The Best Book I Read This Month: Crimes Through Time by Rosie McCormick

The best book I read this month was written for children but can be fun for adults too. Crimes Through Time: Mischief, Missteps and Dastardly Deeds by Rosie McCormick is a jaunt through history with a focus on what is and isn’t legal in selected societies around the globe.

Full disclosure: I have known Rosie for more than a decade and have been excited for this book since she first told me about it. It does not disappoint.

In Crimes Through Time, readers explore 11 different societies, from ancient Mesopotamia to Gold Rush California. They read a blurb about the culture and what behaviors are illegal in that society. Then readers are challenged to find the crimes in an illustrated street scene. A follow-up blurb identifies the crimes that readers should have found and explains what makes each instance a crime.

Diegofer Otero’s illustrations are delightful, full of whimsy and character. Some snippets of dialogue in the illustrations are quips that adults are more likely to recognize and appreciate (just like some of the dialogue in Disney movies and Looney Tunes), but young readers won’t miss anything by not getting the references.

In short, Rosie McCormick’s Crimes Through Time is a lot of fun—and a fun way to learn about history.

The Best Book I Read This Month: The Story of Jane by Laura Kaplan

I struggled with my choice for best book this month. I read a fantastic dark fairy tale by Eowyn Ivey (Black Woods, Blue Sky) that fit the bill. But I also read a compelling work of nonfiction, and ultimately that is the one I have chosen. Laura Kaplan’s The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service does exactly what its title suggests: it tells the story of Chicago’s Jane Collective from its founding in 1969 to its closure in 1973 in the wake of the Roe v. Wade decision.

Because what Jane did was illegal, its organizers made a point of not creating or leaving written records. So Kaplan’s book is based on oral history (interviews) and her own experiences. (Kaplan volunteered with Jane.)

It was a timely read, with reproductive rights being rolled back and the growth of pro-democracy grassroots organizing in the United States. In addition to telling a compelling story about people who were both sympathetic and frustrating, The Story of Jane provides examples and lessons that serve both causes—lessons about leadership, recruitment, and organization, but also about intention, community, and allyship across socioeconomic and racial lines and, most of all, about what success might look like in an underground resistance movement.

The Best Book I Read This Month: Agrippina by Emma Southon

I waffled about my choice for the best book I read this month. I couldn’t decide between the science fiction that made me cry (The Martian Contingency by Mary Robinette Kowal) or the history that ruffled my book club’s feathers (Agrippina by Emma Southon). Ultimately, I chose the latter.

The full title of Southon’s book is Agrippina: The Most Extraordinary Woman of the Roman World. Agrippina was the granddaughter of Rome’s first emperor (Augustus), the sister of an emperor (Caligula), the niece—and wife—of an emperor (Claudius), and the mother of an emperor (Nero). Every member of her immediate family predeceased her. For a time, she ruled the Roman Empire behind the scenes. All of this in a time and place in which women were expected to be invisible—not seen and definitely not heard. The label extraordinary fits.

Southon begins her biography with a historiographical note that won me over very quickly. Southon’s writing has personality. Like other historians of ancient Rome, she addressed the issues of the sources from the time (namely, their unreliability), but she did it with humor. Case in point: she described Suetonius’s writings as an “off-brand badly-cited wiki page.” History with humor? I’m in!

The humor continued through the biography. Southon’s tone had an irreverence to it and an earthiness. My book club was bothered by that. More than one member was bothered by Southon’s use of colorful language and discussion of sex in Rome, calling it vulgar and unnecessary. Clearly, they preferred a more serious approach.

My book club also took issue with the frequency of assumptions and inferences in Southon’s account. I’m not sure they realized or accepted that Southon had to read and work between the lines because of the dearth of sources from the time period. Women were just not written about, unless and until they did something scandalous. That did not bother me, and I appreciated Southon being honest and upfront about when she was assuming or inferring something, as well explaining why she drew the conclusions she did.

As a reader and a history nerd, I found the book enjoyable and satisfying.

The Best Book I Read This Month: How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley

The best book I read this month is the second book that I think is essential for understanding what is happening in the United States right now. (Wild Faith by Talia Lavin is the first.) Jason Stanley’s How Fascism Works explains, in plain language, the ten components of fascism. He cites historical examples and explains how each component manipulates the public to ensure support for, or at least a lack of resistance to, the fascist agenda.

Originally written early in Trump’s first administration, the edition I read was updated to include the COVID pandemic. And it’s all there: everything Trump tried to do the first time around and everything that he and his fellow kleptocrats are doing now to destroy American democracy. Stanley provides clear explanations for the methods and purposes of these actions, as well as their precedents in history. It’s chilling.

It’s no coincidence that Stanley and Timothy Snyder, two American experts in fascism, have left the country. (Both have accepted positions at the University of Toronto.) Their work threatens Trump’s power by exposing his goals and methods—and criticizing them in defense of democracy. Push comes to shove, I may delete this review too at some point. The emperor does not like being told he’s not wearing any clothes.

The Best Book I Read This Month: Wild Faith by Talia Levin

The best book I read this month was perhaps not the best choice to read before this year’s presidential election, as it ramped up my election anxiety exponentially. Having said, that, the book is definitely worth reading. Talia Lavin’s Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America recounts the rise of Christian nationalism in the United States and the movement’s efforts to reshape the nation, its government, and its society in their image. It is eye-opening and terrifying and enraging.

At this point, I don’t have more words than that. I’m still digesting what I read. But it left me with an even stronger conviction that the Christian right—Christian nationalists, Christian fascists—are the greatest danger this country faces in our lifetime.

But don’t take my word for it. Read Wild Faith. Lavin lays it all out very clearly.