Linda Gordon

Linda Gordon, winner of two Bancroft Prizes and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, is the author of The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition, Dorothea Lange and Impounded, and the coauthor of Feminism Unfinished. She is the Florence Kelley Professor of History at New York University and lives in New York and Madison, Wisconsin.

From Gordon's Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: What accounted for the Klan’s rise in the 1920s, and how strong was its influence during that decade?

A: There are two factors. First is the rise in the volume of immigration starting in the 1880s. They were not mainly Protestants—you have all these Catholics, Jews, Greek and Russian Orthodox people, who were made to seem like a threat.

The second happened directly after World War I—a real rise in prosecution and persecution of dissenters with many deportations. It set a precedent for the idea that dissent should be repressed. That is a lot of what the Klan is about—the notion that we should all be alike. It was very uncomfortable with diversity….

Q: How does it compare with other movements of the time?

A: The film Birth of a Nation premiered in 1915. The Klan used that as an enormous tool in recruitment…It was oriented toward the South and toward scurrilous stigmatizing of African Americans. One of the things I felt from writing about this was that one kind of bigotry...[read on]

Visit Linda Gordon's website.

Writers Read: Linda Gordon.

The Page 99 Test: The Second Coming of the KKK.

--Marshal Zeringue

Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker's latest book is Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. From his Q&A with Slate's Isaac Chotiner:

Isaac Chotiner: What is it that you think we misunderstand about our current moment in relation to our past?

Steven Pinker: The heart of the book is a set of graphs showing that measures of human well-being have improved over time. Contrary to the impression that you might get from the newspapers—that we’re living in a time of epidemics and war and crime—the curves show that humanity has been getting better, that we’re living longer, we are fighting fewer wars, and fewer people are being killed in the wars. Our rate of homicide is down. Violence against women is down. More children are going to school, girls included. More of the world is literate. We have more leisure time than our ancestors did. Diseases are being decimated. Famines are becoming rarer, so virtually anything that you could measure that you’d want to call human well-being has improved over the last two centuries, but also over the last couple of decades.

What do you want to get across other than, “Things are better”? Are you just trying to set the record straight, or are you trying to get us to think differently about the way things are now?

No, I’m absolutely trying to get people to think differently.

I put the facts of progress in the context of...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Alison Gaylin

Alison Gaylin's new novel is If I Die Tonight.

From the author's Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for If I Die Tonight?

A: Two events involving social media inspired me. The first happened a few years ago, when my daughter was 13. There was a hit-and-run incident in a nearby town, involving two teenage boys from rival high schools.

What I found so remarkable about the incident was the way in which the story got spun, particularly by the kids, into something that it wasn't. Through small-town gossip and the use of social media, the narrative became something completely removed from the real story, something much bigger and elaborate and clear-cut.

One of the boys also had a 13-year-old brother, and I found myself wondering what he was going through...

The other thing that inspired me was when Sinead O'Connor posted a suicide note on Facebook. She was obviously very troubled, and being an old fan of her music I found it heartbreaking.

But the thing that I noticed most about her suicide note was that...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Alison Gaylin's website.

The Page 69 Test: Into the Dark.

The Page 69 Test: What Remains of Me.

--Marshal Zeringue

E.J. Swift

E.J. Swift is a speculative fiction writer based in London. Her new novel is Paris Adrift. From her Q&A with DJ at mylifemybooksmyescape:

DJ: What is Paris Adrift about?

E.J.: It’s a tale of time travel, bartenders and the City of Light. Hallie is a young woman who moves to Paris to try and escape her past. Initially it’s all going well: she finds a bar job and a community of fellow drifters in the bohemian district of Montmartre, but gets more than she bargained for when she discovers a time portal in the keg room, meets the mysterious Chronometrist, and finds herself caught up in a mission to prevent the end of the world.

DJ: What were some of your influences for Paris Adrift?

E.J.: I lived in Paris for 18 months and fell in love with the city, particularly the area of Montmartre which is a hybrid of the picturesque – Sacre Coeur and the brasseries and boutique stores of Rue des Abbesses – and the grubbier, seedier side of Paris. I also adore the film Moulin Rouge, although...[read on]

See Swift's five best SFF books set in Paris.

