Posted on

‘Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult’ by Maria Bamford

Some of her misadventures … feel like anything but laughing matters. But it’s a testament to Bamford that she’s able to fill these pages with stories that are relatable and consistently hilarious, even when they’re harrowing. Throughout, she rejects the appeal of tidy solutions, instead embracing messy self-acceptance. Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)

Posted on

The Twilight Zone and the Postwar American Dream

Historian Brokaw debuts with a penetrating analysis of how the Twilight Zone (1959–1964) exposed the dark underbelly of Cold War America. Examining key episodes, Brokaw argues that creator Rod Serling “sought to… reframe popular portrayals of white Americans’ wish-fulfillments as nightmares rather than aspirational dreams.” Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)

Posted on

‘Witness’ by Jamel Brinkley

Brinkley is a writer whose versatility knows no boundaries. He can make you laugh, cry, contemplate life’s deepest questions, remember what it was like to be a child, and feel the warmth, or chill, of your own family history. Tapping into the sticky stuff of humanity, each story is a gift of the highest quality, reminding us that we are all both in the audience and on life’s stage, even if we don’t know it. Forever the witness and the witnessed. Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)

Posted on

Counterweight by Djuna

An efficient, fast-paced cyberpunk story . . . The novel’s speculations about human agency resonate in the current moment, when American tech C.E.O.s oscillate between issuing sonorous warnings about the existential risks of the A.I. systems they’re developing and breathless hype about brain-computer interfaces. The book imagines the imminent emergence of companies run by artificial intelligence—companies as intelligence, a fusion of technology and economic logic that will definitively outrun humanity. Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)