A sweeping, definitive work of history exploring the road to the September 1968 protests of the Miss American Pageant—one led by women’s liberationists and the other organized by the emergent Miss Black America Pageant—and the birth of a new politics of beauty. 

A revolution was brewing. In the dying days of the summer of 1968, during one unprecedented Pageant weekend, Atlantic City played host not only to the fifty young contestants and thousands of eager visitors who had arrived in town for the Miss America crowning, but also to the first Miss Black America Pageant, mounted to protest its “lily-white” sister competition, as well as raucous actions from women’s liberationists. For just a few hours, the boardwalk became a site of vigorously contested ideas—ideas that would redefine the women’s movement and reverberate across American culture.

Now, Pulitzer Prize finalist Micki McElya unfolds the full scope of this history, detailing the shocking injustices and passionate debates that led to the demonstrations, as well as the broader social and political landscape that gave rise to some of the most iconic women on both sides of the ideological spectrum. Here, we find complex portraits of Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Florynce Kennedy, Phyllis Schlafly, and Anita Bryant as well as glimpses of Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Lewis, Vanessa Williams, and Donald Trump years before they became the public figures we know them as today.

Immersive, galvanizing, and endlessly edifying, Liberation Summer is also a kaleidoscopic panorama of the year that saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the Tet Offensive and the escalation of the Vietnam War, violence at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, and the election of Richard Nixon. Within this ever-shifting terrain, lesser-known characters like reporter Charlotte Curtis, radical feminist organizers Robin Morgan and Carol Hanisch, Miss America 1968 Debra Barnes, and the first Miss Black America Saundra Williams fought to not only define their conception of ideal womanhood, but to live it.

Engagingly told and meticulously researched, Liberation Summer proves how the battle for beauty’s meaning has always been inextricably political—and how its enduring impact continues to shape our politics today. –netgalley.com

A deeply moving memoir of healing and ancestral reconnection, weaving an intimate personal story with the epic history of Ireland.

In 2013, exactly a century after her grandparents emigrated from Ireland to America, Carolyn Brigit Flynn returned to her ancestral homeland in the wake of a family tragedy. Raised in a boisterous Irish Catholic family in 1970s Washington, DC, Flynn grew up amid traditional music, stories, and blarney—but also with silence about the poverty and hardship her grandparents left. Her charismatic father bore his own wounds and shunned her when she fell in love with another girl in high school.

In her thirties, Flynn realized she could not build an authentic life until she reckoned with the Irish ghosts she felt coursing through her blood. Her journey took her from the sacred stones of Newgrange to a windswept Irish island where she lived alone for a month. In the coming years, she braided her own experience of trauma and healing with the deeper thread of Ireland’s history of colonization, ancient spirituality, and profound resilience. At once intimate and expansive, Flynn’s memoir is both a personal love letter and a historical excavation. Ultimately, The Light of Ordinary Days invites readers to consider how we reassemble ourselves after tragedy—how we make a true home, across the sea or within the soul, by honoring the places and people who came before. –netgalley.com

A revelatory and immersive biography of a white Southern woman who was a key figure in the early civil rights movement, devoting her life to ending segregation in America only to be forgotten by history.

Born in Florida to a religious family, Lillian Smith (1897-1966) was a white Southern woman living in the Jim Crow South who defied all stereotypes: She lived with her lover, Paula, first running a summer camp in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, and then a magazine, devoted to creating a new vision of the South, one that passionately championed equality and integration. Smith published Black and white writers, a rare feat in those days, and herself wrote articles instructing white Southerners on why they shouldn’t support segregation—Smith firmly believed racism hurt white Americans, too. In 1944 she published a bestselling novel, Strange Fruit, which became a national sensation and was banned in Boston and Detroit. The FBI began a file on her, she received death threats, and her house caught fire three times, twice intentionally, resulting in the loss of all her works-in-progress and her correspondence. Undaunted, she continued her ardent fight against segregation, maintaining correspondence with some of the great leaders of her day, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr, W.E.B Dubois, Paul Robeson, and Pauli Murray. She continued to fight for both civil and human rights throughout the 1960s, helping nurture many of the activists in SNCC and CORE, only to succumb to cancer in 1966.

Drawing on previously unpublished archival research, and with a modern appreciation of Smith’s complex identity, AN INCONVENIENT WOMAN is the definitive account of a woman who defied all expectations and dedicated her life to racial equality. –netgalley.com

One Black woman’s transformative journey of running through grief

In the wake of profound grief at the loss of her mother, Tiffany Gayle Chenault decided, at age 40, to run a half-marathon in all 50 states. Black Woman Runner explores running as a space of survival, healing, joy, while also shedding light on the experiences of Black women who participate in the largely white-dominated world of recreational running. 

