17 Books to Better Understand America, with Sharon McMahon

23:29First of all, Isabel Wilkerson is truly one of the most amazing humans. I have nothing but wonderful things to say about her. So I love her as a person and I love her as a writer. She's a Pulitzer Prize winning writer. And The Warmth of Other Suns was a project that she worked on for, I want to say, like 17 or 18 years, well over a decade. And it follows the journey of a number of people and their families as they participate in the Great Migration in the United States, One of the largest migrations in human history, recorded migrations in human history, where the millions, tens of millions of the descendants of formerly enslaved Black Americans left the South for the North and the West to seek opportunity, to seek communities where they perhaps were less marginalized, to seek economic opportunity, social opportunity.

24:29and why and how that happened is an absolutely fascinating story. How the city of New York came to be what it is, how the city of Los Angeles came to be what it is, how other cities like Milwaukee and Chicago that she talks about in the book as well, what people found when they got there and what happened to their families when they left a place like Georgia or Mississippi and settled somewhere like New York City. You really see how the character of the country was formed by these migration patterns. And I have to highly recommend this book on audiobook as well. It's so good. It is so good. In fact, I often listen to audiobooks at 1.5 speed.

25:13This one I listen to at like normal speed. That's a very high praise, by the way. when somebody says I listen to it. It is high praise. As a 1.2 guy, 1X is high praise. Yeah, I 100 % agree. Somebody recently told me that they listened to my book on 1X and I was like, oh my God. Like just, that's like getting, it's like getting my own Pulitzer Prize, right? Like 1X, what? This audio book is so well narrated that it really added to my understanding of the characters. so I I even like I was I knew that I was approaching the end and I was like sad for it to be over and I it was one of those things where I like savored the last few chapters I didn't want to say goodbye to any of the characters so cannot recommend anything that Isabel Wilkerson writes but The Warmth of Other Sons is just a singular work truly is an incredible book yeah

26:14Jeff:Jeff, what's on your list? Oh, that's so tricky. So one thing about The Warmth of Other Suns, and I think a lot of the books maybe on a lot of our list is trying to figure out how to make big ideas or big movements specific, right? So this, you know, not uniquely American problem, but built into the American problem of the one and the many, right? How does one person represent a group? How do you represent a group with one person? A lot of my trains are going in and out of Chicago on my wrecks, but I'll start with The The Street by Ann Petrie, 1946, a novel. It's a story. The main character is a single mom living in Harlem, and she has read her Ben Franklin and is going to do the American dream thing.

26:56And Petrie is very interested in showing in specific story and character-driven detail the challenges of that for someone who isn't rich and white and a guy, and how they really build on each other in specific ways where, you know, one small example is she has to go to court for some reason. She doesn't understand in that moment that she could actually just represent herself, like she doesn't need a lawyer. So she pays money she doesn't have to hire a lawyer, which then further puts her behind the eight ball in trying to get ahead. At the time, it was a hugely successful book. It was the first book by a black woman to sell more than a million copies.

27:34Her follow-up book, The Narrows, 1953, is a precursor to like a... I saw Terry Jones write about her a few years ago in the preamble to one of her books, but it's a great New England novel at the same time. But this book is really like, okay, I'm going to take one specific woman at this one block in this one specific situation to show how hard it can be and how the old Horatio Alger, Benjamin Franklin model of just doing the right thing every day over and over again will lead to the white picket fence, the real challenges that are in that book. And it also reads really great. It's a social realist novel, but it's also a great novel of the city.

28:17It's a great novel of being by yourself and a great novel of struggle at the same time. That's a book that not a lot of people know. And when I say it sold a million copies in 1946, you also have to adjust that for like people inflation. Yeah, that's awkward. It's like the equivalent of like selling 3 million copies today. And Rebecca, we know that's like fourth wing. That's like fourth wing popularity. It's nuts how popular this book was.

28:40Jeff:Yeah. That's incredible. And I'll just let listeners know, like in our division of labor here for this episode, Jeff is holding down fiction corner. It was a tough ass, but thank you for trusting me with that, Rebecca. I'll start with one. I talked about it when Amanda Nelson was on the show and we talked about the United States Constitution. But Melissa Murray, who's a constitutional law professor, one of the hosts of the Strict Scrutiny podcast, put out a great book earlier this summer called The U.S. Constitution. And it is the full text of the Constitution broken down clause by clause into a plain text interpretation and a history of what were the framers solving for.

