Your Summer A&S Reading List
From critically acclaimed poetry collections to the culmination of a Chesapeake family saga spanning four centuries to influential and thought-provoking examinations of historical and contemporary events, professors and graduates from the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences published a number of books this past year that thoughtful readers might want to pack for their summer vacations.
A sampling of some of the most celebrated books from A&S authors from the last 12 months:
Fiction and poetry
On The Tobacco Coast [Macmillan]
The fourth in a series of novels that began with the acclaimed Mason’s Retreat, On the Tobacco Coast serves as the culmination of a Chesapeake saga spanning four centuries of an American family’s history. Told with irony and deep insight, the novel concludes Tilghman’s exploration of the themes of pride and shame, and the persistence of family stories, race and privilege. A reflection on the state of America today and its efforts to reckon with the wrongs of the past, the novel looks forward to an uncertain, but more just future.
Thick with Trouble [Penguin Books]
From National Book Award finalist Amber McBride, this poetry collection about Black womanhood in the American South summons the supernatural to examine death, rebirth and life outside the male gaze. Steeped in the Hoodoo spiritual tradition, the poems are organized via reimagined tarot cards.
Fireflies and Zeroes [Brandylane Publishers]
This debut novel by Larson, an A&S alumna, explores the repercussions from Charlottesville’s 2017 “Unite the Right” rally, through the experiences of a pop-punk trio about to embark on a reunion tour. After enduring months of radio silence from their volatile front man, Max, their guitarist, Jason, watches in horror as Max is thrown to his death off a balcony at a party on the eve of the tour. Or so he thinks.
Young adult/children’s literature
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Winner of the one of the highest accolades in children’s literature — the Randolph Caldecott Medal — and a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, this is the first picture book written and illustrated by alumna Vashti Harrison. Its story shares valuable lessons about fitting in, standing out and the beauty of joyful acceptance.
Poemhood: Our Black Revival [HarperCollins]
Featuring contributions from 37 acclaimed poets, this young adult poetry anthology celebrates Black poetry, folklore and culture. The collection includes poems by James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni, Kwame Alexander, and Gwendolynn Brooks.
Nonfiction
Making #Charlottesville: Media from Civil Rights to Unite the Right [University of Virginia Press]
Winner of the American Journalism Historians Association’s 2024 Book of the Year award, Bodroghkozy’s book explores the resurgence of white supremacy amid the 2017 “Summer of Hate” in Charlottesville, comparing violent and deadly clashes at the Unite the Right rally to key moments from the Civil Rights Movement era. According to Bodroghkozy “#Charlottesville’ brought to similar maximum visibility the rise of a potentially potent alternative white nationalist social change movement that was also media savvy and committed to the complete reversal of those progressive gains [from the Civil Rights Movement].”
In the Pines: A Lynching, A Lie, A Reckoning [Little, Brown and Company]
The Commonwealth Professor of American Studies, Grace Hale was home from college when she first heard about her family legend. In 1947, while her beloved grandfather had been serving as a sheriff in the Piney Woods of south-central Mississippi, he prevented a lynch mob from killing a Black man who was in his jail on suspicion of raping a white woman — only for the suspect to die the next day during an escape attempt. Years later, Hale revisited the story about her grandfather and Versie Johnson, the man who died in his custody. The more she learned about what had happened that day, the less sense she could make of her family’s version of events. What she discovered would upend everything she thought she knew about her family, the tragedy, and this haunted strip of Mississippi. Johnson's death, Hale found, was actually a lynching. But blame for the act did not lie with a faceless mob. In the Pines is a true crime tale, a family story, and a history of how Black people built a flourishing community in rural Mississippi and what white people were willing to do to stop them.
Dark-Land: Memoir of a Secret Childhood [Paul Dry Books]
This memoir by poet and Edwin B. Kyle Professor of Christian Studies Kevin Hart. traces his difficult childhood as a "backward boy" in a poor part of London, his disorienting move to tropical Australia, and the secrets he and his family kept from one another. Written in elegant, lucid prose, Dark-Land is a memoir of a working-class childhood, a narrative of a migrant, and the story of a convert to Christianity. Booklist praised it as a “granular, meditative, and beautiful portrait of a fascinating life.”
The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America [University of Chicago Press]
Throughout the 20th century, African Americans acquired substantial amounts of property nationwide. However, Kahrl writes, racist practices, obscure processes, and outright theft diminished their holdings and their power. This historical examination sheds light on the problematic practices of an American taxation system that Kahrl argues has proven most unfair to the very people who need its support most. In The Black Tax, Kahrl, co-director of the UVA Karsh Institute of Democracy’s Repair Lab, reveals the painful history of these practices, from Reconstruction up to the present, describing how discrimination continues to take new forms, even as people continue to fight for their rights, their assets, and their power.
The Ecology of Nations: American Democracy in a Fragile World Order [Yale University Press]
UVA’s Ambassador Henry J. and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Professor of Politics, Owens is one of the world’s leading international relations theorists. Examining the challenges facing liberal democracy worldwide, Owen sees the failures of democracy as failures of “ecosystem engineering.” In The Ecology of Nations, Owen argues that the way to ensure democracy’s survival in the United States is to reimagine liberalism — to view it as less about disruption and perpetual openness and more about commitment, community, and country. Liberalism must reject the “great delusion” that it can defeat autocracies everywhere and convert them into liberal democracies — while also countering moves by China and Russia — to make the world safe for autocracy.
Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South [Simon & Schuster]
In this authoritative biography, Varon, the College’s Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History, examines the controversial Confederate general who later embraced Reconstruction and became an outcast in the South. During the Civil War, General James Longstreet fought tenaciously for the Confederacy and counseled Lee not to order the ill-fated attacks that led to his defeat at Gettysburg. Longstreet was never commemorated with statues or other memorials in the South because of his postwar rejection of the Lost Cause mythology and his support for racial reconciliation. Varon’s book offers readers an opportunity to rediscover Longstreet’s legacy through the first biography to give proper attention to his long, post-Civil War career.
Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization [HarperCollins]
At a time when record numbers of Americans are not succeeding at getting — or staying — married, Wilcox argues that our kids and communities — as well as our civilization as a whole — are much more likely to flourish when the state of our unions is strong. New research by Wilcox, who directs the National Marriage Project at UVA, shows that Americans who get married and have children today are leading happier and more prosperous lives, on average, than men and women who are single and childless. In this book, Wilcox spotlights four groups — Asian, conservative, religious, and college-educated Americans — who are building strong and stable marriages by defying the me-first messages of contemporary society in favor of a family-first way of life
