a cosmic oasis—a planet that breathes, metabolizes, and regulates its climate. Acclaimed science writer Ferris Jabr reveals a radical new vision of Earth where lush forests spew water, pollen, and bacteria to summon rain; giant animals engineer the very landscapes they roam; microbes chew rock to shape continents; and microscopic plankton, some as glittering as carved jewels, remake the air and sea. “Lamenting humanity’s outsized ecological footprint, Jabr notes how homo sapiens have acidified the oceans, stymied fire’s role in regulating forest ecosystems, and generated vast amounts of plastics that are killing wildlife. The science highlights the complex ways in which the planet has been shaped by its inhabitants, and Jabr’s sobering look at the harm wrought by humans finds some hope amid the gloom, suggesting that innovating carbon capture technology and cultivating oceanic kelp forests constitute promising strategies for sequestering atmospheric carbon. The result is an edifying and holistic view of life on Earth.”— Publishers Weekly

. One of humanity’s oldest beliefs is that our world is alive. Though once ridiculed by some scientists, the idea of Earth as a vast interconnected living system has gained acceptance in recent decades. We, and all living things, are more than inhabitants of Earth—we are Earth, an outgrowth of its structure and an engine of its evolution. Life and its environment have coevolved for billions of years, transforming a lump of orbiting rock into a cosmic oasis—a planet that breathes, metabolizes, and regulates its climate. Acclaimed science writer Ferris Jabr reveals a radical new vision of Earth where lush forests spew water, pollen, and bacteria to summon rain; giant animals engineer the very landscapes they roam; microbes chew rock to shape continents; and microscopic plankton, some as glittering as carved jewels, remake the air and sea. “Lamenting humanity’s outsized ecological footprint, Jabr notes how homo sapiens have acidified the oceans, stymied fire’s role in regulating forest ecosystems, and generated vast amounts of plastics that are killing wildlife. The science highlights the complex ways in which the planet has been shaped by its inhabitants, and Jabr’s sobering look at the harm wrought by humans finds some hope amid the gloom, suggesting that innovating carbon capture technology and cultivating oceanic kelp forests constitute promising strategies for sequestering atmospheric carbon. The result is an edifying and holistic view of life on Earth.”— Free the Land: How We Can Fight Poverty and Climate Chaos, by Audrea Lim . Climate change, gentrification, racial inequity, and corporate greed are some of the most urgent problems facing our society. They are traditionally treated as unrelated issues, but they all share a common root: the commodification of land. Environmental journalist Audrea Lim began to notice these connections a decade ago when she reported on the Native communities leading the fight against oil mining on their lands in the Canadian tar sands near her hometown of Calgary, but before long, she saw the essential role of land commodification and private ownership everywhere she looked: in foreclosure-racked suburbs and gentrifying cities like New York City; among poor, small farmers struggling to keep their businesses afloat; and in low-income communities attempting to resist mines and industrial development on their lands, only to find that their voices counted less than those of shareholders living thousands of miles away. “We're clearly at a moment where we've started running into real roadblocks as a species—when we need to question some very basic assumptions, perhaps above all about the proper balance between individual and community. This fascinating book offers some very new insights into that question—it will knock some rust off your brain!” —Bill McKibben

. Climate change, gentrification, racial inequity, and corporate greed are some of the most urgent problems facing our society. They are traditionally treated as unrelated issues, but they all share a common root: the commodification of land. Environmental journalist Audrea Lim began to notice these connections a decade ago when she reported on the Native communities leading the fight against oil mining on their lands in the Canadian tar sands near her hometown of Calgary, but before long, she saw the essential role of land commodification and private ownership everywhere she looked: in foreclosure-racked suburbs and gentrifying cities like New York City; among poor, small farmers struggling to keep their businesses afloat; and in low-income communities attempting to resist mines and industrial development on their lands, only to find that their voices counted less than those of shareholders living thousands of miles away. Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves, by Nicola Twilley . The introduction of artificial refrigeration overturned millennia of dietary history, launching a new chapter in human nutrition. We could now overcome not just rot, but seasonality and geography. Twilley takes readers on a tour of the cold chain from farm to fridge, visiting off-the-beaten-path landmarks such as Missouri’s subterranean cheese caves, the banana-ripening rooms of New York City, and the vast refrigerated tanks that store the nation’s orange juice reserves. Today, nearly three-quarters of everything on the average American plate is processed, shipped, stored, and sold under refrigeration. It’s impossible to make sense of our food system without understanding the all-but-invisible network of thermal control that underpins it. Twilley’s eye-opening book is the first to reveal the transformative impact refrigeration has had on our health and our guts; our farms, tables, kitchens, and cities; global economics and politics; and even our environment. “ Frostbite is astonishing. From daring cryonauts to exhaling salad bags to gaseous apples, Nicola Twilley brings readers on a jaw-dropping voyage that lays bare the miracle, mess, and surprising ramifications of refrigeration. A must-read for anyone who eats or drinks in the 21st century. I can’t stop thinking about this book.” —Bianca Bosker