29:19Jeff:So much of it was their own very recent PTSD and a real failure of imagination that we would still be using the Constitution in mostly its original form 250 years later. It was illuminating for me as a person who has read the Constitution and pays attention to a lot of politics, but really to get into the details of what they were trying to address, what they were trying to set the new country up to do, and what they were trying to prevent. That preventative part was so significant. I learned so much from it. And I think that having just the background of these founding documents and understanding, I mean, Sharon, you know, like understanding how the country works helps you feel more powerful to participate in it.

30:07Jeff:Yeah. Yeah. I love that one, too. Melissa Murray is great. And I totally agree that it's one thing to just read it and be like, the rights of the people in blah, blah, blah shall not be abridged. It's one thing to just like read the words, but to understand why it's there. It helps you internalize your understanding in ways that simply reading the plain text is not. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. What's up next on your list, Sharon? Okay. Next on my list, I have a book that was a massive bestseller. It became a movie. It's one of those books that is, you know, I don't know if it's too soon to call it a classic, but it's going to be if it's not already, which is Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy.

30:55Everybody that reads that book feels like they are different after having read it. What more do you want? Yeah, that they are changed for having read Just Mercy. They're changed in their understanding of America. They're changed emotionally. They're changed personally. It's like I was saying earlier, it's your understanding of somebody is impacted by your proximity to them. If you can sit down with them, look them in the eyes, have dinner with them. Just mercy is the closest many of us will get to real proximity to people who, many of whom are wrongfully incarcerated in the American judicial system.

31:39people who have not been the recipients of fair trials or, you know, for a huge variety of reasons. You, I dare you to read Just Mercy and not feel like you're different. You understand the world differently after reading it.

31:56Jeff:Beautiful. I think we can call it a modern classic. That's a good way to say it. My son was, my son had a real experience reading that book for school last year. It was, it was a visceral experience for him reading it. Yeah. So I'm glad to see that people are out there reading.

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33:36Jeff:Today's episode is brought to you by Penguin Random House Audio. It is Latin A Heritage Month and friends, I don't know about you, I'm trying to get into some fabulous Latin A YA audiobooks. And Penguin Random House has a stellar lineup. So one of my most anticipated books of the year is The House of Gardenias by the one, the only Isabel Cáñez. She is like, to me, the queen of gothic historical fantasy. I'm just saying her gothic historical fantasy is chef's kiss. The audio book is read by Omar, Levia and Krista Gonzalez. There's also The Writing Room by Marcia Agueta Mickelson, read by Daisy Guevara.

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34:54Jeff:Today's episode is brought to you by Book Riot All Access. Now, friends, we got some exciting news. It's our 15th anniversary. And not just that, we're about to save you a little piece of change, a couple of coins in this economy, you know, 15 % off to be exact. We're having our first ever sale on All Access. For a limited time, you can get an annual All Access membership for 15 % off. But let me do some quick math for you. That's like getting over three months completely free. Okay, you can join now, unlock our full archive. That includes expert publishing insights, book news, and handpicked recommendations from the editorial desk.

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36:08uh wheel that's back to me rebecca um i guess i'm going to continue maybe to follow sharon's lead a little bit about books that show you things that maybe you wouldn't experience yourself um i think fiction is especially good in america we're so big there's so many different kinds of people and kinds of lives and some stories are taken more seriously than others some experiences aren't taken seriously at all until you get a book like the house on mango Street, which is Sandra Cicero's 1983 novel. Rebecca, we're doing an Amy Tan Joy Luck Club thing with novel here. It's really a series of vignettes.

36:43The main Cara Esperanza Cordero, she's a tween, we'd call her now. I think she's 12 and she turns 13 over the course of a book. It follows a year of her life in this neighborhood of Chicago, where there's a bunch of people of Spanish and Latin American descent, Latina, all over the place. And it's just following her live. And for so many people, this was the first experience in popular culture. It also sold very well. It won a bunch of awards, including the American Book Award. It's been adapted into plays. It sold more than 6 million copies. And then it's also been translated into 20 languages.