Chenault unpacks her own lived experience in order to contemplate the racial space of running: not just the physical neighborhoods where casual runners might run, but also where races are held, what the market for products for runners looks like, and how and to whom running is marketed. Deconstructing the stereotype of the “strong Black woman,” Chenault investigates the meaning of identity and the embodiment of being a runner, particularly a Black woman runner.

In what she calls her “twenty-first-century Green Book,” Chenault offers vivid insights into current-day racial realities while traveling to all 50 states. Ultimately, this is a story about movement — through space, emotion, and identity. It’s about the culture of running, but more urgently, about who runs and why it matters. –netgalley.com

Peabody and Emmy-nominated Native comedian Joey Clift takes you on a journey to discover the largest population you don’t know in his hilarious debut for fans of Michael Harriot, Mo Rocca, and Phoebe Robinson. 

Foreword by Shane Hawk, writer and co-editor of Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology!

Put away the construction paper: This contraband book is here to teach you everything your high school refused to teach about Native American history, people, and culture. From misunderstood figures like Pocahontas, to sports mascots, to the Land Back movement, to how cool Lily Gladstone is, this hilarious NDN-approved guide is the first of its kind––illustrated in an irreverent, textbook-meets-notebook style by Diné artist Julie Fiveash. Sharewith your loved ones and transform your boring Thanksgiving into a big “You’re Welcome” dance party!

Joey Clift (Cowlitz tribe) walks you through a wide range of information that will answer provocative questions and debunk Americans’ wildest assumptions, like: 

• “Native American” or “American Indian”: What the heck do we call you? 
• Is it appropriate to do a Land Acknowledgement over Zoom?
• Why saying “I’m 1/16th Cherokee” is like saying you’re “1/16th Californian’
• Columbus Day is a holiday for a guy who was bad at pretty much everything 
• Are Native American people extinct? No! Stop asking!

This giftable, conversation-starting book is perfect for history buffs, teachers, and comedy lovers alike. Funny, fearless, and deeply informative, Joey Clift’s debut reminds readers that Native people aren’t just part of history—they’ve been here the whole time. –netgalley.com

How a Billion-Dollar Doll and Its Unlikely Founder Changed Girlhood Forever

A deeply researched, invigorating love letter to the beloved American Girl brand, its unforgettable female founder Pleasant Rowland, and her then radical, now iconic line of eighteen-inch dolls that surprised and transfixed a nation.

Are you a Samantha? A Felicity? An Addy? Dive into the world of American Girl, the franchise that has captivated the world for generations. 

For four decades and counting, American Girl has been a defining force in the lives of young girls, shaping their understanding of history, identity, and selfhood. But the story of its creation—and the visionary woman behind it—has never been fully told…until now. An American Girl is the fascinating tale of Pleasant Rowland, the trailblazing founder who disrupted the toy industry with her line of dolls defined by their high-quality craftsmanship and rich, educational backstories—and how
this iconic brand from America’s heartland ended up shaping girlhood for generations.

Author Amanda FitzSimons takes readers inside Rowland’s meticulous creative process and the far-reaching, almost incalculable legacy of her creation. This book explores how American Girl became a cultural touchstone, navigating the crosscurrents of third-wave feminism, the rise of consumer culture, and contentious debates over historical accuracy and representation. It dissects the brand’s complicated relationship with race, class, and diversity, from the groundbreaking introduction of Addy Walker—the line’s first nonwhite doll—to the critiques of its aspirational price point.

An American Girl is a compelling, eminently readable love letter to the entrepreneurial genius of a brand that has maintained its grasp on public consciousness for nearly half a century. It is an essential read for anyone who has ever loved a doll and recognized the powerful ways in which they can transform our understanding of ourselves—as well as the world around us.

For the first time, historian Miranda Malins chronicles the story of one of the most influential families in British history – the Cromwells.

Two powerful, controversial men who had an astonishing impact on British history – Thomas and Oliver Cromwell – were commoners who came from the same family. These two men started out with nothing and ended with nothing, but not before they – and the rest of their family – had changed the face of British history, becoming architects of the early modern world in the process.

In The House of Cromwell, historian Miranda Malins takes readers on an extraordinary journey through two centuries from the Wars of the Roses to the accession of the Hanoverians. This expedition through some of the important years in British history overflows with explosive family dynamics, power struggles that would determine dynastic succession, and the eruption of overlooked voices from the past – particularly those of the Cromwell women – that determined the family’s fate.

Family mattered above all else to Thomas and Oliver Cromwell. Without understanding the entire dynasty, however, one can never understand their impact on Britain and the world. Miranda Malins’ The House of Cromwell is the first, complete history of the most unique, disruptive, creative and controversial family to rule Britain. –NetGalley.com