Susie

A young girl who cruises gay men under the pier at Long Beach... Don’t you want to know what happens next?

Myriam Gurba was one of my favorite discoveries during the my Best American Erotica days. A Chicana lesbian writer and performer from East L.A., Myriam happens to be a great beauty, but I had no idea about that when I first published her. I wondered when I read her first story, "Is she six? Sixteen? Sixty?" Gurba is ageless, an amazing writer. Join the fan club before it gets too crowded!

Dahlia Season not only contains the title novella, a story about a goth dykling and her adventures being shipped off to Catholic High School— and then to Mexico— but Gurba's most acclaimed short stories as well!

"To Repair the World" is a collection of calls-to-action Paul Farmer has delivered to medical schools around the country.

Farmer's speeches were designed to inspire the next generation of doctors and health care activists— but they will put a fire under anyone's pants.

In his words, "Resist the impoverishment of aspiration."

The man has remarkable rhetorical gifts, but the power of Farmer's speech comes from the compassion and empathy he’s gained from his experience working in communities without adequate health care.

In the introduction, President Bill Clinton writes of learning about Paul Farmer in a New Yorker profile and calling his daughter Chelsea to ask if she knew of him.

Duh, Dad.

Chelsea told her father that Farmer is "our generation's Albert Schweizer." Good comparison. Schweizer's "reverence for life" translates into Farmer's assertion that health care should be seen as a human right— that all deserve care.

Farmer has an evidence-based conviction: poverty and disease are solvable problems. Faced with a mountain of incalcitrance, you don't grab a pick ax and start chipping away— you invent a new way to bring it all down.

Randolph’s protagonist, Mary Rasmussen, is that woman. She was born and raised on a ranch in the middle of Nowhere, Nebraska—aka The Sandhills. The story opens with Mary in the hospital, waking up to discover that she’s missing a leg, and her husband is dead. Her isolation and despair drive her to marry a preacher who makes her life unbearable.

I was wondering the whole time if she was going to murder him in his sleep— but I won’t spoil what actually happens…

There’s not ONE American folk or country music fan, there’s not one American rock or pop critic, who hasn’t paid homage to this man or fallen in love with his many songs and musicial discoveries.

Finally, we have a biography that has all the humor, warmth, and campfire-style storytelling that captures everything Mike Seeger has brought to the table of American culture.

This is the case that broke open the COINTELPRO operation at the FBI and all of J. Edgar Hoover’s dirty tricks.

With the Aaron Swartz tragedy so fresh in our minds, it's worthwhile to re-visit the machinations of institutional persecution and cover-up that comes right from the top.

Fred Hampton is still a household name in the black community and anyone who ever filed a “Freedom of Information Act" request.

I helped organize a national tour of the movie based on Hampton's case in the 1970s... it was seared into my mind. I’m delighted to find Haas's excellent new book on the whole saga.

The story is enthralling— scary, suspenseful, funny— young people hanging onto the edge of their seats by sheer wit and passion. It’s hard to believe they were so young, in their late teens. and taking on the world. Inspiring.

Excellent narration by George Newborn who brings emotion and clarity to the reading.

Elizabeth McKenzie has written one of those rare books that seems to capture adolescence like a photograph.

Stop that Girl gets it all right; outsized action that rings true, gnarled family relationships that are at once damaging and fortifying, and emotional showdowns both ridiculous and cathartic.

Ann Ransom, the narrator, is a classic child heroine. Brave, sarcastic, and just a bit precocious. She's driven to please her family members even when those around her have competing demands and takes on the role of confidant and caregiver from an early age.

Like anyone who's found themselves in this situation, she does her best to cope, but it's not always what the adult world would expect-- Running off with her new baby sister in a crowded airport to get away from the arguing adults, for example.

Ann's family moves around throughout her life looking for a place where they feel they belong, and California becomes an unstated character in the book. The oil fields, the swimming pools and cul-de-sacs. I felt the presence of my home sate in every line.

I know narrator Elizabeth Evans from "Mermaids" and "Jesus Land." She does such a nice job with adolescent heroines. She gives them tenderness and an iron core.

Lonesome Animals reminds me of True Grit, but told from the perspective of the bounty hunter. Like Charles Portis's classic, it's plenty funny, quite serious, and sometimes brutal.

This book is all about the hunter “coming out of retirement” for one last case. In this instance, to stop a serial killer targeting Native Americans. A Western crime mystery with tough villains, oddball characters and an even odder hero.

I love our hero's tactics for catching criminals—when he’s “waiting out” someone and grows impatient, he throws live grenades, starts a fire, or rolls boulders in their direction. A loved one dies when she’s too slow to pepper his sausage— And that’s just the prologue!

Narrated with complete aplomb, by the author. What a magnificent reader.

Shawn Fanning and Napster overthrew the music industry—and if you don't think you're still reeling from that revolution, sit down and prepare to have your mind blown.

Fanning never went away. His legend in IT and the transformation of intellectual property on the Internet is something we take for granted now— but its origins are something out of a down and dirty mystery novel.

This is Joseph Menn's meticulous investigation of how Shawn unearthed the firmament— the eye-opening reveals are incredible. The tale of Fanning's shady uncle pushes the story into a true-crime investigation.

Take a listen!

If you've ever read stories about “gay dolphins” and the like, you can thank the work of evolutionary biologist Joan Roughgarden.

Roughgarden's book Evolution's Rainbow has caused huge amounts of controversy since it was first published in 2004, depicting a natural world in which animals' lives are teeming with the same variety in their sex lives and behaviors as any human being— but without the moral outrage.

Alfred Kinsey supposedly once said that "The only unnatural sex act is that which you cannot perform." Roughgarden takes that sentiment and runs with it, giving example after example of just how broad the spectrum of "natural" sex and gender really is in the animal world.

For instance, meet the bighorn sheep: macho males live apart from the females and have lots of anal sex to keep them occupied during the mating off-season. Then they rely on feminine males to broker sex between them and the ladies.

Same-sex swan couples happen to be far better parents than their hetero counterparts. Fish bros work together to get laid. Those doves aren’t actually monogamous. Through impeccable empirical evidence, Roughgarden opens up a world where humans aren’t the center of the universe, and animals have their own dramas and life cycles to get through.

Roughgarden also explores the world of science itself, shining a light on scientists who have refused to acknowledge that animals engage in homosexual behavior, or any gender roles that deviate from the classic Darwinian model of promiscuous males competing for picky females. Sometimes, it's just the opposite!