37:22So now it's become a export of what it's like to be this particular person in this particular place. And art can do this in a way that can be difficult for a court case or a political movement to just put you in someone else's experience that's radically different than you, see what it's like, and in doing so, affirm their humanity, right? I now understand what it's like to be them. I may not understand the social forces that put them there, the social forces that keep them there, what their own agency is and is not in any of these specific situations. But I think the, I don't know, the first step, the sine qua non of understanding how this polyglot weird country that we live in is made up of all these different kinds of peoples to understand, that's just a bunch of people, right?

38:09And you understand one, and then you understand another. And you don't have to understand everybody. You don't have to understand other cultures. And even reading this one book, you will not understand, quote unquote, this thing. but it gets you out of a two-dimensional, one-dimensional, in many cases, zero-dimensional understanding of the realities of being someone who's not like you in significant ways. Continues to be taught, really kicked off the modern Chicano literature movement that I think we're still seeing the long tale of 30 years later. So many writers who are writing now, they name check House on Mango Street, whether they're a Latina or not.

38:47Jeff:Wonderful pick. Um, let's see. One of mine, I have a three pack for books that open up a kind of a part of life that you haven't experienced. Um, I was a sophomore in college when I was assigned to read Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, um, came out in 2001, Ehrenreich sort of doing that mix of sociology and journalism, but, uh, she set out to work in what we would call blue collar jobs. Um, But to try to understand what it is to really try to exist in America on minimum wage. One of the jobs that I remember just vividly from the book is she's a maid at a hotel for a while. And she breaks down the real dollars and cents of how much money she was being paid at these jobs, how much it cost to rent the hotel room by the week that she could stay in, what she was able to eat or not eat with those paychecks.

39:47Jeff:And as a white girl who had grown up in comfortable suburbs and I was at a private college, like this was just not a part of like I understood theoretically what that people lived with poverty. But I had not really grasped the structural nature of that experience and of how hard it is to get out of it, especially because of so many of the positive spins we put on, you know, the American spirit of it all. There is opportunity and you can work your way up and you can find successes in this country that wouldn't have been available to you anywhere else. But that's only one part of the story. And nickel and dime to think.

40:26Jeff:Stands is a modern classic now, 25 years later. I think it would be really interesting to revisit. But I have grouped it with Matthew Desmond's two books, Evicted from 2016, for which he won the Pulitzer. He was early on the housing crisis and on the ways that the housing crisis, of course, intersects with poverty, with keeping people in very difficult, almost impossible financial situations in this country. And then poverty came out in 2023, so it picks up those threads and extends them into some of the really challenging but true ways that American society exists on the backs of impoverished people and how ingrained the acceptance of a certain impoverished class is into our systems of government, our systems of life, and what it might look like to try to change that.

41:20Jeff:Also how difficult it is to try to change those. So that's my little triple play of let's talk about economics, baby. Back to you, Sharon. I my next book is related to The House on Mango Street in that Sandra Cisneros wrote the foreword to to this book. And the author absolutely views her as one of her literary heroes. But the book is called The Distance Between Us and is written by Reina Grande. And Reina Grande is a child when she finds herself straddling the worlds between the United States and Mexico. And family that leaves Mexico to go to the United States. She is taken across the border to live with family that she hasn't seen in a long time.

42:17At one point, she's returned to her family in Mexico who mistreats her. And this concept of both the physical distance of, you know, only a few hundred miles and yet a world away. And also the emotional distance between herself and her family on the other side, her family back in Mexico, and what it's like to try to come to America as a small child. And, you know, what she uncovers when she—this is a nonfiction book. And so it is a really beautiful illustration of what life is like for a child who experiences what it's like to cross the border from Mexico, you know, in a way that she, especially at a time when immigration is such a hot topic in the United States, when people have such diverging views over who's qualified to come here, who gets to be an American, what makes you a real American?

43:20What should we do with people who were brought here by their families but who do not have legal status currently? It is a very compellingly written nonfiction book, very quick to read. You really want to find out what happens. But it is very illustrative of many people's real lived experiences in ways that like the news and statistics and like tables and charts simply can never describe. All right, Jeff. Oh, where do I want to go next? I don't know. I have a good segue from you, Sharon, but I was thinking about All the King's Men recently by Robert Penn Warren, which is a, it's been a while since I've read it, but it's a loose but serious historical fiction, sort of.

