Here’s a rundown of some of our favorites from 2019, including several whose authors we were lucky enough to interview this year.
FILM CRITIC PETER KEOUGH’S OUTSTANDING NEW BOOK IS FOR KIDS OF ALL AGES
Kids are sweet, and I liked being a kid, but I wanted to avoid any rose-colored looks at childhood. I actually thought it was going to be too dark when I handed the manuscript in.
EXCERPT: FROM ‘BLACK LIVES, NATIVE LANDS, WHITE WORLDS: A HISTORY OF SLAVERY IN NEW ENGLAND’
The slave quarters standing at 15 George Street is the only freestanding slave quarters north of the Mason-Dixon Line still existing in the United States.
LIFE OF THE PARTY
Slam feminism with a true-crime twist in latest from poet Olivia Gatwood Back in the fall of 2013, before Trump and #MeToo, I first encountered Olivia Gatwood’s poetry at a Lower East Side poetry slam, which she won. To someone with a newly minted degree in English from a small liberal arts school […]
SPECIAL FEATURE: FENTANYL IN THE FAMILY
Ben Westhoff’s dive into the ‘deadliest wave of the opioid epidemic’ is the most frightening book of the year, and it’s mandatory reading
EXCERPT: ‘THE ROAD TO SAN DONATO’
“Yeah. Let’s fly to Florence and pedal to the village. It will be, I dunno, five hundred miles or so.”
WAGING PEACE IN VIETNAM
When even soldiers said no to war Fifty years ago this fall, a campus upsurge in Boston and many other cities turned opposition to the Vietnam War into a genuine mass movement. On Oc 15, 1969, several million students, along with community-based activists, participated in anti-war events under the banner of the […]
ALLSTON LIVING ROOM READ: WHERE QUEER STORIES AND MORE TAKE THE FLOOR
“I think it is very powerful, but also complicated. Queerness is like this big abstract concept and how do you put a border around that? And more importantly, should you?”
POP-UP ROMANCE NOVEL SHOP COMES TO BOW MARKET
“When planning inventory for this pop-up, we were careful to ensure that readers can find themselves and their fantasies in the pages.”
HERE’S TO A MILLION MORE
Legendary Harvard Square comic book shop celebrates 45 years of independence
