Here are 100 books that Defectors fans have personally recommended if you like
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I have always been fascinated with ideas and ideologies and how people can interpret the world differently. As a teenager I wanted to become an ethnographer, to travel the world and discover other cultures. Now I focus mostly on Europe and the US, but I always look to challenge myself by talking with people who hold opposing views. I am impressed by the revival of religious, nationalist, and conservative ideas in our current world and how they offer their own philosophy of the social order. That’s why I selected books that can help me see the world through the eyes of others.
This is my preferred book on this topic because it offers a pungent story of how pride and shame matter to our understanding of politics. Arlie Russell Hochschild already wrote another terrific book on Louisiana a few years ago, so I was really looking forward to this new one on the Appalachian post-industrial communities.
The way she describes small events of everyday life and how they influence voting patterns struck a chord with me. It tells us how politics at the grassroots level is, in fact, about making sense of the world around us and navigating difficulties, and it’s all about emotions and the way we deal with the question, “What about me?” It’s a superb book for deconstructing “high politics” and shows how far away people may feel from decisions made in Washington, DC.
In her first book since the widely acclaimed Strangers in Their Own Land, National Book Award finalist and bestselling author Arlie Russell Hochschild now ventures to Appalachia, uncovering the "pride paradox" that has given the right's appeals such resonance.
A 2024 New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Pick
For all the attempts to understand the state of American politics and the blue/red divide, we've ignored what economic and cultural loss can do to pride. What happens, Arlie Russell Hochschild asks, when a proud people in a hard-hit region suffer the deep loss of pride and are confronted with a…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
I have always been fascinated with ideas and ideologies and how people can interpret the world differently. As a teenager I wanted to become an ethnographer, to travel the world and discover other cultures. Now I focus mostly on Europe and the US, but I always look to challenge myself by talking with people who hold opposing views. I am impressed by the revival of religious, nationalist, and conservative ideas in our current world and how they offer their own philosophy of the social order. That’s why I selected books that can help me see the world through the eyes of others.
This is a great book for capturing the urban-rural divide in the US as one of the key components to understanding our polarization. It is based on history but also on a large survey done of rural populations, so there is a lot of great detail on all the grievances accumulated by different rural groups and how they are framed.
I was particularly intrigued by its discussion of the nostalgic aspect—the idea that a traditional way of life is dying and the feeling of becoming an “endangered species” that needs to be preserved.
The widening gulf between rural and urban America is becoming the most serious political divide of our day. Support for Democrats, up and down the ballot, has plummeted throughout the countryside, and the entire governing system is threatened by one-party dominance. After Donald Trump's surprising victories throughout rural America, pundits and journalists went searching for answers, popping into roadside diners and opining from afar. Rural Americans are supposedly bigots, culturally backward, lazy, scared of the future, and radical. But is it that simple? Is the country splintering between two very different Americas-one rural, one urban?
I’m a scholar of religion who was trained in the History of Christianity at Rice University, and I’m endlessly fascinated by the monsters that people create, demons being one of the most often invoked and feared. I’ve been particularly interested in how people make use of ideas of demons throughout history, and much of my teaching and research has revolved around this subject. While I began as a medievalist, the contemporary United States is–believe it or not–equally, if not richer, in its materials on demons. More and more, I find myself drawn to researching the demons that pop up in an unlikely area: politics.
Gagné’s work is specifically focused on the 2016 and 2020 elections and the influence of American Evangelicals on both elections.
One of my favorite things in the book is Gagné’s attention to the different news cycles and how Spiritual Warfare motifs emerge, sometimes in unexpected places. Moreover, he sets the record straight on how some of these same Spiritual Warfare motifs are misunderstood or misrepresented. More often than not, when we wade through the inflammatory, we find something even more terrifying.
This book introduces the American Evangelical movement and the role it played in the support of Donald Trump. Specifically, it focuses on the Neocharismatic-Pentecostal (NCP) leaders, their beliefs, and their political strategies. The author examines why 81% of white evangelicals voted for Trump in 2016, and why he still received between 76% and 81% of their vote in 2020 despite losing the presidency. Additionally, the book discusses how NCP leaders are part of the Christian Right, a religious coalition with a political agenda centered on controversial issues such as anti-abortion activism, opposition to LGBTQ+ rights, and the protection of religious…
The Guardian of the Palace is the first novel in a modern fantasy series set in a New York City where magic is real—but hidden, suppressed, and dangerous when exposed.
When an ancient magic begins to leak into the world, a small group of unlikely allies is forced to act…
I have always been fascinated with ideas and ideologies and how people can interpret the world differently. As a teenager I wanted to become an ethnographer, to travel the world and discover other cultures. Now I focus mostly on Europe and the US, but I always look to challenge myself by talking with people who hold opposing views. I am impressed by the revival of religious, nationalist, and conservative ideas in our current world and how they offer their own philosophy of the social order. That’s why I selected books that can help me see the world through the eyes of others.
