June Non-fiction CAT: Society

Welcome to the June edition of the non-fiction CAT! Our topic this month is society. I've spent a bit of time noodling on just what is included here, and you will undoubtedly have your own ideas, which is why I love all our CATs and KITs - it's great to see what everyone comes up with.

This month's topic morphed from sociology (defined as the study of the development, structure and functioning of human society) to society, with a broad definition of anything related to living together in a society.

I took a look at the Dewey Decimal system to get some ideas of what might be included, and thought about what would be covered in other months this year (leaving out law and order and transportation topics). And yes, sociology is included!

So are:

Anthropology
Culture
Civil rights
Political rights
Systems of government
Economics
Social problems
Social service
Secret associations and societies
Education
Commerce
Communication
Customs
Etiquette

Lots of hot button topics!

And this is where you could include politics, if you so desire!

I did a search of my own library using the Dewey/Melvil column and found a lot more books than I expected; here is a sample:

Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point; other books by Gladwell that would fit include Blink and Outliers.
Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society by Peter Senge
Veiled Kingdom by Carmen bin Laden
The Criminal Conversation of Mrs. Norton by Diane Atkinson
Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America and American in Iran and Honeymoon in Tehran: Two Years of Love and Danger in Iran by Azadeh Moaveni
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Slum by Katherine Boo
American Nerd: The Story of My People by Benjamin Nugent
Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam
March, Women, March: How Women Won the Vote by Lucinda Hawksley

My top two are:


Please share what you are planning on reading this month and don't forget to update the wiki!

I'm planning on reading Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging by Afua Hirsch for this challenge.

I got Triggered as a Christmas present. I guess this challenge will give me an incentive to finally get it read.

I may not get to it but I think my most relevant book for this one is Everybody Lies by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

In looking through what I have that generally falls within this Dewey group, I think I'll read Plain and Simple: A Woman's Journey to the Amish by Sue Bender.

>5 dudes22: I loved that book and have read it many times. Maybe I should re-read it for this selection.

I am thinking of reading All About the Amish for NetGalley. There is also the possibility of a couple of other books from my shelves--one is about Hassidic Jews and the others are Gladwell books, plus I have tons of education books. This is a great topic.

I have a couple of options:

Collapse / Jared Diamond
(plus I think I have another Diamond audio on hold at the library)

Talking to Strangers / Malcolm Gladwell

I had a couple books picked out for this CAT but I changed my mind when I discovered this new release the other day: Sunny Days: The Children's Television Revolution That Changed America by David Kamp. It's about the birth of children's educational television as an experiment to better prepare disadvantaged youth for school. It looks like it covers Sesame Street, The Electric Company, Zoom, Mr Roger's Neighborhood and Big Blue Marble.

>8 VioletBramble: - Oh my gosh! that sounded so familiar, but I knew I hadn't read it or heard of it. Then I realized that Malcolm Gladwell had a chapter about this in his book The Tipping Point which I read earlier this year.

I've set aside The Inconvenient Indian, by Thomas King, for this challenge.

I would also highly recommend Seven Fallen Feathers, by Tanya Talaga.

I’m planning to return to Good Economics for Hard Times but probably need a backup, perhaps Breaking News. I try to be interested in economics, but I’m just not.

>11 pamelad: Rusbridger's book is an excellent look at the economics of the newspaper industry, among other topics. I really enjoyed that.

>12 MissWatson: My heart sank when you mentioned economics. I've put Breaking News aside for now because I got bogged down in paywalls, and have started The Rub of Time by Martin Amis. It is a collection of essays. Some are about literature but most are about politics, so it fits in this category.

I chose Kulturgeschichte des Klimas for this CAT where the author looks at the effect of climate change on human civilisation. The author is a historian of Early Modern history, and the section that actually dealt with human history was by far the best.

I have finished The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper. When I started this book I thought for sure it would be for a crime category, but NO. This is the story of the five victims of Jack the Ripper in 1888. The story has little to do with the murders, in fact they are barely mentioned. Instead the author focuses on the lives of the women who became victims and the society in which they lived from parentage to birth to adulthood. It is a riveting account of female poverty in London during the nineteenth century. The author chronicles the societal mores that lead women to desperate measures to do little more than survive. She makes a strong case for the fact that the victims were not likely all prostitutes as the popular narrative recounts. This was fascinating, not what I expected and such a well-deserved re-telling of the lives of these women. Rubenhold's research was exhaustive and she makes a clear distinction between verified facts and assumptions based on historical context.

Current events encouraged me to read April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr's death and how it changed America by Michael Eric Dyson.
Published in 2008 this is somewhat dated now, but it's still an interesting look at King's life and death and how he brought about change - although from a 2020 view it's obvious that there is still a great deal to be achieved. Dyson includes lots of statistics that while providing a heap of information does not make for dynamic reading, especially in audio format. An imagined interview with King at the end was bizarre and pointless, effectively leaving the reader with a negative impact.

I read Eat, Sweat, Play a book concerned with women's participation in sport and execise - or rather the lack thereof.