44:12But it's the story of Huey Long, who is a real person in the book. The character's name is Willie Stark, a populist governor who rises through the ranks in the 30s, riding away of populism and quasi-nationalism and how that works and what happens. He, in the book, has an observer, sort of a, I think he's a staff member. His name is Jack Burden. There's sort of a, Rebecca, there's sort of a Gatsby thing. We've got Gatsby and Caraway right at the same time with Willie Stark and Jack Burden. He's sort of watching them and learning from them, inspired and horrified by him. But at the same time, Sharon, I think one thing Robert Penn Warren is interested in is the specifics of these people, right?

44:54These movements, these big movements can feel like a mob, but they're made up of specific people. and who's at the head of them matters for the shape and direction that they take and what happens when they go sideways and how do they go sideways and how does everyone sort of just start going along and why does the throng get caught up in these kinds of movements and you know when I was in high school and college like this was on all of the reading lists I don't think it is anymore but I've got to tell you going back I picked up my copy off the shelf the other day and looked at my notes. And this stuff about the will and just wanting power, this happens, this comes around and goes around from time to time.

45:35And it's one of those helpful reminders of while any specific current event is specific and unique in its own way, it's also related to other underlying dynamics in America and around the world about power, about populism, and what kinds of things can go wrong in these certain situations. It's quite beautiful in its own way. The film, 1949 film, won the Academy Award. And I think it's just sort of fallen off since then. But I don't know why. The Modern Library said it was the 36th greatest novel of the 20th century. But Rebecca, I don't think we think of it in those terms. Like when you and I are kicking around Great American Novel, how often does All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren come up?

46:17Jeff:Yeah, I'm not sure that it's on the long list for this podcast, which is about to change. I'll go figure out some significant publishing anniversary or maybe we'll talk about it in 2028 around the election. But that's a great pick. I read that in college because my roommate loved it. Oh, really? Do you remember liking it? I do. I remember liking it and having that same sense of recognition that you're talking about, like, oh, these things that seem so collective, the reminder that they are all just made up of people and that seeing the unique individuals inside of things is really what brings them to life and is a common thread even of this conversation today and of the books we're recommending.

46:56Jeff:One of the experiences I had that I think a lot of us had in recognizing those specific stories and how specific stories exist inside of systemic structure is from The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, which came out in 2010. She's a civil rights litigator, a legal scholar. The book was ranked number 69 on the 100 best books of the century so far by the critics, including us, who got to participate in that with the New York Times. And this is a book really about the prison industrial complex, but that that is made up of human people. The specific ways that it impacts largely black men, but intersects with other minoritized racial groups and socioeconomic groups.

47:39Jeff:to talk about the reality that slavery ended in the South, but that structures and people who wanted to maintain power and to maintain wealth found other ways to oppress particularly Black people, particularly Black men. And that prison has been, became and remained one of the ways that that functions. It's an incredible book, kind of blew my mind at the time, and I still think about it often. I see you nodding, Sharon, so I'll pass it over to you. No, I totally agree with that recommendation. It again, it's one of those books where when you read it, you there's no way for you to put that down and be like, well, I already knew all that.

48:21You know what I mean? Like, it's very, very, very informative. Um, piggybacking a little bit on Huey Long, this is a, this is a book about, um, a character who existed in roughly the same time period, although he had different beliefs than Huey Long. He was a politician in the 1920s, and the book is called A Fever in the Heartland. And this is written by a man named Timothy Egan, who is really just a fantastic narrative nonfiction writer who knows how to make a nonfiction story move on the page in the way that a novel does. And this is a true story of a man named D.C. Stevenson, who was a politician in Indiana, at a time when something was happening that many of us do not realize, which is the second coming of the KKK, the second coming of the Klan, in which the Klan grew, was resurrected.

49:14You know, after the Civil War, we have the birth of the Klan. During the latter half of the 19th century, we have a lot of anti-Klan legislation that has passed in an effort to try to sort of tamp down their power. In the 1920s, the Klan rises again. And this time they have even more opponents. This time they don't just hate formerly enslaved Black Americans. Now they also hate all immigrants. They hate Catholics and they hate Jews. And this is a huge percentage of America at this point in the 1920s. What we don't realize as Americans is that the Klan was tremendously powerful, not just in the South as we envision men in white hoods in Mississippi, but in places like Indiana, which is where D.C.