I enjoyed this book because it goes right to what is a core issue of our contemporary political landscape: how formerly Democratic blue-collar communities have been shifting their political orientation toward the Republicans.
I also loved the combination of ethnographic analysis and historical perspective the two authors display to look at the transformation of our trade union culture (in their case, in Pennsylvania). It tells us how much everyday sociability—how we spend our leisure time, which social groups we belong to, etc.—has reshaped our political worldview.
In the heyday of American labor, the influence of local unions extended far beyond the workplace. Unions were embedded in tight-knit communities, touching nearly every aspect of the lives of members-mostly men-and their families and neighbors. They conveyed fundamental worldviews, making blue-collar unionists into loyal Democrats who saw the party as on the side of the working man. Today, unions play a much less significant role in American life. In industrial and formerly industrial Rust Belt towns, Republican-leaning groups and outlooks have burgeoned among the kinds of voters who once would have been part of union communities.
I'm a scholar of Irish and Irish-American culture and identities who teaches at the University of Connecticut. After I left Ireland to take up that position, I initially taught only Irish material. However, soon after my arrival, Obama, a Black president of white Protestant Irish maternal ancestry, was elected. This alerted me to the complexity of Irish identities and histories in the Americas. I also began to perceive traces of Irish memory and history in American writers and public figures whose diverse Irish roots are underexamined. The long and varied Irish presence in America and the overlooked concerns with Irish identity and history of many creatives and public figures inspired my new cultural history.
I first encountered Noel Ignatiev’s ground-breaking and hugely influential book, How the Irish Became White, after I moved from Ireland to America to work at UConn.
I was electrified by its thesis and found it very helpful in thinking critically about Irish-American identity and history. After all, that had become my heritage too once I crossed the Atlantic.
Ignatiev opens by outlining how the Irish fled to America from a motherland under British occupation and a colonial caste system that dehumanized them.
He argues that in America the new immigrants embraced a hierarchy based on race, as a result of which the oppressed became the oppressors: for Ignatiev, the Irish assimilated by becoming more brutal in their oppression of African Americans than the nativists, gaining “whiteness” by refusing to make common cause with Black fellow workers.
How the Irish Became White challenges the dominant story of how the Irish succeeded…
'...from time to time a study comes along that truly can be called 'path breaking,' 'seminal,' 'essential,' a 'must read.' How the Irish Became White is such a study.' John Bracey, W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachussetts, Amherst
The Irish came to America in the eighteenth century, fleeing a homeland under foreign occupation and a caste system that regarded them as the lowest form of humanity. In the new country - a land of opportunity - they found a very different form of social hierarchy, one that was based on the color of a person's skin.…
Growing up in Salt Lake City in the 1950s I was very soon aware that I was living in a world of borders, some permeable and negotiable, and some almost impossible to cross. It was a city of Mormons and a city of those who weren’t; a city of immigrants like my grandparents, and about whom my mother wrote (and wrote well); and a Jim Crow town where Black men and women couldn’t get into the ballroom to hear Duke Ellington play. Finally, it was a city haunted by its Indian past in a state keeping living Indians in its many bleak government reservations. What to make of those borders has been a life-long effort.
Sallyis the moving account of the true story of a captive Indian girl who lived in the house of Brigham Young as a servant and cook, a “wild” woman who had been “tamed” by her civilized captors. When she had almost forgotten her own language Sally was sent off to a Mormon village as the wife of a Pahvant Ute chief in order to “civilize” the local surrounding Indians. Sally’s story asks us what these seemingly simple words “wild” and “tame” really mean, and to think about what they can hide.
In this remarkable and deeply felt book, Virginia Kerns uncovers the singular and forgotten life of a young Indian woman who was captured in 1847 in what was then Mexican territory. Sold to a settler, a son-in-law of Brigham Young, the woman spent the next thirty years as a servant to Young's family. Sally, as they called her, lived in the shadows, largely unseen. She was later remembered as a 'wild' woman made 'tame' who happily shed her past to enter a new and better life in civilization.
Drawing from a broad range of primary sources, Kerns retrieves Sally from…
Aury and Scott travel to the Finger Lakes in New York’s wine country to get to the bottom of the mysterious happenings at the Songscape Winery. Disturbed furniture and curious noises are one thing, but when a customer winds up dead, it’s time to dig into the details and see…
As a refugee myself, I was attracted to read about the lives and experiences of other refugees, not merely those from my own community or background, but especially those from other backgrounds–which is probably reflected in the books that I’ve chosen for my list.
I so easily identified with the lead character, Salim, who is caught between two cultures–his country of origin, Zanzibar, and his adopted country, England.
The author provides detailed and satisfying descriptions of Zanzibar in the 1960s and of London in the 1990s, portraying effectively how he is pulled by both and yet part of both. He confronts the vexed questions of ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Where is home?’
The colourful description of life in a Zanzibar village is delightful, reminding me so much of Mombasa, where I was born, especially as both places share the language, Kiswahili–which I still remember!
