From the Fall 2023 edition of The Prairie Progressive, Iowa’s oldest progressive newsletter. The PP is  funded entirely by reader subscription, available in hard copy for $15/yr.  Send check to PP, Box 1945, Iowa City 52244. Click here for archived issues

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley 2023 is a good time to read a novel written in 1932,  even more prescient than Orwell’s 1984. “You can’t consume much if you sit still and read books.”

Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris

Thirty years ago, computers, coffee, and cocaine converged in Palo Alto, California, the hometown of Stanford University and the Hoover Institute. The world was forever changed. Malcolm Harris grew up in this town and attended Ohlone Elementary School, named after the thousands of natives who were slaughtered by settlers in the years following the Gold Rush. Harris makes a convincing case that the “Tall Tree” has led the US in efficiently combining academia, capitalism, militarism, technology, and white supremacy.

Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead

One of America’s greatest writers scores again. A devoted father confronts corruption and crime in 1970s Harlem while trying to find Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter. Only  Whitehead could come up with the most appropriate slogan for America’s bicentennial celebration: “Two Hundred Years of Getting Away with It!”

The Great Man by Kate Christensen

A famous New York City artist dies. His wife and his mistress of many years maneuver to have the last word on his life. Two art critics compete to write his definitive biography. Christensen’s The Last Cruise is an equally fast, funny, and smart read by this Iowa
Writers’ Workshop visiting professor.

A History of America in Ten Strikes by Erik Loomis

The strikes detailed in this book have much to teach us about the strongest weapon workers have in the struggle for fair wages, dignity, and justice— and what we can learn from defeats as well as victories. A must-read for anyone following today’s national
struggles like Starbucks United, UPS Teamsters, and Screen Actors Guild, as well as Iowa battlefields like the Englert Theatre in Iowa City and Amcor in Des Moines. Especially relevant during the current (as we go to press) United Auto Workers strike.

Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley

An Oakland teen-ager drops out of high school and becomes ensnared in sex work to pay the rent. Struggling to survive, she is further ensnared in an ugly police scandal. A stunning first novel that somehow finds hope in a dehumanizing system.

Malicious Intent: Murder and the Perpetuation of Jim Crow Health Care
by David Barton Smith

A suspenseful murder mystery combined with a gripping history of America’s intentionally unequal health care system. Read it and ask yourself again: why doesn’t the richest nation on earth have universal health care?

The Postcard by Anne Berest

Being Jewish in Paris in the early 1940s was to live with a deepening, inexorable fear of being rounded up, deported, and murdered. The author confronts, in the form of a novel, the history of her ancestors who died at Auschwitz. “I carry within me, inscribed in the very cells of my body, the memory of an experience of danger so violent that sometimes I think I really lived it myself, or that I’ll be forced to relive it one day.”

The Ride Together
by Paul Karasik and Judy Karasik

A half text, half graphic memoir adds up to a fully engaging depiction of a family living with autism. Honest, funny, and poignant without being sentimental or sugar-coated.

Prairie Dog’s Poetry Corner

Need a pause from politics? Here are three recent collections to cleanse your mind
and soul (but don’t be surprised if politics sneaks in).
• Time is a Mother by Ocean Vuong
• Pilgrim Bell by Kaveh Akbar
• Gravity and Center by Henri Cole

The Swine Republic by Chris Jones

Did you think Prairie Dog was going to overlook the year’s most talked-about book in Iowa? This collection of fearless essays lambasts the agro-industrial cabal that has defiled Iowa’s lakes and rivers—at taxpayer expense.
—Prairie Dog