World Wide Work: Books and Films You May Have Missed

BOOKS

Monumental Beauty by Matt Witt (Common Ground Press). A leading conservationist writes that Monumental Beauty “is particularly timely as the Trump administration and its corporate allies are attempting to prioritize logging, drilling and mining on our special public lands instead of conservation for now and for future generations.” Monumental Beauty features 132 photographs showing the beauty and biodiversity of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument that was singled out in Project 2025 for attack by the new administration. 100% of sales from Monumental Beauty go to the nonprofit Soda Mountain Wilderness Council that for 40 years has been leading the fight to establish and protect the Monument. The book includes a forward by Don Gentry, former chair of the Klamath Tribes. Monumental Beauty can be ordered here.

Truth Demands by Abby Reyes (North Atlantic). When Reyes was in her early 20s, her boyfriend and two others were brutally murdered while in Colombia to support indigenous people resisting a multinational oil company. Her thoughtful memoir intertwines her continuing work for climate action and corporate accountability and her personal search for ways to keep going in a world full of injustice and violence.

Selling Social Justice by Jennifer C. Pan (Verso). At a time when many people in America are struggling economically while billionaires get richer, both major political parties and their corporate allies have changed the subject from class inequality by focusing instead on race. It will take a movement that unites working people of all races based on class interests to counter the intensifying assault on living standards and workers’ rights.

A Hole in the Story by Ken Kalfus (Milkweed). In this nuanced and honest novel, a Washington journalist who considers himself  a progressive thinks the #MeToo movement is about other men until he is challenged to reexamine his own past.  

The Jewish South by Shari Rabin (Princeton). A history of Jews in the American South reveals a mixture of contradictions. Jews often have been “othered” by Christians, sometimes violently through lynchings and bombings, and today by attempts to impose Christian teaching in public schools. Some Jews played a courageous role as allies in the civil rights movements. Yet, throughout history, many Jews and their rabbis have tried to be accepted as white southerners, which sometimes meant exploiting enslaved labor or remaining silent on the treatment of Black people.

On the Pleasures of Living in Gaza by Mohammed Omer Almoghayer (OR Books). A journalist born and raised in Gaza shares stories about the culture and resilience of the people who live there.

Red Scare by Clay Risen (Simon and Schuster). During the 1930s and after World War II, right-wing forces funded by wealthy special interests fought back against progress won by workers, women, and people of color under the New Deal. Officials like Senator Joseph McCarthy and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover who had no respect for constitutional rights or factual accuracy labeled progressives as communist subversives, causing many to lose their jobs or even go to jail for their beliefs. Universities, Hollywood studios, and some labor leaders, hoping to save their own skins, engaged in appeasement, which only further whetted the appetite of the demagogues. Senators Hubert Humphrey, John F. Kennedy, and most other leaders of both parties went along, enacting legislation that made it illegal simply to be a member of the Communist Party, punishable by up to five years in prison. This history of the Red Scare is particularly timely as people are being arrested and deported today because of their beliefs without resistance from many big institutions.

Hillbilly Highway by Max Fraser (Princeton). In the last century, about 8 million white southerners migrated from rural areas to the industrial cities of the Midwest. As they struggled to adjust both economically and culturally, they often were left out of anti-poverty programs and disrespected by urban elites, laying some of the groundwork for today’s political dynamics.

The Girl in the Middle by Martha A. Sandweiss (Princeton). In 1868, a well known photographer took a picture in what is now Wyoming of six white men and one young indigenous girl. The photographer labeled the six men – all high up in military or political circles – but not the girl. An historian traces the lives of the photographer and all seven subjects of the picture, including the girl. The result provides an informative window into the white invasion of the West as well as the early days of photography..

Justice Abandoned by Rachel Elise Barkow (Harvard). Mass incarceration leads to more repeat crimes as detention makes it harder to get jobs, housing, health care, and other services, and a high percentage of people in jail are awaiting trial and have never been convicted. Yet, over the past 50 years the U.S. Supreme Court has ignored the Constitution and issued decisions that allowed more pretrial detention, coercive plea bargaining, disproportionate sentences, stop-and-frisk policing, prison overcrowding, and racial bias throughout the so-called criminal justice system.

Democracy in Power by Sandeep Vaheesan (University of Chicago). About one-quarter of U.S. customers get their electricity from publicly owned utilities or nonprofit cooperatives. As rates climb and the shift to renewable energy moves too slowly, this book examines the history, strengths, and weaknesses of various forms of electric utility and identifies a path forward.

FILMS

Dusty and Stones. Two cousins from a remote valley in Swaziland fall in love with American country music and begin writing and performing their own songs. This documentary shows their joy but keeps it real as they travel to play in Nashville and a music festival in Texas.

North of North. An 8-part series follows a 26-year-old Inuit woman coming into her own in a fictional Canadian Arctic community. 

Unrest. A visually creative feature film takes place in a 19th-century watchmaking town in Switzerland where factory workers are organizing.  

Aisha. A woman who was raped in her home country of Nigeria tries to navigate the refugee system in Ireland. Along the way she befriends an Irish security guard who is trying to rebuild his own life after serving time in prison because of drug addiction.

Forgotten Love. A surgeon in Poland is hit on the head during a mugging and suffers from amnesia. Many years later, while working at a sawmill in the countryside, he slowly starts to reconnect with his profession and with his daughter.

The Fam. In this feature film that has the authenticity of a documentary, seven teenage girls and their social workers in a foster home work through life’s challenges

Late Bloomers. A young woman struggling to find herself and to cope with her mother’s decline finds meaning in a friendship with an elderly immigrant.