Why am I passionate about this?

By ten years old, I had lived in four countries and endured the repercussions of revolution, exile, military coup d’état, and emigration. That explains my life-long passion for history. I pursued a Ph.D. in Latin American history to make sense of the forces that shaped my and my family’s lives. My seven previous books explored diverse topics in Caribbean history within its broader Atlantic context. Momentous domestic and global events, starting with the COVID-19 pandemic and an explosion of racial and political violence in the U.S. pushed me to broaden my scholarly attention and become a Creators Syndicate’s weekly columnist, and publish a collection of columns with the title When the World Turned Upside Down. 


I wrote

When the World Turned Upside Down: Politics, Culture, and the Unimaginable Events of 2019-2022

By Luis Martínez-Fernández,

Book cover of When the World Turned Upside Down: Politics, Culture, and the Unimaginable Events of 2019-2022

What is my book about?

When the World Turned Upside Down is a collection of 66 opinion columns written by historian and nationally syndicated columnist…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Luis Martínez-Fernández Why did I love this book?

When The Shallows was first published in 2010 it rang like a five-bell fire alarm, alerting the world about the mostly negative effects of pervasive exposure to the internet. Science journalist Nicholas Carr noticed experiencing an “uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory” and set out to find answers and solutions by thoroughly studying the extant body of neuroscience literature on a wide array of topics including brain plasticity, cognition, and memory. Republished with slight changes as a tenth-anniversary edition in 2020, The Shallows is now even more relevant in these times of TikTok. It remains an excellent guide (more like a dictionary) for Baby Boomers like myself to understand the culture and minds of Millennials and GenZers. 

By Nicholas Carr,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Shallows as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Nicholas Carr's bestseller The Shallows has become a foundational book in one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the internet's bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply? This 10th-anniversary edition includes a new afterword that brings the story up to date, with a deep examination of the cognitive and behavioral effects of smartphones and social media.


Book cover of Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Luis Martínez-Fernández Why did I love this book?

Several reviewers, including Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, deemed Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century the most important economics book of the year in 2017, perhaps the decade. As a historian who writes on global economic topics, I find Piketty’s treatment of rising economic inequality extraordinarily insightful. The book forcefully challenges the widely held, naive assumption that the problem of income and wealth inequality will eventually take care of itself. Capital’s relevance is enhanced by the COVID-19 pandemic-generated rise in global inequality. It is a voluminous masterpiece, the result of a dozen years of primary research and thorough quantitative analysis, reminiscent of Karl Marx’s investigations for The Capital. It reads so well that one forgets that it is an economics book.

By Thomas Piketty, Arthur Goldhammer (translator),

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked Capital in the Twenty-First Century as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A New York Times #1 Bestseller
An Amazon #1 Bestseller
A Wall Street Journal #1 Bestseller
A USA Today Bestseller
A Sunday Times Bestseller
A Guardian Best Book of the 21st Century
Winner of the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
Winner of the British Academy Medal
Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award

What are the grand dynamics that drive the accumulation and distribution of capital? Questions about the long-term evolution of inequality, the concentration of wealth, and the prospects for economic growth lie at the heart of political economy. But satisfactory answers have been hard…


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Book cover of Against the Seas: Saving Civilizations from Rising Waters

Against the Seas by Mary Soderstrom,

The scenario we are facing is scary: within a few decades, sea levels around the world may well rise by a metre or more as glaciers and ice caps melt due to climate change. Large parts of our coastal cities will be flooded, the basic outline of our world will…

Book cover of How Democracies Die

Luis Martínez-Fernández Why did I love this book?

Hailed by The Economist as the “most important book of the Trump Era,” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die is a thoroughly researched, engagingly written book that reminds us that the United States, even with its long democratic tradition, is not immune to a democratic breakdown that may prove irreversible. The authors, both professors of government at Harvard University, look deep into the past and widely around the globe to produce a list of warning signs of shifts from democracy to authoritarianism which have become increasingly common in the twenty-first century. With great persuasiveness, they marshal the thesis that “Democracies may not die at the hands of generals but of elected leaders—presidents or prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought them to power.”

By Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked How Democracies Die as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'The most important book of the Trump era' The Economist

How does a democracy die?
What can we do to save our own?
What lessons does history teach us?

