Books like Improbable Scholars — picked by fans

I am a huge fan of mystery novels written by Michael Connelly featuring the detective Harry Bosch, so I was delighted to read Jill Leovy’s account of real-life homicide detectives in Los Angeles working under very difficult circumstances to provide a measure of justice to otherwise ignored crime victims and their families.

The book does a wonderful job of documenting the craft of good police work and shows how poorly functioning formal legal systems – a legacy of Jim Crow – negatively impacts Black communities.

As the fictional detective Harry Bosch likes to say, “everyone counts or no one counts.”

Leovy’s book shows what it takes for that vision of everyone counting to become a reality. 

Liberals and conservatives strongly disagree on the appropriate scope of government. No book has helped me understand why more than Thomas Sowell’s Conflict of Visions.

He describes how the ideological difference results from disagreements about the malleability of human nature. The unconstrained vision, typically associated with liberals, sees human nature as altruistic and perfectible. The government should be used expansively to promote social justice and equality to realize this vision. 

In contrast, the constrained vision, typically associated with conservatives, sees human nature as limited, selfish, and imperfectible. The government should play a limited role in society, as elites cannot hope to restructure society without unintended destructive consequences.

This is one of the most handsomely illustrated books I’ve ever purchased – and one of the most eye-opening.

Bertaud sums up a lifetime of work in over 40 cities, showing that the preoccupation of many urban planners and architects with aesthetically pleasing design ignores the reality that cities work best when they give residents the ability to make their own decisions about where they want to live and help them access good economic opportunities.

Bertaud also chronicles how well-meaning but paternalistic land use rules (minimum lot sizes, height restrictions, excessive historic preservation regimes) have harmed cities by making them inaccessible to diverse newcomers. 

In writing our book, my co-author Greg Berman and I relied heavily on Derthick’s classic 1979 account of the development of Social Security in its first 15 years.

Derthick shows that its intentionally incremental development became the key to its later success as the largest and most successful anti-poverty program ever developed.

Derthick shows how two unheralded government bureaucrats nurtured and protected the program in its early years, including against a very popular and more immediately radical alternative.

The book does a good job of showing that choices made by the architects of government programs in their early days help set their long-term trajectories – an understudied topic.

I couldn’t compile a list of books without including Judy Blume. In the forty years since I read my first Blume novel, a lot of things have changed, and—many have stayed the same.
Forever, first published in the mid-70s, is mildly erotic—and raw, and sensuous, and tender, and all the things that love and sex are. The sensual scenes are peppered in with great dialogue between the characters.

I especially love this book because no matter how many experiences I’ve had, I can still find a small piece of myself in protagonist Katherine—first sex, first love, first breakup, first death, and the many “firsts” that I’ve carried through my own life (divorce, pandemic, post-divorce love).

Forever may not always last, but it never fails to define chunks of our lives—always. 

Folklore is not history, nor is history folklore, but they often intersect. Henry Charlton Beck, a journalist who became an Episcopal priest and who wrote a series of New Jersey folklife classics, began his career with this volume, stories of abandoned iron forges, villages, and forgotten legends in the state’s iconic Pinelands. Rutgers University Press reprinted Beck’s books, beginning with this book in 1961.

The ultimate New Jersey reference book. This publication is, without doubt, an essential title on the bookshelf of any New Jersey oriented author. With over 3,000 articles by experts in their fields of study, supplemented by illustrations and maps, it tells a comprehensive story of the state, including that it was the site of the first intercollegiate football game, and the first vote cast by an African American. If you have a question on New Jersey, you need this book, which has been cited as an outstanding reference work by the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance.

The Jersey Devil, is a horrifying creature said to lurk in the rugged New Jersey pine barrens.

It’s been the subject of (fruitless) searches and scary legends for well over a century. But it’s not an intrepid cryptozoologist or weekend monster hunter who finally cornered the beast, but instead two historians, Brian Regal and Frank Esposito.

Just as Jay Smith tackled the beast of Gévaudan as a historial mystery, the pair trace the origins of the Jersey Devil from an eighteenth-century settler named Daniel Leeds to the present day.

Along the way we find a smattering of compelling –yet evidence-free—eyewitness reports, much folklore, some professional feuds, and several outright hoaxes (including a painted kangaroo exhibited as the Devil!)

As with the chupacabra and other monsters, the true story is in many ways more interesting than the fictional one. 

Welcome to the Neighborhood explores the complexities of forming adult friendships after moving into a new neighborhood and encountering an already established circle of friends.

I’ve felt like a fish out of water in a similar situation, and this story is eerily relatable.

I laughed and teared up too. This book gave me all the feels.

It’s an amazing debut about standing up for yourself, finding your tribe, and living a life that feels right to you. 

I love how this LGBTQ+ verse novel combines magical realism, hurricanes, and family conflict to create a compelling read!

Murray’s deep connection to the ocean is something that shifts and changes through the course of the story as the storm forces her to literally move and for family dynamics to shift.

The water imagery helps reflect Murray’s character growth during the story.