49:57Stevenson became a politician. In cities like Denver, where one third of white Americans in Denver in the 1920s were members of the Klan. In places like Oregon, where the Klan was very normalized and they helped build children's hospitals and they, you know, seemed like these are just... It's like the Shriners almost. It's impossible to even convey now. It's a wonderful point, Sharon. Yeah. And they're marching in Washington, D.C., down Pennsylvania Avenue with no hoods on, just like, here we are. We're a very legitimate civic organization. You know, like those are, that's how they were trying to portray themselves.

50:34Well, D.C. Stevenson is accused of a terrible crime. And so not only is this a history of American, not left-wing populism like Huey Long was an advocate of, but of a right-wing populism that was part of the KKK ideology. it's not just that story it is also a fascinating true crime story so if you want to get into reading non-fiction and you just find that it's like it's not that it's not as good as a novel a fever in the heartland will help bridge that gap for you it's such a good title too

51:14Jeff:i don't know who titled that book egan's titles are unbelievable the first one i read was lasso the wind which is a travel book about the it's amazing anyway the titles are fantastic yeah yeah Yeah. Great title work there. Back to me. Oh, where do I want to go? I'm going to, I know where I'm going to end. So that means I'm by process elimination. I am going to go with, oh, okay. I've only got one left, but if I'm going to end with where I'm going to end back to Chicago. People on this show have heard me talk about Invisible Man by Ralph Allison, another Chicago guy. I put it on here for a couple reasons.

51:49One, I think it is my personal opinion. It's the best American novel of the 20th century. So by definition, an eligible candidate to be talked about here. But if I'm going to make a more detailed case, I guess what I would say is Ellison brings to bear an artist's eye for the great possibilities of America and tries them out one by one and shows their shortcomings. This narrator at the end says, who knows, but on the darker registers, I speak for you, which is going to lead into my last year. But this idea of like, how is my the narrator is thinking about himself in the world and how his story may or not be representative of something else and he's trying to figure it out and all the solutions offered to him whether it be you know the communist party or education or romantic love or fellowship with a larger organization he sort of tests them all and they fail him for some reason or the other and then at the end spoiler alert i guess for an invisible man which is not really a plot driven

52:49Jeff:75 years old. Yeah. He retreats. We, we begin where he ends, which is in this cave with all of these lights. He's lit up this underground cave and he's writing his story, trying to figure out what comes next. Like what is he going to do with this? Um, and I've always found that very powerful and it's, you know, connecting to Ellison's own life story, who this is his one published novel in his life. Like he didn't even know where to go next after it. Um, it's an American urban odyssey where it's both elusive and elusive. It doesn't offer you the answers. It sort of is dwelling in the possibilities and the mysteries and the contradictions.

53:27He's influenced by T.S. Eliot and Faulkner and Hemingway. So there's a lot of American literature tributaries flow into Ellison, but I'm not sure that's a reservoir we've yet tapped to its fullest. So I'll stick by my invisible man takes until I can no longer have takes on

53:43Jeff:I would have bet all the money in my wallet that was going to be on your list today. That wasn't a tough guess for me particularly. It's a great one. Sharon, it's so funny that when we were doing the example at the top of the show about how to get into history, you reached for maybe I want to learn more about the suffrage movement because in fact, I do want to learn more about the suffrage movement. And so I asked our friend Amanda Nelson, what should I read about this? Because obviously I care about women's rights. I'm curious about feminism. Gloria Steinem just died. So this is also on my mind.

54:14Jeff:And Amanda recommended to me Suffrage Women's Long Battle for the Vote by Ellen Carroll Du Bois or Dubois, maybe. I'm so W.E.B. Du Bois pilled that now I can't see that. I think that I think like Blanche DuBois, this is DuBois and DuBois is. Yeah, I'm guessing. So we'll go with DuBois. But the gold standard from a person who would know about the history of the suffrage movement, working up from really the abolition of slavery all the way to the ratification of the 19th Amendment. And I am looking forward to listening to that on audio. I'm not brave enough for 1.5x like y 'all, so it'll take me a while.