As well as the book I'd planned to read for this month, I have also just finished Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Renni Eddo-Lodge which was excellent.

I've read Selma's Bloody Sunday: Protest, Voting Rights, and the Struggle for Racial Equality by Robert A. Pratt, which featured Bloody Sunday, but included more of the Civil Rights struggle in the mid-1960s.

After a couple of false starts, I have finally read a book about society: The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell. The first half is an investigation into the living conditions of miners and their families. The second part is about Orwell's middle-class upbringing, the gulf between the middle and working classes, and the necessity of bridging it in order to institute a socialist government. A lot of self-flagellation here!

The July thread is up! https://www.librarything.com/topic/321389#

I am also counting Grubengold for this, which is a history of coalmining in Europe from 1750 until today, how it sparked the Industrial Revolution, changed landscapes, industrial relations, enabled the modern consumer society and then the environmental protection movement.

I've finished Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging by Afua Hirsch and it was brilliant, highly recommended.

I finished another book dealing with racism: Stieg Larsson, my friend by Kurdo Baksi 4★

"I never doubted for one single second that Stieg Larsson was on the side of the weak and vulnerable. He was always prepared to speak up for anybody and everybody incapable of making a case for themselves. And that was not all: he was willing to pay a high price in order to bring about change."

Stieg Larsson was founder of the anti-fascist magazine Expo and was shadowed and threatened by neo-Nazis and racists. As a journalist he thwarted them by writing profusely against them, and even directly to individuals. Several of his fictional characters were based on people he knew. Plots were based on articles and police reports that he had amassed, or were inspired by events in his own life. His method for writing was unusual, completing a chapter of book one, then moving to book two, then book three, thereby developing all three plots at the same time.

This short book is Baksi's heartfelt tribute to his ethical, talented friend.

"My point is that the police don't take racism and neo-Nazism seriously." - Stieg Larsson

I had planned on reading/listening to How to be an Antiracist (written and narrated by Ibram X. Kendi) next month, but I ended up finishing it last Friday afternoon! - This seems to be the "it" book of the moment and I can see why: Ibram X. Kendi dissects the various forms of racism in our country-- the origins/roots and, the ways it makes itself manifest in our society; examining some of the anti-racist solutions in the past (which did not work) and; taking an unflinching look at his own racism and his efforts to eradicate it. The book provides important context in the discussions about anti-racism taking place in the country and world today inasmuch as knowledge can inspire. Kendi may be a great speaker (I actually don't know) but he is not a great narrator: It was often difficult to discern when he was quoting other people, if he was trying to imitate other people, and why he was being particularly emotive in certain sections. I'm thinking of getting the ebook version for book club discussion.

I've squeaked in one more book for this CAT: Angela Saini's Superior: The Return of Race Science which was an excellent debunking of the resurgent interest in eugenics. It would also fit in July's Human Science category, but I've included it here. She makes the point that science simply can't be studied or interpreted separately from the social and political context.

>26 Jackie_K: For anyone in Australia who's interested in this book, I just bought the Kindle version for 99 cents on Amazon Australia.

Great job everyone with your reading choices this month.

I also made a change mid-month and have been making my way through The Invention of the White Race, Volume 1: Racial Oppression and Social Control. I will need a few more days to get through it - it's not easy to read with tons of footnotes and 14 appendices, and it's written in a 'scholarly' way. It has some radical ideas, and I have ordered Volume 2 to see how the author finishes making his case.

I read The fire next time by James Baldwin and can recommend it highly. Although written in the sixties, sadly this work is still relevant. Baldwin's writing is eloquent and profound.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed / Jared Diamond
3.5 stars

Diamond looks at different societies -- some historical, some current -- to see what they’ve done in order to survive/succeed. Some have disappeared. This includes current-day Montana, the Vikings (in Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland, some of the smaller islands nearer Europe...), Easter Island and other Polynesian Islands, the Mayans in Mexico, Haiti/Dominican Republic, Australia, China, Japan, New Guinea, Rwanda... He looks at some of them in more detail than others.

And I found some stories more interesting than others: Montana, Vikings, Easter Island, Rwanda, Haiti/Dominican Republic. He had a few chapters at the end that looked at business – the economy “vs” the environment. I was surprised to hear about how one of the big oil companies is set up in New Guinea – to the benefit of the environment around the area!
Too bad more oil companies didn’t do similar (or too bad it wasn’t required that they all do better, as it apparently can be done).

I do have a hard time rating a lot of nonfiction 4 stars and higher. I think those that I rate that high read more like fiction, this one was good, but it didn’t read like fiction.

Finished The Invention of the White Race Volume 1: Racial Oppression and Social Control by Theodore W. Allen yesterday. He poses a really interesting question - did racism cause slavery or did slavery cause racism and then spends most of Volume 1 making his case by describing how the English treated the Irish. It wasn't that easy to read (>30 LibraryCin: i.e., not written like a novel!), with a lot of terms I had to look up and with lots of footnotes and 14 appendices. Still, I learned a lot and I am interested in how it brings it all together in Volume 2.