. The introduction of artificial refrigeration overturned millennia of dietary history, launching a new chapter in human nutrition. We could now overcome not just rot, but seasonality and geography. Twilley takes readers on a tour of the cold chain from farm to fridge, visiting off-the-beaten-path landmarks such as Missouri’s subterranean cheese caves, the banana-ripening rooms of New York City, and the vast refrigerated tanks that store the nation’s orange juice reserves. Today, nearly three-quarters of everything on the average American plate is processed, shipped, stored, and sold under refrigeration. It’s impossible to make sense of our food system without understanding the all-but-invisible network of thermal control that underpins it. Twilley’s eye-opening book is the first to reveal the transformative impact refrigeration has had on our health and our guts; our farms, tables, kitchens, and cities; global economics and politics; and even our environment. Frostbite Swimming Pretty: The Untold Story of Women in Water, by Vicki Valosik .In this revelatory history, Vicki Valosik traces a century of aquatic performance, from vaudeville to the Olympic arena. Esther Williams, who became a Hollywood sensation for her splashy “aquamusicals,” was just one in a long, bedazzled line of swimmers who began their careers as athletes but found greater opportunity, and often social acceptance, in the world of show business. Early starlets like Lurline the Water Queen performed “scientific” swimming, a set of moves previously only practiced by men that focused on form and exhibited mastery in the water. Demonstrating their fancy feats in aquariums and water tanks rolled onto music hall stages, these women stunned Victorian audiences with their physical dexterity and defied society’s rigid expectations of what was proper and possible for their sex. Now, on the fortieth anniversary of synchronized swimming’s elevation to Olympic status, “Swimming Pretty honors its incredible history of grit, glamor, and sheer athleticism. Women swimmers have navigated tensions between athletics and performance, sport and spectacle, for generations,’ according to this comprehensive debut history . . . An incisive marriage of sports and cultural history, this is well worth diving into”.— Publishers Weekly

.In this revelatory history, Vicki Valosik traces a century of aquatic performance, from vaudeville to the Olympic arena. Esther Williams, who became a Hollywood sensation for her splashy “aquamusicals,” was just one in a long, bedazzled line of swimmers who began their careers as athletes but found greater opportunity, and often social acceptance, in the world of show business. Early starlets like Lurline the Water Queen performed “scientific” swimming, a set of moves previously only practiced by men that focused on form and exhibited mastery in the water. Demonstrating their fancy feats in aquariums and water tanks rolled onto music hall stages, these women stunned Victorian audiences with their physical dexterity and defied society’s rigid expectations of what was proper and possible for their sex. “Swimming Pretty Women swimmers have navigated tensions between athletics and performance, sport and spectacle, for generations,’ according to this comprehensive debut history . . . An incisive marriage of sports and cultural history, this is well worth diving into”.— Do I Know You?: A Faceblind Reporter’s Journey into the Science of Sight, Memory, and Imagination, by Sadie Dingfelder . The author has always known that she’s a little quirky, prone to making some strange mistakes over the years. With a mixture of curiosity and dread, Dingfelder starts contacting neuroscientists and lands herself in scores of studies. In the course of her nerdy midlife crisis, she discovers that she is emphatically not neurotypical. She has prosopagnosia (faceblindness), stereoblindness, aphantasia (an inability to create mental imagery), and a condition called severely deficient autobiographical memory. As Dingfelder begins to see herself more clearly, she discovers a vast well of hidden neurodiversity in the world at large. There are so many different flavors of human consciousness, and most of us just assume that ours is the norm. Can you visualize? Do you have an inner monologue? Are you always 100 percent sure whether you know someone or not? If you can perform any of these mental feats, you may be surprised to learn that many people—including Dingfelder—can’t. “The realization that some people see a flat world while others are menaced by three-dimensional objects is stunning. But it doesn’t end there. Digging deeper, she follows psychologists who are unraveling how we think about what we see and how our imaginations and memories are built. It’s a fascinating story that will make you rethink how you see the world.” —John Elder Robison

