BookSwell

When Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, President Obama observed that Trump "is not an outlier; he is a culmination, a logical conclusion of the rhetoric and tactics of the Republican Party." In Burning Down the House, historian Julian Zelizer pinpoints the moment when our country was set on a path toward an era of bitterly partisan and ruthless politics, an era that was ignited by Newt Gingrich and his allies. In 1989, Gingrich brought down Democratic Speaker of the House Jim Wright and catapulted himself into the national spotlight. Perhaps more than any other politician, Gingrich introduced the rhetoric and tactics that have shaped Congress and the Republican Party for the last three decades.

Ashley Bennett and her friends are living the charmed life. It’s the end of senior year and they’re spending more time at the beach than in the classroom. They can already feel the sunny days and endless possibilities of summer. Everything changes one afternoon in April, when four LAPD officers are acquitted after beating a black man named Rodney King half to death. Suddenly, Ashley’s not just one of the girls. She’s one of the black kids.

In Gonzalo Torné’s El corazon de la fiesta, Clara might be out of her depth when the friends’ and neighbors’ problems she’d hoped to solve run deeper and wider than she’d thought.

A reissue of Ian F. Svenonius's cult-classic debut essay collection, including brand-new writing in this expanded edition. Ian F. Svenonius is the author of the underground best sellers Supernatural Strategies for Making a Rock 'n' Roll Group and Censorship Now!! He was also the host of VBS.tv's Soft Focus, where he interviewed Mark E. Smith, Genesis P. Orridge, Chan Marshall, Ian MacKaye, and others.

Currently, 3.7 million Americans call themselves preppers. Millions more prep without knowing it. Bradley Garrett, who began writing this book years before the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, argues that prepping is a rational response to global, social, and political systems that are failing to produce credible narratives of continued stability. Left with a sense of foreboding fueled by disease outbreaks, increasing government dysfunctionality, eroding critical infrastructure, nuclear brinksmanship, and an accelerating climate crisis, people all over the world are responding predictably—by hunkering down.

We’re reading Pulitzer Prize winner Colson Whitehead’s Zone One, an apocalyptic story with zombies and a virus.

Join us on Wednesday, August 12th at 11:00 am for a virtual event with our publisher sales reps. Grab your tea, late breakfast, or early lunch and tune in to hear our reps talk about their current book recommendations.

One afternoon, in a town in southeastern Nigeria, a mother opens her front door to discover her son's body, wrapped in colorful fabric, at her feet. What follows is the tumultuous, heart-wrenching story of one family's struggle to understand a child whose spirit is both gentle and mysterious. Raised by a distant father and an understanding but overprotective mother, Vivek suffers disorienting blackouts, moments of disconnection between self and surroundings.

As the town spends the week preparing for a mysterious Forgiveness Festival, Pew is shuttled from one household to the next. The earnest and seemingly well-meaning townspeople see conflicting identities in Pew, and many confess their fears and secrets to them in one-sided conversations. Pew listens and observes while experiencing brief flashes of past lives or clues about their origin. As days pass, the void around Pew’s presence begins to unnerve the community, whose generosity erodes into menace and suspicion. Yet by the time Pew’s story reaches a shattering and unsettling climax at the Forgiveness Festival, the secret of who they really are—a devil or an angel or something else entirely—is dwarfed by even larger truths.

Join acclaimed artist, writer, and educator Harry Gamboa, Jr. and journalist Rex Weiner for an in-depth discussion of Gamboa's new poetry collection Flowers for the Dead. Harry Gamboa Jr. is an artist, writer, and educator. He is the founder and director of the international performance troupe, Virtual Vérité (2005-2017). He is also a co-founder of Asco (1972-1985), the Los Angeles-based performance group.

Dreams collide with reality, modernity with antiquity, and myth with identity in the twelve arresting stories of A House Is a Body. In "Earthly Pleasures," a young painter living alone in San Francisco begins a secret romance with one of India's biggest celebrities, and desire and ego are laid bare. In "A Simple Composition," a husband's professional crisis leads to his wife's discovery of a dark, ecstatic joy.

