Books like Shooting at Heaven's Gate — picked by fans

Bach was an executive at United Artists when the struggling studio decided to bet it all—and then some—on a film called Heaven’s Gate. It ended up being one of the most infamous debacles in Hollywood history: a critical and commercial dud that took so long to make and lost so much money that it literally destroyed a studio.

How does a bomb this bad happen? Bach shows in detail how the best of intentions can lead to failure in a story that doesn’t just demonstrate what went wrong with Heaven’s Gate but how hard it is to make a good movie when business and art intertwine.

Layton escaped, at great risk, to try to prevent the tragedy of Jonestown. Her book is the best book yet to read to see Jonestown and Jim Jones through the eyes of a survivor. Layton entered Jonestown (as did most of Ron’s and my students) later than early settlers, when the situation was getting more and more dire as Jones was deteriorating. 

Twenty-four at the time, Layton accompanied her mother, who believed Jones could cure her cancer. As Charles Krause says in the foreword, “Debbie quickly realized that she and the others had been deliberately deceived: Jonestown was essentially a concentration camp in the jungle.” Layton had been in the church since she was a teen. Jones had immediately recognized her intelligence and energy, and eventually made her one of his inner circle. When she left, he declared her a traitor. The book is fascinating and well written.

After ten years in a political cult, Janja Lalich dove deep into research on Heaven's Gate. Then she set out to explain, in this book, how smart, driven people function under coercive control. 

The gist? While they keep their intelligence and capacity for achievement, they shrink the range within which they act and think.

Lalich's perspective helped me understand why my fellow ex-Zendiks and I had acquiesced to so much dumb shit. We weren't stupid or brainwashed—just trapped by bounded choice.

Also, I was delighted by her account of her own cult's implosion, crystallized in the moment when the leader pulls out a cigarette and no one offers a light. 

This brilliant, best-selling book turned award-winning documentary is so fantastic for unraveling a revisionist history of the “tired old lady who wouldn’t move to the back of the bus.”

Not unlike the way I show how Dr. King’s memory has been sanitized and defanged, Theoharis shows how Parks’ memory has been voided of her long history of radical activism, and her unyielding pursuit of racial and social justice.

I thought about this book a lot as I was writing my chapter on the hidden Black women, the “sheroes” of the Civil Rights Movement who present-day Black feminist activists are resurrecting in public consciousness.

No can deny that pie is magic, but in this book, pies are literal magic: anyone who eats the fruit pies at the Blackbird Café will receive messages from their long-lost loved ones, thanks to the blackbirds who arrive at midnight and sing their dreams.

I adore the touch of magical realism in this gentle novel, and I can never read it without wanting a slice of pie and a glass of blackberry sweet tea. There’s something so quintessentially summery and wholesome about this book that you can practically taste it as you turn the pages.

There is something special about Heather Webber’s work—all of it, mind you. But South of the Buttonwood Tree has something a little extra. 

It’ll break your heart on the same page you’re laughing. Her characters become people you’ve known your whole life by the end of the first chapter. By the end of the book, you’re leaving friends and family behind to live their lives without you—that’s how rich the story is.

There is no getting bogged down in details, yet you have them all. The story flows in a rhythm that feels warm and comforting but not so formulaic that you know what to expect when you read the first word. She really hits that comfort spot I know I need, and you might too.

Lauren Denton continues leading me down a road filled with glory and unparalleled splendor. The authenticity and raw connectedness to her characters resonates on a level that transcends fiction.

Life is messy and uncertain. It’s the people we surround ourselves with and summoning the courage to open up that makes everything seem “right”. There’s no word for it, that feeling when everything settles into place because you’ve given yourself permission to be the person you truly are. But the entirety of this novel wraps around you with that message.

Find your path, with all its grooves, bumps, and ruts. There might be dusty fragments scattered in the breeze or thick mud that slows you down, but when it’s “your” road and choice, it’s undeniably the most glorious road you’ll travel.

Patricia McKissack introduces the quilts of Gee’s Bend to young readers in this charming picture book. McKissack not only read about Gee’s Bend but she visited and learned how to quilt. Her text is written in poems that capture the lilt and rhythm of Gee’s Bend women. The speaker, “Baby Girl,” describes how she learned how to quilt from her grandma. The soft, painterly illustrations by Cozbi A. Cabrera resemble Gee’s Bend quilts, and depict the colorful scraps of material the women used. The story includes the visit of Dr. Martin Luther King to “the Bend” on his way to Camden, then Selma, to march for the right to vote. And the aftermath of that march. A superb picture book full of history and hope for readers of all ages.

I grew up in the 1960s and '70s, during a time when segregation ended, but racial strife continued, particularly in the South, so this book hits somewhat close to home.

Byron Woodfin sheds a meticulous inside light on how some people of privilege believed to be above the law and speaks to a time that all should remember so as not to repeat past mistakes. I found the storyline to be captivating, from the investigation of the attempted murder car bombing to the dramatic legal proceedings that later ensued.

This book is a real page-turner for those who enjoy true crime set in what one hopes to be a bygone era of racially motivated bigotry.

After the Civil War, the South was in turmoil, with ruined farms, destitute people, and existential uncertainty about the future.

John Hollis Bankhead of Alabama was one who stepped forward to ensure that little would change. He voted against the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments and helped institutionalize convict leasing. As author Kari Frederickson writes, "Confederates may have lost the war, but white men like Bankhead were determined to thwart any possible political or social revolution."

Other Bankheads continued in the same vein including Marie who, as director of the Alabama state archives, embraced the Lost Cause narrative, rejected symbols of Reconstruction, and, in the name of state’s rights, opposed voting rights for women. Learning about this family’s success in molding the post-war South gave me new insight into issues of today.