. The author has always known that she’s a little quirky, prone to making some strange mistakes over the years. With a mixture of curiosity and dread, Dingfelder starts contacting neuroscientists and lands herself in scores of studies. In the course of her nerdy midlife crisis, she discovers that she is emphatically not neurotypical. She has prosopagnosia (faceblindness), stereoblindness, aphantasia (an inability to create mental imagery), and a condition called severely deficient autobiographical memory. As Dingfelder begins to see herself more clearly, she discovers a vast well of hidden neurodiversity in the world at large. There are so many different flavors of human consciousness, and most of us just assume that ours is the norm. Can you visualize? Do you have an inner monologue? Are you always 100 percent sure whether you know someone or not? If you can perform any of these mental feats, you may be surprised to learn that many people—including Dingfelder—can’t. “The realization that some people see a flat world while others are menaced by three-dimensional objects is stunning. But it doesn’t end there. Digging deeper, she follows psychologists who are unraveling how we think about what we see and how our imaginations and memories are built. It’s a fascinating story that will make you rethink how you see the world.” Cue the Sun!: The Invention of Reality TV, by Emily Nussbaum . In sharp, absorbing prose, Nussbaum traces the jagged fuses of experimentation that exploded with Survivor at the turn of the millennium. She introduces the genre’s trickster pioneers, from the icy Allen Funt to the shambolic Chuck Barris; Cops auteur John Langley; cynical Bachelor ringmaster Mike Fleiss; and Jon Murray and Mary-Ellis Bunim, the visionaries behind The Real World—along with dozens of stars from An American Family, The Real World, Big Brother, Survivor, and The Bachelor. We learn about the tools of the trade—like the Frankenbite, a deceptive editor’s best friend—and ugly tales of exploitation. But Cue the Sun! also celebrates reality’s peculiar power: a jolt of emotion that could never have come from a script. What happened to the first reality stars, the Louds—and why won’t they speak to the couple who filmed them? Which serial killer won on The Dating Game? Nussbaum explores reality TV as a strike-breaker, the queer roots of Bravo, the dark truth behind The Apprentice, and more. “The finest kind of pop-cultural narrative history: inquisitive, discerning, surprising, thoughtful, informative, and lively; underpinned but not weighed down by its serious intent; and written with a storyteller’s verve, a journalist’s skepticism, a critic’s astuteness, and a fan’s loving eye.” —Michael Chabon

. In sharp, absorbing prose, Nussbaum traces the jagged fuses of experimentation that exploded with Survivor at the turn of the millennium. She introduces the genre’s trickster pioneers, from the icy Allen Funt to the shambolic Chuck Barris; Cops auteur John Langley; cynical Bachelor ringmaster Mike Fleiss; and Jon Murray and Mary-Ellis Bunim, the visionaries behind The Real World—along with dozens of stars from An American Family, The Real World, Big Brother, Survivor, and The Bachelor. We learn about the tools of the trade—like the Frankenbite, a deceptive editor’s best friend—and ugly tales of exploitation. But Cue the Sun! also celebrates reality’s peculiar power: a jolt of emotion that could never have come from a script. What happened to the first reality stars, the Louds—and why won’t they speak to the couple who filmed them? Which serial killer won on The Dating Game? Nussbaum explores reality TV as a strike-breaker, the queer roots of Bravo, the dark truth behind The Apprentice, and more. The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise, by Olivia Laing . In 2020, Olivia Laing began to restore an eighteenth-century walled garden in Suffolk, an overgrown Eden of unusual plants. The work brought to light a crucial question for our age: Who gets to live in paradise, and how can we share it while there’s still time? Moving between real and imagined gardens, from Milton’s Paradise Lost to John Clare’s enclosure elegies, from a wartime sanctuary in Italy to a grotesque aristocratic pleasure ground funded by slavery, Laing interrogates the sometimes shocking cost of making paradise on earth. “Laing’s piece resonates with an idea that applies not just in the backyard or the grand estate but everywhere: The garden itself is neither good nor evil, but the gardener makes it so.” — Peter Catapano - New York Times