--Marshal Zeringue

Virginia Eubanks

Virginia Eubanks is the author of a new book, Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police and Punish the Poor. From the transcript of her interview with NPR's Ari Shapiro:

SHAPIRO: Virginia Eubanks argues that many of the automated systems that deliver public services today are rigged against the people these programs are supposed to serve. She dives deep into three examples of automated public services - welfare benefits in Indiana, housing for the homeless in Los Angeles and children's services in Allegheny County, Pa., which includes Pittsburgh.

The Indiana case was so bad that the state eventually gave up on the automated system. Virginia Eubanks started by telling me what state lawmakers were trying to accomplish through automation.

EUBANKS: Indiana was attempting to save money and to make the system more efficient. But the way the system rolled out, it seems like one of the intentions was actually to break the relationship between caseworkers and the families they served. The governor sort of did a press tour around this contract. And one of the things he kept bringing up was there was one case where two case workers had colluded with some recipients to defraud the government for about - I think it was about $8,000.

And the governor used this case over and over and over again to suggest that when caseworkers and families have personal relationships, that it's an invitation to fraud. So the system was actually designed to break that relationship. So what happened is the state replaced about 1,500 local caseworkers with online forms and regional call centers.

And that resulted in a million benefits denials in the first three years of the experiment, which was a 54 percent increase from the three years before.

SHAPIRO: Is an automated system of public services inherently going to be less helpful, less effective than something like Uber or Lyft or Amazon or all the automated things that people who are not in poverty rely on every day?

EUBANKS: No. There's nothing intrinsic in automation that makes it bad for the poor. One of my greatest fears...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Celia C. Pérez

Celia C. Pérez is the author of The First Rule of Punk. From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for The First Rule of Punk, and for your character Malú?

A: The idea and the character came, in part, from my own experiences growing up as a child of immigrants and as a reader. Growing up, I often felt like I didn't quite fit in. My dad is Cuban and my mom is Mexican so there was always a feeling of being in between cultures. Being bicultural in the U.S. added another element of being neither one nor the other.

Growing up as a reader, I didn't see a character or story that closely resembled my own until I was in college. I got into punk and making zines, which are a great way to express yourself and your interests, a long time ago.

So when I started writing this character it just felt natural to make her a little punk who not only didn't fit in with her mom's expectation of what it was like to be a girl and Mexican American, but who also...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Gregg Easterbrook

Gregg Easterbrook's latest book is It's Better Than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear. From the transcript of his interview with NPR's Sarah McCammon:

MCCAMMON: And you do write that President Trump and other politicians have sold the American people and perhaps the British people on a much dimmer view of the state of things. You write Trump convinced voters that our country is going to hell. Despite the industrial output record, Trump convinced voters that we don't make things anymore. Despite the glittering numbers, Trump convinced voters that the economy is always bad - down, down, down. Despite the urban comebacks of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., Trump convinced voters that American cities have no education, they have no jobs and so on. So if everything is so great, then why is this idea that you call declinism so alluring for so many people?

EASTERBROOK: I think there - I say in the book there are four basic categories of knowing, and one is certainty. The sun is 93 million miles from the Earth. There's nothing to discuss there. Another is faith versus doubt. We can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God. A third is opinion. Which beer do you like the best? I mean, it's just opinion. And then there's what you want to believe. What you want to believe is so much stronger than all other forms of knowing.

Americans want to believe that their country is falling apart. This is not a brand-new belief. This belief has been deep in American culture for generations. Far in the past, intellectuals thought America was falling apart. We seemed to have trained ourselves to believe this despite declining pollution, increasing longevity, less discrimination, less violence. Everything that you can measure has been steadily better during the lifetime of almost all of your listeners to this program.

MCCAMMON: We can't talk about the future without talking, I think, about one of the biggest threats - that being climate change. You acknowledge that rising sea levels pose a major threat to people's lives and livelihoods. But even on that topic, you express optimism that between technology and adaptation, humans will solve that problem, too. You know, we're already seeing rising seas and global warming. Why are you so optimistic we can solve this one in time?

