BOOKS WE RECOMMEND THIS WEEK

Chirdeep Malhotra . Updated: 7/8/2021 11:12:01 PM Books and Authors

From an epistolary novel about a New England Jewish family, to a book combining insights of a memoir with a manifesto of feminism, our book picks this week, curated by Chirdeep Malhotra

FICTION

“American War” by Omar El Akkad

This novel imagines a dystopian future: a second American Civil War, a devastating plague and one family caught deep in the middle. In “American War”, we’re asked to consider what might happen if America were to turn its most devastating policies and deadly weapons against itself. The novel has won the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction, and was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction and the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction Book of the Year.



HUMOROUS FICTION

“Nuclear Family: A Tragicomic Novel in Letters” by Susanna Fogel

This comedic novel is about a fractured family of New England Jews and their discontents, over the course of three decades. Told entirely in letters to a heroine we never meet, we get to know the Fellers through their check-ins with Julie: their thank-you notes, letters of condolence, family gossip, and good old-fashioned familial passive-aggression. Together, their letters – some sardonic, others absurd, others heartbreaking – weave a tapestry of a very modern family trying (and often failing) to show one another they care.



MEMOIR/ NON-FICTION

“How to Raise a Feminist Son: A Memoir and Manifesto” by Sonora Jha

In this memoir plus manifesto, Sonora Jha combines her own journey as a feminist, with her journey as a mother attempting to raise a man with compassion, empathy and kindness. Informed by the author's work as a professor of journalism specializing in social-justice movements and social media, as well as by conversations with psychologists, experts, and other parents and boys, this book follows one mother's journey to raise a feminist son as a single parent. This empowering book offers much-needed insight and actionable advice, and through stories from her own life and wide-ranging research, the author shows us all how to be better feminists and better teachers of the next generation of men in this electrifying tour de force.



BIOGRAPHY/ NON-FICTION

“The Code Breaker” by Walter Isaacson

This is a biography of Dr. Jennifer Doudna, winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for her work on the CRISPR gene editing system. CRISPR, an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA, has opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions. It has already been deployed to cure deadly diseases, fight the coronavirus pandemic, and make inheritable changes in the genes of babies. The book, while profiling Dr. Jennifer Doudna and other scientists for their revolutionary gene-editing tool, also discusses the ethical implications of their work.


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