Lisa B

The book's messaging around systemic racism and structural violence can be heavy-handed, relying on clunky exposition and stock characters rather than trusting Amal and the reader to gradually awaken to a greater awareness of these issues through the story. The writing, however, can be captivating and powerful, especially when it lets the reader into Amal's interior life. Spare and straightforward verse gives way to vibrant, rhythmic bursts when he spits his rhymes. He is a wonderfully complex

Drawing on archival research, public opinion survey data and his own memories of growing up in the Deep South, Jones, founder and CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), builds a convincing case that white Christianity has played a central role in sustaining racist attitudes and actions in America. According to Jones, despite the official proclamations of churches at the national, institutional level in favor of racial justice, the theology of American Christianity provides the fou

As far-fetched as some of his ideas seem, Eagleman grounds all of his predictions in extensive research, citing dozens of experiments. And although the book can get technical in its descriptions of how the brain works, he makes good use of analogies and anecdotes to keep the material approachable regardless of the reader's prior knowledge. At some points, Eagleman gets too wrapped up in the "gee-whiz" factor of future possibilities. However, the author is a skilled storyteller and an assured gui

"Museums...are collections sorted and arranged into stories, given order and explanation and sense," A. Kendra Greene writes in The Museum of Whales You Will Never See. Greene's roving, ranging book of essays takes the reader on a tour of a handful of them. But this is no mere travelogue. Greene's work is itself a collection of varied, disparate pieces—long-form journalism, personal essay, history, academic treatise—arranged into winsome stories that seek to give "order and ex