In the 21st century democracy is threatened like never before.

Drawing insightful lessons from across history - from Pinochet's murderous Chilean regime to Erdogan's quiet dismantling in Turkey - Levitsky and Ziblatt explain why democracies fail, how leaders like Trump subvert them today and what each of us can do to protect our democratic rights.

'This book looks to history to provide a guide for defending democratic norms when they are…


Book cover of The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It

Luis Martínez-Fernández Why did I love this book?

Many people know that American democracy and capitalism have been on a downward spiral for decades. The system is rigged, former Secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich sounds the alarm throughout his excellent book The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It. He goes deep into these questions as he supports the provocative thesis that despite acrimonious partisan polarization, the real contest is not between the right and left but between democracy and oligarchy; and that the vast majority of citizens (Republicans, Democrats, and Independents) are getting poorer and wield “near-zero” political power. Oligarchs—JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon is their embodiment—have amassed enormous sums of capital and political power, which allows them to further rig the system through campaign contributions, successful lobbying, and even criminal actions for which, if caught, they only pay nominal fines.

By Robert B. Reich,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The System as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Understanding what is happening in our country is critical if we want to fix it and Robert Reich is an exceptional teacher.' - Senator Bernie Sanders

Millions of Americans have lost confidence in their political and economic system. After years of stagnant wages, volatile job markets, and an unwillingness by those in power to deal with profound threats such as climate change, there is a mounting sense that the system is fixed, serving only those select few with enough money to secure a controlling stake.

In The System Robert B. Reich shows how wealth and power have interacted to install…


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Book cover of Norman Mailer at 100: Conversations, Correlations, Confrontations

Norman Mailer at 100 by Robert J. Begiebing,

Winner of the Robert F. Lucid Award for Mailer Studies.

Celebrating Mailer's centenary and the seventy-fifth publication of The Naked and the Dead, the book illustrates how Mailer remains a provocative presence in American letters.

From the debates of the nation's founders, to the revolutionary traditions of western romanticism,…

Book cover of American Happiness and Discontents: The Unruly Torrent, 2008-2020

Luis Martínez-Fernández Why did I love this book?

American readers and news watchers are deeply segregated: those on the left reading and watching news produced by liberals, and those on the right consuming words and images from conservative authors and broadcasts. And then there is Washington Post columnist George Will, a conservative, who reads voraciously across the political spectrum and offers commentary that reasonable Americans must recognize as honest and insightful. American Happiness and Its Discontents is a collection of thoroughly researched, thought-provoking, exquisitely-written columns written by Will from 2008 to 2020. He offers insightful commentary on a wide range of political, social, and cultural topics and tackles subjects deemed taboo by the left such as the wave of nonsense that has flooded higher education. 

By George F. Will,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked American Happiness and Discontents as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

George F. Will has been one of this country's leading columnists since 1974. He won the Pulitzer Prize for it in 1977. The Wall Street Journal once called him "perhaps the most powerful journalist in America." In this new collection, he examines a remarkably unsettling thirteen years in our nation's experience, from 2008 to 2020. Included are a number of columns about court cases, mostly from the Supreme Court, that illuminate why the composition of the federal judiciary has become such a contentious subject.

Other topics addressed include the American Revolutionary War, historical figures from Frederick Douglass to JFK, as…


Explore my book 😀

When the World Turned Upside Down: Politics, Culture, and the Unimaginable Events of 2019-2022

By Luis Martínez-Fernández,

Book cover of When the World Turned Upside Down: Politics, Culture, and the Unimaginable Events of 2019-2022

What is my book about?

When the World Turned Upside Down is a collection of 66 opinion columns written by historian and nationally syndicated columnist Luis Martínez-Fernández between 2019 and 2022, a period of momentous—some unimaginable—developments in the United States and across the world.

This book stands at the intersection of historical writing, chronicling, and opinion journalism, its individual components offering a dialogue between past and present. Some of the book's essays identify, analyze, and connect parallels between the U.S. Antebellum and Civil War and the contemporary polarized context that reached an explosive and frightening peak on January 6, 2021. Others chronicle and analyze dramatic political and geopolitical changes, mostly for the worse: China, Russia, Belarus, and Cuba; and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Book cover of The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
Book cover of Capital in the Twenty-First Century
Book cover of How Democracies Die

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