Books like The Air You Breathe — picked by fans

I am thrilled with any historical fiction that offers another perspective on what popular culture believes to be true. In this case, a man (Darwin) was the only one to posit the theory of evolution. This book explores the life of a brilliant woman who longed to be a scientist in the 18th and 19th centuries. Despite all misogynistic odds, she followed her dream. 

Despite having read this book a decade ago, I can easily recall the scenery, the time frame, and the incredibly luscious botanical-steeped life of the main character, Alma Whittaker, who took me with her to London, Peru, Philadelphia, Tahiti, and Amsterdam. 

Because I am a freak fanatic about all things moss-related, the depth of research in this area was mind-blowing! I loved that the world of mosses became a character, and I could deeply relate to Alma in this way. I was stunned by this entire… show more.

Elizabeth Berg wanted to read a novel about George Sand but couldn’t find one…and so she wrote it herself. In The Dream Lover, Berg unfolds the story of Aurore Dupin, who boldly left a loveless aristocratic marriage to make her own way in 19th-century Paris. She adopts the pen name George Sand and becomes France’s bestselling female novelist, living a bohemian lifestyle and scandalizing society by having high-profile love affairs and, even more outrageously, by dressing in men’s clothing. I love stories about trailblazing women, and Berg compellingly conveys how risky and courageous Sand’s actions were at a time when women had few rights.

I love to read about artists in Paris in the 1930s. And this book is about a woman who tries to leave the world of modeling to become a photographer, and then she morphs again into one of the only WW2 journalists.

Lee Miller was a real person and she fell in love with Surrealist Man Ray in Paris. 

This biography is a must-read for anyone who is interested in art, history, and strong, powerful women. It was the first book I read about the great 19th-century sculptress, Camille Claudel. “As recently as twenty years ago, in France, Camille Claudel was known only to a handful of admirers. The brief moments of applause she had enjoyed during her lifetime had never led to important commissions, and the sales of her pieces remained few and far…Camille Claudel displayed many characteristics that contribute to the weaving of myths: she was beautiful, talented, witty, and fiercely independent. She was connected to some of the most visible artists and writers of the era; she even had a romance with Auguste Rodin, the greatest sculptor of the nineteenth century. But hidden among the magnificent gifts nature had bestowed upon her was the seed of an illness that eventually brought her to a mental asylum.”

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I loved learning about psychotherapist Sue Patton Thoele’s personal journey and anecdotes of other women (including moms) who found the courage to become their most authentic selves. It blew my mind to know that so many women like myself were also facing daily internal battles with self-limiting fears influenced by patriarchal norms. 

Thoele hit the nail on the head when it came to naming some of those sneaky fear-based mindsets and behaviors that were embedded in my own motherhood experience, e.g., devaluing beliefs and self-sabotaging patterns. By the end of the book, I felt motivated to implement a courageous way of living. I walked away with affirmations that were geared towards transforming my subconscious fears into self-love. 

As someone who adores all things Pickford (and has written about Mary’s sister-in-law, Olive Thomas), there’s no way I couldn’t include this book, which covers the association between silent star Mary Pickford and her scenarist Frances Marion. 

I love the dynamic between these two powerful women, and Benjamin does a good job of establishing their relationship. There is a lot to love about this book: the writing, the dialog, and the detail. I love this book!

My only quibble is the picture they used for the front cover. I’d have picked it up long before I did if they’d actually used a picture of Mary and Frances because I would have recognized instantly who it was about.  

Newbie novelist Jacqueline Susann created an iconic all-time bestseller with her tale of three young glamazons who vault to the show business heights, only to tumble into a pit of addictions, poor choices in men, and delightfully overripe dialogue. Susann made her sweeping, sexy soap opera shenanigans even more irresistible by patterning her characters on such 20th-century headline-makers as Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Grace Kelly, Ethel Merman, and the Kennedys. Said publicity-savvy Susann, “They can keep calling it that ‘roman à clef'. It’ll only make my books sell.” They did. It did. Although the sanitized and critically bashed 1967 movie version toned down the à clef elements, it became a box-office smash that has gone on to become enshrined as a kitsch classic.

Based on meticulous and ground-breaking research, this book examines the roles played by children and adolescents in the drug trade in Rio de Janeiro. The author and his team interviewed twenty-five young men involved with the drug trade, plus various other local actors. The testimonies reveal that the participation of children and adolescents is a function of a thriving drug market, the absence of alternative opportunities, and the corrupt and repressive nature of local security forces. I know of no other book with such unparalleled access to child combatants in Rio’s favelas. 

In this classic and pioneering study, Joseph Love traces how ideas about underdevelopment travelled from interwar Rumania to postwar Brazil, two peripheral regions united in their disenchantment with the promises of economic liberalism.

Household names like Mihail Manoilescu, Raúl Prebisch, and Celso Furtado come across as heirs to a long intellectual tradition connecting Russian Narodnik populism to Latin American dependency theory a century later.

These disparate historical actors were brought together by a shared concern with the obstacles to development posed by a world of structural economic and geopolitical inequalities, thus shining a spotlight on the conflicting interests between the West and the Rest.

This book is a mandatory read for anyone interested in the history of the transatlantic slave trade. In Way of Death, the late Joseph C. Milller examines the South Atlantic node of the slave trade within the context of the rise of merchant capitalism in the eighteenth century. Miller explores the connections between Angola, Portugal, and Brazil through the experiences of Africans and slave traders of Portuguese, Brazilian, and Luso-African origins. In this book, Miller advances his now much-debated theory of the expansion of the slave frontier eastwards into the deep interior. Scholars interested in the slave trade from Angola agree that Way of Death is a landmark study both methodologically and theoretically. Miller was able to mine primary sources in the Angolan archives in a time when the country experienced war and authorities were suspicious of researchers.