Looking for holiday gift ideas for a reader in your life? Consider these four slightly under-the-radar titles. Here in the US, Bookshop.org’s free shipping promotion ends with Cyber Monday, so now is a good time for my American readers to support independent booksellers while checking off some gift shopping. If you’re not in the US and you can’t find these titles at your local bookstore, there’s still plenty of time to ship for the holidays if you order soon.
Fighting for Space: Two Pilots and Their Historic Battle for Female Spaceflight
by Amy Shira Teitel
Jerrie Cobb was a key member of the Mercury 13 – a group of women who had passed the same tests as male astronauts but who were turned away by NASA in favor of men. Jackie Cochran was the famous aviator who funded them. I’d read about both women in other books, but never like this. Teitel weaves such an eminently human narrative that I found myself fascinated to the point of fact-checking. How had no other writer told these stories before? Readers interested in women’s history, twentieth-century aviation, or the space race would love this book. However, its engaging, cinematic quality renders it appealing to a truly general audience.
Ritz and Escoffier: The Hotelier, The Chef and the Rise of the Leisure Class
by Luke Barr
Eating out – it’s how we celebrate, unwind, or simply fuel our bodies in a hectic world. Yet eating out as we know it has not been around for very long. Barr’s fascinating book reveals how much of contemporary restaurant culture emerged from the nineteenth-century partnership of famous hotelier César Ritz and lauded chef Auguste Escoffier. Served with a dash of scandal and a hearty helping of spectacle, this book will delight foodies, travelers, and anyone fascinated by the excesses of the Belle Époque.
Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent
by Dipo Faloyin
Written by a writer and senior editor at Vice who grew up in Nigeria, Africa Is Not a Country offers a lively and often grimly funny survey of the history of African stereotypes. Moving from the disastrous Berlin Conference of 1885 in which European-drawn borders systematically destroyed the continent’s cultural systems to the KONY 2012 movement and the white savior complex it represented, this book can’t help but challenge readers interested in history or international culture. Bonus: Africa Is Not a Country just came out this fall, reducing the likelihood that your giftee already owns it.
Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties
by Marion Meade
While the other books on this list were published in the last four years, this one dates to 2004. I don’t think it received enough attention back then. Each of the ten chapters represents a single year in one of American history’s most iconic decades, detailing the comings and goings of writers Edna St. Vincent Millay, Zelda Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, and Edna Ferber. Rather than a deep dive into one biography after another, the effect is that of a social whirl in which real-life characters flit in and out, publishing, having affairs, drinking, dancing, and despairing. This would be a worthy addition to the library of anyone who has ever wanted to be a fly on the wall of one of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald’s parties.
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Can’t wait to hear more. Any suggestions for people who are looking for books to snuggle up with post-holidays?