EASTERBROOK: A core distinction I try to make in "It's Better Than It Looks" is being optimistic doesn't mean...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Lianne Oelke

Lianne Oelke's new young adult novel is Nice Try, Jane Sinner.

From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for your novel, and for your character Jane Sinner?

A: I struggled with depression in university, and keeping a journal helped me deal with all my negative thoughts. When I re-read what I wrote, I didn't like the person I was. I started typing up the journal entries so I could take out things I didn't like and add things that made me laugh.

Eventually I realized that I was writing about someone like me, but different. Bolder. Someone with a cool name, like Jane Sinner. I weaved in a plot to tie everything together (I was watching a lot of The Bachelor at the time, so reality TV was a natural choice).

Once I decided I was writing a novel, it took about three years to finish a draft I was reasonably proud of.

Q: What do you think the book says about the role of reality TV in today’s world?

A: Reality TV--just like social media--has done so much to open up personal lives to the world. Anyone can share anything, and it's both intimate and alienating.

Part of the appeal of putting yourself out there is that it....[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Sarah McBride

Sarah McBride is a progressive activist and currently the National Press Secretary at the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization. Her new book is Tomorrow Will Be Different.

From the transcript of McBride's Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross:

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, my guest is Sarah McBride. She's the author of the new memoir "Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, And The Fight For Trans Equality." She's the national spokesperson for Human Rights Campaign, the LGBTQ advocacy group, and she was the first trans intern at the White House during the Obama administration. She was the first trans person to speak at a convention, and that was at Hillary Clinton's convention in 2016.

So, you know, you write that when you came out as trans, you were so focused on transphobia and worrying about transphobia that you weren't prepared for just, like, your basic sexism and misogyny. (Laughter) So...

MCBRIDE: (Laughter) Yeah.

GROSS: So what experiences taught you about sexism and misogyny that you weren't prepared for?

MCBRIDE: Well, you know, I had always tried to think about the phobias and the isms in the world that people of every marginalized background face. But as you mentioned, I was so scared of the transphobia that I didn't I think fully wrap my mind around just how ever-present misogyny and sexism would be.

And you know, I - the experience that really sticks out in my mind and one I'll never forget is sort of the feeling the first time I faced street harassment or catcalling on the street. And the notion of someone else feeling entitled to comment - a complete stranger - on my body - I didn't fully realize just how dehumanizing that would feel in addition to also threatening my safety and making me worried about sexual assault. That of course as a trans person is also wrapped up in a fear that if they realize that they're attracted to or even sexually assaulting a trans person, that it can escalate into even fatal violence.

But it was sort of that experience of not just the feeling of a lack of safety which I sort of understood but also that that less-tangible indignity, that less-tangible dehumanization that one experiences when a stranger feels entitled to comment on their body and then just navigating the world in and the thousands of little decisions one has to make in order to navigate this world that really is built for men, to avoid the judgments that could result in anything from being dismissed in a workplace to potentially facing violence. And I think the scope of those decisions and the scope of that ever-present prejudice really shocked me and shocked my system.

GROSS: So give me an example of a decision you had to make.

MCBRIDE: Well, I think, I mean - I think the most obvious example is...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Robin Oliveira

Robin Oliveira's new novel is Winter Sisters. From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: Why did you decide to write a second novel about your character Mary Sutter?

A: Actually, I didn’t make a concrete decision to write a second novel about Mary; it came about somewhat organically.

I was at the beginning of writing an entirely different book about an American woman who marries a Russian in the early 20th century, when, in the process of researching that book, I discovered that in 1879, in New York State, the age of consent was 10 years old.

That changed everything. I abandoned the earlier story and returned to historic Albany, N.Y., as the setting for the book.

Early on, when I knew that a doctor’s services would be called for, I thought Mary might make a cameo appearance. But the issues explored in the novel turned out to be grave, and I knew that if Mary got wind of them, she...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Robin Oliveira's website.

The Page 69 Test: My Name Is Mary Sutter.

--Marshal Zeringue