. In 2020, Olivia Laing began to restore an eighteenth-century walled garden in Suffolk, an overgrown Eden of unusual plants. The work brought to light a crucial question for our age: Who gets to live in paradise, and how can we share it while there’s still time? Moving between real and imagined gardens, from Milton’s Paradise Lost to John Clare’s enclosure elegies, from a wartime sanctuary in Italy to a grotesque aristocratic pleasure ground funded by slavery, Laing interrogates the sometimes shocking cost of making paradise on earth. “Laing’s piece resonates with an idea that applies not just in the backyard or the grand estate but everywhere: The garden itself is neither good nor evil, but the gardener makes it so.” — Dancing on My Own: Essays on Art, Collectivity, and Joy, by Simon Wu . Emerging art critic and curator Simon Wu dances through the institutions of art, capitalism, and identity in these expertly researched, beautifully rendered essays. In “A Model Childhood” he catalogs the decades’ worth of clutter in his mother’s suburban garage and its meaning for himself and his family. In “For Everyone,” Wu explores the complicated sensation of the Telfar bag (often referred to as “the Brooklyn Birkin”) and asks whether fashion can truly be revolutionary in a capitalist system—if something can truly be “for everyone” without undercutting someone else. Throughout, Wu centers the sticky vulnerability of living in a body in a world where history is mapped into every choice we make, every party drug we take, and every person we kiss. “This exhilarating debut essay collection from art curator Wu uses cultural artifacts as springboards to reflect on connection, sexuality, and the immigrant experience. . . . This dynamic first outing heralds the arrival of a promising new talent.” — Publishers Weekly

. Emerging art critic and curator Simon Wu dances through the institutions of art, capitalism, and identity in these expertly researched, beautifully rendered essays. In “A Model Childhood” he catalogs the decades’ worth of clutter in his mother’s suburban garage and its meaning for himself and his family. In “For Everyone,” Wu explores the complicated sensation of the Telfar bag (often referred to as “the Brooklyn Birkin”) and asks whether fashion can truly be revolutionary in a capitalist system—if something can truly be “for everyone” without undercutting someone else. Throughout, Wu centers the sticky vulnerability of living in a body in a world where history is mapped into every choice we make, every party drug we take, and every person we kiss. “This exhilarating debut essay collection from art curator Wu uses cultural artifacts as springboards to reflect on connection, sexuality, and the immigrant experience. . . . This dynamic first outing heralds the arrival of a promising new talent.” — Do Something: Coming of Age Amid the Glitter and Doom of '70s New York, by Guy Trebay. If you know, you know. If you don’t know, perhaps there’s a part of you that wishes you did. My twenties in the 1970s began my years of exploring New York City. While I was never a denizen of the scene described here, and while the 1980s were really my prime prowling years, I have tremendous nostalgia for the gritty energy of the city back then. Trebay offers an evocative coming-of-age memoir—the story of the education of a wayward wild child and acidhead who, searching for meaning and purpose, found refuge in the demimonde of the ruined but magical metropolis that was New York City in the 1970s. Unschooled and on his own, Trebay became a striver, wending his way through a seemingly apocalyptic landscape populated by a vibrant cast of characters, including washed-up Hollywood screenwriters of the ’30s; Warhol superstars like Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling; fashion geniuses like Charles James; and emerging artists, filmmakers, writers, designers, photographers, and deejays who would powerfully influence mainstream culture in the decades to come. “ Do Something is so beautiful and so personal that one feels like an intimate friend after reading Trebay's tale of New York in the 1970’s. I loved it all. It's the mark of something powerful when a voice lingers in one’s head after one reads a book, and Trebay's voice rings incredibly clear.”

—Tom Ford, fashion designer and filmmaker

All book links in this diary are to my online bookstore The Literate Lizard. If you already have a favorite indie bookstore, please keep supporting them, but If you’re able to throw a little business my way, that would be truly appreciated. I would love to be considered ‘The Official Bookstore of Daily Kos.’ Use the coupon code DAILYKOS for 15% off your order, in gratitude for your support (an ever-changing smattering of new releases are already discounted 20% each week). I’m busily adding new content every day, and will have lots more dedicated subject pages and curated booklists as it grows. I want it to be full of book-lined rabbit holes to lose yourself in (and maybe throw some of those books into a shopping cart as well.)

We also partner Libro.fm for audiobooks. Libro.fm is similar to Amazon’s Audible, with a la carte audiobooks, or a $14.99 monthly membership which includes the audiobook of your choice and 20% off subsequent purchases during the month. Note that the DAILYKOS coupon code is only for the bookstore, not for the audiobook affiliate.

READERS & BOOK LOVERS SERIES SCHEDULE

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