54:56Jeff:But I wanted to get that one into the air here for other people who are also filling in that gap, wanting to learn more about it. Certainly, I wouldn't be sitting here doing this work today if I didn't have all of these rights that women fought for. So Suffrage by Ellen Carol Dubois on my list. Last round, Sharon, let's start to take it home. My last pick is by an American who, you know, perhaps deserves a bigger place in the pantheon of civil rights greats, which is a man named John Lewis. And he wrote a book called Walking with the Wind, a memoir of the movement. And he is a very young man. John Lewis is a very young man, teenager, in fact, when the 1950s civil rights movement is getting started.

55:44And he becomes very intimately involved in all of the sort of big moments of the civil rights movement. In fact, John Lewis is one of the leaders of the March to Selma. He is one of the people who is injured by the police on the walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. He lives until, I want to say he passed away in 2022. It's very recent. It doesn't feel that long ago. No, he died during COVID. I know that for sure. He died in the 2020s, 2022, 2023. He becomes a member of Congress and was in Congress for a long time as well. And it was in Congress when he died. But because he has seen the entire black freedom struggle in the United States from the 1950s, from the time of his sort of coming of age as an adolescent until his passing in 2022, we'll say, he has a perspective that is unlike nearly anyone else's.

56:53You know, the changes that he's seen, how intimately involved he was in so many of these big moments. It is just such an illustrative book on what it meant to be part of this movement. And also, I think more than just thinking about, oh, wow, he was a really courageous young man who did really courageous things. More than that, it's understanding how we, even us today, can build movements of our own. If we want to see change, which I think all Americans can think of many things they'd like to change, if we want to see change, what does it take? And how do we keep from being discouraged in our work?

57:45One of the things that I just think about John Lewis is that he never seemed to be discouraged in his work. And that's a place that I would love to be able to say that I am. Right? Like, I'm never discouraged. I always know that I'm doing important things. I appreciate that about him. And he's a great example of how I feel like history gives me hope and that I can learn from his example and from people like him about what it means to continue to persevere in the face of adversity.

58:19Jeff:I'm so glad you brought him into this conversation. An excellent trilogy of graphic novels as well called March. Yes, very good. Yes. His activism covers specifically the March Across the Selma, the Pettis Bridge in Selma, but so many other things. And a great way if you have younger people in your household to give them a gateway. And also, if Walking with the Wind is too intimidating for you, it's a big book. You know, if it's too intimidating for you, the graphic novels are excellent. And there's lots of - National book award winning, in fact. Lots of adults love to read graphic novels. There's absolutely no shade in being like, I read the great graphic novels.

58:58I would also, like, if the big book is too much, start with the graphic novels. It's still, he's worth learning about in either format. Yeah. Yes. Okay, Jeff. Well, Sharon, I'm taking, I think maybe we're thinking along this sort of the same lines for our last pick of something that's a little like, maybe some positive, something you look for hope or inspiration or, you know, some solace in the darker moments of reading the news. for me since I first read Walt Whitman's 1855 Leaves of Graths not the 1898 Deathbed Edition we're talking about the 1855 edition I'll accept no substitutes it is a vision of America that can be that isn't and probably never will be but a grand vision of a particular person who wants to believe he does believe it's possible that every atom belonging to me is good belongs to you.

59:53And that great radical democratic idea that we're all in this thing together. And so what matters to you matters to me and vice versa. And the great challenge and the great joy of America is figuring that out. And what kind of capacious understanding, what grand artistic and emotional and moral vision it would take to sustain that and how hard it is at the same time. Because even as I read it today, I'm still motivated by it, but how the work of angels, Whitman's vision seems to me rather than the work of man. And I think when people, and I might be one of those people, get frustrated with America, it is because of the thing over the rainbow of what it could be possible, right?

1:00:36That we see the better angels, Rebecca, when we were talking about the Constitution, the things that they saw, but also the things that got mired in at the same time. Well, Whitman is still, He's insisting even to me today that look for me under your boot soles. Like that's there and that's with you. And those ideas can be taken forward. And in the form of a John Lewis or somebody else, progress can be made. I think there's some biographical stuff I think about with Whitman all the time is he came from nothing. And through maybe a harmless amount of hucksterism made himself into something, right?

