Reading Recommendations!

Stories of Struggle is now available in paperback! That exciting news from the University of South Carolina Press led to an invitation to join the pages of Shepherd. “Explore, discover, read” is their charming tagline. Shepherd.com currently features more than 9,000 invited authors who select one of their books to be featured, as well as five reading recommendations, the selections centered on a topic, theme, or mood. What a helpful way to assist those of us always looking for the next book to read!

My choices for Shepherd are illustrated below. My own book, Stories of Struggle, is the result of my interviews with more than 150 Black activists of the civil rights movement. I was determined to preserve their stories, mostly untold and likely to be lost forever because of their age, modesty, and the habit of media and scholars to focus on the Great Man (a faulty obsession that has had far more than its day) rather than the people who did the work. Go HERE to read my full Shepherd’s page, which includes a little about me, a little about Stories of Struggle, and my five book selections, my focus, of course, being books that reveal what is hidden, lost, or forgotten.

I’ve got to say that Shepherd is fun! How else would I have bumped into Jessica Carew Craft, anthropologist and author of Why We Need to Be Wild: One Woman’s Quest for Ancient Human Answers to 21st Century Problems, and her recommendation of Never Alone: A Solo Arctic Survival Journey by Woniya Dawn Thibault, who survived for seventy-three days in the Arctic using ten basic tools and, of course, her own skills. Neither of these books would have appeared in my usual rambles of bookstores and friends’ book-club reading lists. While I’m happy in my book-lined writing room, I’m also happy such “wild” women are telling their tales.

Thanks to Shepherd’s navigation options, I now have The Mystery of Charles Dickens by A.N. Wilson, a 2021 book of the year for The Times (of London), Daily Mail, and Irish Mail, among others, sitting in my stack of books to read next. I have dedicated the late summer to rereading Dickens: Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, and David Copperfield so far. The last two books made me determined to learn more than college lit taught me about a brilliant author whose work is somewhat autobiographical and such a call to social action.

If you share my interest in civil rights, Shepherd’s offers many entry points, including “best books on race relations”; “best civil rights books”; “best books on women in the civil rights movement”; and “best books to teach about the civil rights movement.” And more! Experiment.