Described by Run-DMC founder Rev.Run as “exceptional”, Dispatches from the Vanguard is a celebration of the Global International African Arts Movement. Featuring interviews by editor Patrick A. Howell with writers, poets, artists, social entrepreneurs, and activists, the book provides incredible insight into the work of leading cultural innovators. Among those interviewed are Ishmael Reed, Tyehimba Jess, Rich Fresh, Nikki Giovanni, Nnedi Okorafor, Chester Higgins, and Jaki Shelton Green.

Throughout narrative history, horror has been used to reflect the things we are afraid of or are dealing with as a society. From Frankenstein's reflected fear of the industrial revolution and meddling with nature, to Dracula's dealings with Victorian ideas of sexuality, to the zombie's survivalist fear on a dying planet rife with contagion. Four horror authors and editors talk about what they write and publish, and how to move forward as the world dishes out new horrors daily.A BookSwell event co-hosted by Kate Maruyama & Cody Sisco, featuring Rena Mason, Kate Jonez, Michael Paul Gonzalez, and Nicole Sconiers.

You are invited to virtually join author Deborah Lott in conversation with author Melissa Cistaro. They will be discussing Lott's recently released memoir and and also refer to Cistaro's 2015 memoir - both books examine fraught family relationships.

Write Left 2020 features fourteen poets: Steve Abee | Iris Berry | Zoe Blaq | Busstop Prophet | John Dorsey | Alexis Rhone Fancher | S.A. Griffin | Armond Kindard | Kuahmel | Ellyn Maybe | Teresa Mei Chuc | jerry the priest | Terry Robinson | Jeff Rogers Created in 2019 by S.A. Griffin and Jeff Rogers, Write Left brings together left handed poets and writers in recognition and celebration of their strange place in our right handed world. Left handed people comprise only about 10 percent of the population of the United States, and in some countries, as little as 2-3 percent.

Los Angeles in the sixties was a hotbed of political and social upheaval. The city was a launchpad for Black Power--where Malcolm X and Angela Davis first came to prominence and the Watts uprising shook the nation. The city was home to the Chicano Blowouts and Chicano Moratorium, as well as being the birthplace of "Asian American" as a political identity. It was a locus of the antiwar movement, gay liberation movement, and women's movement, and, of course, the capital of California counterculture.Mike Davis and Jon Wiener provide the first comprehensive movement history of L.A. in the sixties, drawing on extensive archival research and dozens of interviews with principal figures, as well as the authors' storied personal histories as activists.

In 2012, Dr. Karen King, a star professor at Harvard Divinity School, announced a blockbuster discovery at a scholarly conference just steps from the Vatican: She had found an ancient fragment of papyrus in which Jesus calls Mary Magdalene "my wife."

Camila is twenty-two years old and a new mother. She has no family to rely on, no partner, and no home. Despite her intelligence and determination, the odds are firmly stacked against her. In this extraordinary work of literary reportage, Lauren Sandler chronicles a year in Camila's life--from the birth of her son to his first birthday--as she navigates the labyrinth of poverty and homelessness in New York City. In her attempts to secure a safe place to raise her son and find a measure of freedom in her life, Camila copes with dashed dreams, failed relationships, the desolation of abandonment, and miles of red tape with grit, humor, and uncanny resilience.

When Sara Schaefer is in first grade, her father warns her to always tell the truth because one lie leads to another and soon you will find yourself in a hole you can't escape. A few years later, the Schaefer family is completely upended when it's revealed that their grand life is based on a lie. Her parents become pariahs in their upper middle class community and go from non-religious people to devout church members. The idea of good and evil as binary, opposed forces is drilled into Sara and it becomes the perfect framework on which to build her anxiety and increasingly-obsessive thoughts.

Join us for Jokes & Poems with Mike Birbiglia and J. Hope Stein as they celebrate the release of THE NEW ONE! Signed (bookplate) copies available while supplies last. In 2016 comedian Mike Birbiglia and poet Jennifer Hope Stein took their fourteen-month-old daughter Oona to the Nantucket Film Festival. When the festival director picked them up at the airport she asked Mike if he would perform at the storytelling night. She said, “The theme of the stories is jealousy.”