By the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature
'The elegance and control of Gurnah's writing, and his understanding of how quietly and slowly and repeatedly a heart can break, make this a deeply rewarding novel' Kamila Shamsie, Guardian
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For seven-year-old Salim, the pillars upholding his small universe - his indifferent father, his adored uncle, his treasured books, the daily routines of government school and Koran lessons - seem unshakeable.
But it is the 1970s, and the winds of change are blowing through Zanzibar: suddenly Salim's father is gone, and the island convulses with violence and corruption the…
The major question I wanted to answer: why do people think that Jews are cowards and try to get out of the military? Where is the history of Jews and the military? I present these five books as proof that Jews do fight and have fought ever since the days of King Saul and David, Bar Kochba, the Maccabeus, and every war ever fought in history.
This is the first comprehensive and comparative look at Jewish involvement in the military and their attitudes toward war from the 1600s to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Penslar is a professor of Jewish history and Zionism at Harvard University and a colleague of mine there.
We are both proud and progressive Zionists, yet critical of certain policies when we have to be. It’s a densely written book; one needs to read it slowly and carefully. Very few Jews are pacifists; the image of the Jew as the shy, bookish scholar or tailor (stereotyped by the images of popular culture like Fiddler on the Roof) is wrong and misleading.
If Jews did not want to fight in certain wars, it was for self-preservation or due to anti-Semitism—they were not allowed to be farmers, own land, hunt, fish, use a gun, even join the army, or were…
Jews and the Military is the first comprehensive and comparative look at Jews' involvement in the military and their attitudes toward war from the 1600s until the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Derek Penslar shows that although Jews have often been described as people who shun the army, in fact they have frequently been willing, even eager, to do military service, and only a minuscule minority have been pacifists. Penslar demonstrates that Israel's military ethos did not emerge from a vacuum and that long before the state's establishment, Jews had a vested interest in military affairs. Spanning…
As an American, a Jew, and a novelist—though not necessarily in that order—I’ve always been interested in Jewish-American literature, and the Jewish-American experience in general. What was it like for the first Jews in America? What accounted for their success? What were the costs of assimilation? And where are they—we—headed? These books are a great starting point for anyone looking for answers to these questions. But be warned: in keeping with the Jewish tradition, they often answer those questions with more questions. Not, to quote the Jewish sage Jerry Seinfeld, that there’s anything wrong with that.
In The Price of Whiteness, historian Eric L. Goldstein documents the uneasy shift in Jewish-American identity throughout American history.
Are Jews a religion or a race or something else entirely? How did Ashkenazi Jews come to be seen as white? Goldstein addresses these questions and others in his rigorously researched book, which touches on topics like Black-Jewish relations, and features a surprisingly profound analysis of Adam Sandler’s “The Chanukah Song.”
What has it meant to be Jewish in a nation preoccupied with the categories of black and white? "The Price of Whiteness" documents the uneasy place Jews have held in America's racial culture since the late nineteenth century. This book traces Jews' often tumultuous encounter with race from the 1870's through World War II, when they became vested as part of America's white mainstream and abandoned the practice of describing themselves in racial terms. American Jewish history is often told as a story of quick and successful adaptation, but Goldstein demonstrates how the process of identifying as white Americans was…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I developed an interest in the Middle East after taking a class on the Peoples and Cultures of the Middle East and North Africa as an undergraduate student. I later lived and worked in Kuwait for two years and traveled extensively across the Middle East, including to Syria, a country whose hospitality, history, and cultural richness left an indelible impression on me. During subsequent travel to Syria, I became acquainted with the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, in Damascus. This camp, which physically blended into its surroundings while retaining its Palestinian-ness, ignited my desire to better understand Palestinian refugee identity and the political claims at the heart of this identity.
Making Refugefocuses on Somali Bantu refugees who were resettled in the town of Lewiston, Maine in the early 2000s. These refugees had been the focus of Besteman’s earlier research in Somalia in the 1980s. About a decade after Somalia plunged into civil war, Somali Bantus were being resettled in the United States, enabling Besteman to physically reconnect with them. One of the strengths of this book is that it provides rich historical context, giving the reader an overview of the different stages of the refugee experience: the events leading to war and displacement, life in refugee camps in Kenya, and resettlement in the United States.
Making Refuge is also one of the few books that gives ethnographic insight into the refugee resettlement process in the United States. Through its focus on the challenges faced by resettled Somali Bantus, who are Black and Muslim, it questions the assumptions underlying the…
How do people whose entire way of life has been destroyed and who witnessed horrible abuses against loved ones construct a new future? How do people who have survived the ravages of war and displacement rebuild their lives in a new country when their world has totally changed? In Making Refuge Catherine Besteman follows the trajectory of Somali Bantus from their homes in Somalia before the onset in 1991 of Somalia's civil war, to their displacement to Kenyan refugee camps, to their relocation in cities across the United States, to their settlement in the struggling former mill town of Lewiston,…
