book review Archives

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 7, 2024Rebekah 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.

Cave Of Bones Is Irresponsible For So Many Reasons

November 14, 2023November 14, 2023Rebekah Kohlhepp

Author’s Note: It feels odd to be putting out a post right now that, while important, feels relatively trivial compared to what is going on in Palestine right now. There is a US-sponsored genocide occurring as I write this. Both the United States and Israel want you to think the “situation” is “too complicated” for you to condemn genocide and apartheid. It is not. Please take the time to learn about the history of Israel and its violent colonization of Palestine. I hope to have blog posts sharing what I learn in these books—some of which are free right now—up in the near future and as a continual part of my blog.

Free Palestine. 🇵🇸

Not Yours to Reclaim: A Review of Reclaiming Two-Spirits

October 8, 2023November 19, 2023Rebekah Kohlhepp

I wanted to like Gregory D. Smithers’ 2022 book Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America. It was my first Two-Spirit read, so I felt compelled to like the book due to the subject matter. But I found myself plodding through it for over a month, never seeming to have the energy or motivation to keep going.

On Writing White: A Review of On Writing Well

September 3, 2023September 3, 2023Rebekah Kohlhepp

“This is the book that changed my life. If you only read one, make it this one.”

These words from a trusted fellow reader (and writer) were all it took for me to crack open William Zinsser’s On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction.

The Repackaged Atheist Book No One Asked For

August 21, 2023August 21, 2023Rebekah Kohlhepp

To be an atheist means to not believe in God. Nothing more. Nothing less.

I just saved you $15.

David G. McAfee’s Hi, I’m an Atheist!: What That Means and How to Talk About It with Others caught my eye as I was wandering my favorite bookstore a couple of weeks ago. I had never heard of the book or of McAfee, so for only $15, I gave it a try. I hoped that this pocket-sized guide might fill a gap in atheist literature on how to come out to others.

It didn’t.

Supremacy’s Court: A Review of The Scheme

July 9, 2023July 9, 2023Rebekah Kohlhepp

The Supreme Court has been captured by shadowy right-wing mega-donors. It doesn’t sound like it could be true, but it is. In The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Jennifer Mueller put the Court itself on trial and make an airtight case that the integrity of the Court has been sold. For hundreds of billions of dollars.