Book Reviews Archives

Washington Bullets by Vijay Prashad on a background that is half red and half blue

Skeletons in America’s closet: book review of Washington Bullets by Vijay Prashad

September 1, 2025September 1, 2025Rebekah Kohlhepp

It must have been the third or fourth rave review of Vijay Prashad’s work that pushed Washington Bullets to the top of my TBR. Specifically, a fellow reviewer had called Washington Bullets a “critical (yet still accessible) intro” to US imperialism. I had already been primed on the topic by works like Inventing Reality and Manufacturing Consent as well as myriad YouTube channels and podcasts, but the story of US imperialism is so winding and chasmic that it seems no amount of sources could cover it all.

Liberating social justice from nonprofits: a review of The Revolution Will Not Be Funded

August 17, 2025August 17, 2025Rebekah Kohlhepp

The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex caught my eye from the moment I saw it. I’ll admit that I was nervous to see what the essays edited by INCITE! Women of Color would say about the industry I had chosen. What I found were incredibly validating tales and analysis of the nonprofit industrial complex (NPIC). Was nonprofit work really a means of achieving liberation? Or does it just keep activists too busy to notice their own exploitation and deradicalization?

Queer Palestine’s white savior: a book review of Israel/Palestine and the Queer International by Sarah Schulman

January 26, 2025January 26, 2025Rebekah Kohlhepp

After spending an afternoon last week protesting Donald Trump’s second inauguration in a wind chill of zero degrees Fahrenheit, I find myself thinking back to Pride last summer.

Mind Openers: Nonfiction November 2024, Week 4

November 18, 2024November 17, 2024Rebekah Kohlhepp

I can’t believe I am already hosting my third Nonfiction November! This week, I want to know what books really opened your mind this year. Here’s the prompt!

Nonfiction November 2024 Mind Openers prompt

One of the greatest things about reading nonfiction is the way it can open your eyes to the world around you—no plane ticket required. What nonfiction book or books have impacted the way you see the world in a powerful way? Is there one book that made you rethink everything? Is there a book that, if everyone read it, you think the world would be a better place?

Inventing Reality or Manufacturing Consent: Nonfiction November 2024, Week 3

November 16, 2024November 17, 2024Rebekah Kohlhepp

This week in Nonfiction November, we are pairing books together! Here’s the prompt from Liz:

This week, pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title (or whatever you want to pair up). Maybe it’s a historical novel and the real history in a nonfiction version, or a memoir and a novel, or a fiction book you’ve read and you would like recommendations for background reading. Or (because I’m doing this myself) two books on two different areas have chimed and have a link. You can be as creative as you like! (Liz)

The book Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara on a royal blue background

The Congo’s bloodstained blue gold: book review of Cobalt Red

October 7, 2024October 6, 2024Rebekah Kohlhepp

In Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives, American journalist Siddharth Kara takes us into the Congo’s child-filled mines between 2018 and 2021—at least, as far as the Congo’s military will allow him. Kara encounters numerous obstacles in accessing mines to document and miners to interview. Government and mining company officials do not even try to hide the fact that journalists are not welcome there. If word were to get out—if someone were to, say, write a book about the conditions in the Congo’s mines—increased attention on the mines’ deadly conditions could jeopardize the capitalists’ monopoly on all the region’s resources and on its inhabitants’ lives.

3 Books about Palestine I’ve Read this Year

July 6, 2024July 28, 2024Rebekah Kohlhepp

Book reviews have been my focus for a couple of years, but this year I haven’t had the time or energy to read, and when I do, I definitely don’t have the time or energy to write reviews. The books I’ve been reading are largely about Palestine, or socialism—both of which I’m new to and find politically dense and hard to read. (Most of what I read is usually new to me, because I can never stick with one topic for very long before I find another new and exciting hyperfixation. Such is life.)

For example, I’ve actually read three books about Palestine beyond just Light in Gaza in 2024.

A hand holding the book Light in Gaza against a background of bright blue sky with a few bright white clouds.

Gaza’s Dreams: A Review of Light in Gaza

February 18, 2024February 17, 2024Rebekah Kohlhepp

Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, edited by Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing, and Mike Merryman-Lotze, is the hardest-hitting book I’ve read on Palestine so far. I wish I’d started with it, rather than Palestine: A Socialist Introduction and Except for Palestine. Unlike those, Light in Gaza didn’t wade through the political history of the region, which can be overwhelming for uninitiated readers like me. Instead, 15 authors each spend a chapter telling their own stories. How has the occupation impacted them? How have their families survived? What do they want readers around the world to take away from their stories?

CASTE BOOK REVIEW | The book Caste: The Origins of our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson sits in the snow.

America is the Bad Place: A Review of Caste

January 7, 2024January 19, 2025Rebekah Kohlhepp

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson took readers by storm in late 2020, so I was fashionably late reading it at the end of 2023. While something about its ubiquity made me hesitate to read it, it’s intrigued me for years.

The Total Beginner’s Book Review of Palestine: A Socialist Introduction

December 21, 2023December 21, 2023Rebekah Kohlhepp

Palestine: A Socialist Introduction by Sumaya Awad and Brian Bean was an easy choice for me when looking to begin reading about Palestine and the Israeli settler occupation. I’m new to both Palestine and socialism, and the road of social justice seems to lead inevitably to both.