1:01:12He published an anonymous blurb for his own book that said how great the poem was. He's got a little larceny in his heart. Not quite full Willie Stark, but this dream it. It's not quite the secret, but you can go do it and make it and make something happen for you. I think, Sharon, and one of the things I think people will find inspiring, I'd be curious if you've had people say this to you, is there's people that aren't going to have a statue on the Mall in Washington, D.C. that mattered. I mean, and what Whitman is not something that most people are ever going to care about, but I do. And that's enough for me that I saw this one person and they could think it and feel it.

1:01:52So it's possible for me to think it and feel it, too.

1:01:58Jeff:Today's episode is brought to you by Underlined, publisher of Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow. Girl in Pieces is a deeply moving portrait of a girl in the world that owes her nothing and has taken so much. and the journey she undergoes to put herself back together. Kathleen Glasgow's debut is heartbreakingly real, unflinchingly honest. It's a story you won't be able to look away from. A number one New York Times bestseller, Girl in Pieces, made multiple repeat appearances on the list since publication. It's a story about survival, healing, self-harm, and recovery that will speak to multiple generations of readers.

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1:03:06Jeff:Today's episode is brought to you by You're No Better by Andrew Joseph White on sale October 27th wherever books are sold published by Peachtree Teen. Now if you didn't know Andrew Joseph White has been doing the doggone thing when it comes to queer YA horror these past few years. I'm talking transformative, I'm talking best-selling, I'm talking all the things. And I know this latest is going to be just as great. So we have Morgan Slaughter, a 17 year old trans boy with autism who put his serial killer father in prison years ago. We're already starting off strong. Despite that, though, everyone thinks Morgan will grow up to be just like his dad, including his volatile mother, the documentary crew following their family, and maybe himself if we're keeping in a book, right?

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1:04:16Jeff:This podcast is supported by Quince. One of the best tests for a piece of clothing I've run into lately is would I wear this in my professional headshots? And apparently my answer for Quince is yes. I wore their lightweight cotton cashmere v-neck sweater for my new zero to well-read photos, and it has quickly become one of those pieces I reach for all the time in every season. It's soft and lightweight, it layers beautifully, and it hits that sweet spot of looking polished without feeling fussy. I can wear it with jeans, dress it up a little, or throw it in my bag when I'm traveling. This is what Quince is all about and what they do so well.

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1:05:38Jeff:I'm going to wrap us up on that because I'm not going to do better than Walt Whitman. And Jeff, you put such a nice bow on it there that as I drove by the Virginia Randolph Museum and the campus here in Richmond the other day, I was thinking the same things. But Sharon talks in the book about how there are people alive today who were her students. And there are children and grandchildren of those people whose lives were changed. and that even if there will never be a statue on the mall, someone carries the story, even if Sharon had never found the story and brought it to this wider audience, those people are still living with the greater impact of one person deciding to try to make a difference.

1:06:21Jeff:And I think that's kind of fundamentally what this country is really about and what we're hoping to do with this conversation. Again, listeners, please let us know additional recommendations, how you would build out your own Citizenship 101 reading list. Sharon, as we wrap up, where can people find you? You can visit me at my website, SharonMcMahon.com. My newsletter is ThePreamble.com, or you can just follow me on social media at Sharon Says So. Terrific. And thank you again for your time today. What a wonderful conversation. Congratulations on the paperback. That Ken Burns intro is like chef's kiss wonderful.

1:07:00Jeff:Thank you. The book is such a terrific and encouraging resource. And I think, you know, I'm not a parent, but I thought so much about like, what an interesting opportunity for folks with kids in their lives to open up conversations with them. The study guide is an incredible resource too. Thank you. So as you're listening to this, the paperback is out, friends. You can order it, trot down to your local bookstore. You want to have Sharon McMahon on your shelves. That wraps us up for today. Again, you can always join us on Patreon, patreon.com slash Zero to Well Read for our guided read-alongs and our membership options.

1:07:33Jeff:We're in the middle of East of Eden right now as you're listening. We're having a great time, so come and join us. Follow us on the socials at Zero to Well Read Podcast. Shoot us that email, zerotowellread at bookriot.com. Thanks to Thrift Books for sponsoring this season. And Zero to Well Read is a proud member of the Airwave Podcast Network. Until next time, thanks everybody. Thank you.