Fans pick 100 books like Enough to Lose

I love this book—and almost anything Mencken wrote—because he brings his unsparing but good-natured critical intelligence to bear on the politics of his day and on the cultural controversies of the time. Readers will realize if they don’t already, that the absurdities of the present campaign are nothing new, despite what we are told. Mencken’s independence spirit is also refreshing given the tiresome orthodoxies of political pundits today.

Mencken’s bracing intellect and his vivid, bouncy prose are a tonic at any time. He makes today’s journalists seem weak, unreflective, and shallow. 

I love this book, although it is not an “easy read” and should not be. Fischer meticulously catalogs the fallacies that even first-rate historians fall prey to in works that are important in our own time.

He names names and exposes weaknesses in their arguments (I wonder if any of his colleagues spoke to him after the book’s publication) and alerts the reader to errors of thinking and argument that plague historical writing and, I’d add, journalistic writing (and speaking) as well. All reporters should have to read this book, and all well-informed citizens would benefit as well. 

This is one of those books I am just WAITING to give my niece and nephews when they’re old enough to read it. It is such a great guide for how to have conversations born out of curiosity rather than fear.

I also think the formatting of the story and illustrations is inventive, fun, and informative. I consider this graphic memoir a must-read for anyone interested in dipping a toe in the genre. 

The name “Detroit” too often conjures images of poverty-porn: gorgeously crumbling buildings, post-apocalyptic urban decay, lost souls wandering cracked streets. Detroit: I Do Mind Dying shatters this image with unfettered energy. It chronicles the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in the auto plants of the 1960s-1970s, a refreshing reminder of the power of intersectional labor organizing; a raw look at the racism of the mainstream labor movement; and a very human chronicle of the struggles and flaws of courageous everyday workers at this critical time and place in history.

I like this book because it forces us to rethink what the Cold War really was. The book identifies key figures in anti-communist crusades in post-World War II Detroit: workers, white homeowners, city officials, Catholics, and manufacturing executives, and argues that the core elements of their “anticommunism” were not fears of Soviet incursion, but sociocultural tensions at home that derived from drastic changes in wartime and postwar Detroit, which observed a sudden influx of African Americans, Southern whites, and immigrants. 

Thus, the book argues that Cold War Detroit’s “anticommunism” was not a new development in the postwar era, but a continuation of what had previously been labeled anti-unionism, white-supremacism, anti-secular Catholicism, and anti-New deal sentiments, all of which can be characterized as expressions of ongoing “anti-modernist” tensions within American society. Such a reexamination of Cold War anti-communism is significant because it could open up new territory for rethinking what anticommunism… show more.

In A Girl’s Story Annie Ernaux – the author of many memoirs about her parents, her lower-class background, and her sexual life – revisits the summer when she was 18 and a summer camp counselor. For the first time away from home, she was so eager for love that she ended up pursuing a man who dumped and humiliated her. Ernaux has a unique way to find lost time again. She scrutinizes the past with such a precise scalpel that it allows us to identify with the lost young girl and to share her confusion and shame. 

Most environmentalists today believe that wind turbines, solar panels, and electric cars represent our path to a sustainable future. In Green Illusions, engineer Ozzie Zehner blows this thesis out of the water.

Green technologies, Zehner explains, require fossil fuels at every step in their production, maintenance, and disposal. But he is not advocating for continuing to use fossil fuels. Rather, Zehner argues that we have a consumption crisis, and that building more industrial products in factories will not solve the issue. He concludes by offering straightforward, common-sense solutions that actually move us in the right direction.

Dead Wind is the third book in Tessa Wegert’s Shana Merchant series, and it’s where I made my entry into the series. It works as a standalone, but I have every intention of going back to books 1 and 2 to fill in the backstory. In this installment, Detective Merchant is getting her sea legs back after a harrowing experience with a serial killer, while trying to solve the murder of a local woman, and sorting out her romantic feelings with her partner. Her complicated life provides another layer to the suspense and makes her an extremely relatable and likable character. There’s a nice cat-and-mouse feel to this novel with a heart-racing denouement. 

“Tell me what you can’t forget, and I’ll tell you who you are.”

Thus begins Marlena, Julie Buntin’s debut novel about Marlena and Cat, who meet as fifteen-year-olds in rural Michigan. Their friendship is intense and complicated, and right from the start, we know that Cat is the only one who makes it out alive.

Buntin’s writing perfectly captures the voice and texture of adolescence, and her book is a model for how to maintain tension in a story when you find out early on (page 6 to be exact) that one of the main characters is dead.

The sections featuring Cat as an adult show that while she may have left her small town behind, she can’t escape her past. 

All Fudged Up features one of the most charming real-life settings I’ve come across in cozy mysteries.

The series takes place on the delightful Mackinac Island, where there are horse-drawn carriages instead of cars and plenty of historic buildings like the McMurphy Hotel and Fudge Shop.

The main character, Allie McMurphy, spends her days whipping up batches of fudge, keeping the hotel running, and solving murders whenever her sweet puppy finds a body.