97 books like Improbable Scholars

I am a huge fan of mystery novels written by Michael Connelly featuring the detective Harry Bosch, so I was delighted to read Jill Leovy’s account of real-life homicide detectives in Los Angeles working under very difficult circumstances to provide a measure of justice to otherwise ignored crime victims and their families.

The book does a wonderful job of documenting the craft of good police work and shows how poorly functioning formal legal systems – a legacy of Jim Crow – negatively impacts Black communities.

As the fictional detective Harry Bosch likes to say, “everyone counts or no one counts.”

Leovy’s book shows what it takes for that vision of everyone counting to become a reality. 

Liberals and conservatives strongly disagree on the appropriate scope of government. No book has helped me understand why more than Thomas Sowell’s Conflict of Visions.

He describes how the ideological difference results from disagreements about the malleability of human nature. The unconstrained vision, typically associated with liberals, sees human nature as altruistic and perfectible. The government should be used expansively to promote social justice and equality to realize this vision. 

In contrast, the constrained vision, typically associated with conservatives, sees human nature as limited, selfish, and imperfectible. The government should play a limited role in society, as elites cannot hope to restructure society without unintended destructive consequences.

This is one of the most handsomely illustrated books I’ve ever purchased – and one of the most eye-opening.

Bertaud sums up a lifetime of work in over 40 cities, showing that the preoccupation of many urban planners and architects with aesthetically pleasing design ignores the reality that cities work best when they give residents the ability to make their own decisions about where they want to live and help them access good economic opportunities.

Bertaud also chronicles how well-meaning but paternalistic land use rules (minimum lot sizes, height restrictions, excessive historic preservation regimes) have harmed cities by making them inaccessible to diverse newcomers. 

In writing our book, my co-author Greg Berman and I relied heavily on Derthick’s classic 1979 account of the development of Social Security in its first 15 years.

Derthick shows that its intentionally incremental development became the key to its later success as the largest and most successful anti-poverty program ever developed.

Derthick shows how two unheralded government bureaucrats nurtured and protected the program in its early years, including against a very popular and more immediately radical alternative.

The book does a good job of showing that choices made by the architects of government programs in their early days help set their long-term trajectories – an understudied topic.

I was honored to read an early draft of this novel by fellow human and Jerseyite, Val Emmich, and was immediately taken with the voice of Joan, a 10-year-old girl with a special condition that gives her the ability to remember everything, but is afraid of being forgotten. To remedy that, she wants to win a prestigious songwriting contest by writing a song that makes people both want to dance and cry (two of the strongest feelings in her opinion). So she strikes a deal with Gavin, an adult songwriter who she believes can help her make that happen. Jersey City is the primary setting for this novel, a city that along with its many other charms, offers spectacular views of the New York City skyline. 

The Jersey Devil, is a horrifying creature said to lurk in the rugged New Jersey pine barrens.

It’s been the subject of (fruitless) searches and scary legends for well over a century. But it’s not an intrepid cryptozoologist or weekend monster hunter who finally cornered the beast, but instead two historians, Brian Regal and Frank Esposito.

Just as Jay Smith tackled the beast of Gévaudan as a historial mystery, the pair trace the origins of the Jersey Devil from an eighteenth-century settler named Daniel Leeds to the present day.

Along the way we find a smattering of compelling –yet evidence-free—eyewitness reports, much folklore, some professional feuds, and several outright hoaxes (including a painted kangaroo exhibited as the Devil!)

As with the chupacabra and other monsters, the true story is in many ways more interesting than the fictional one. 

Ironically, as a wordsmith, I absolutely adore the universal hilarity of physical comedy, an art form that transcends the need for words. So, I was immediately drawn to the slapstick antics of calamitous Trenton, NJ rookie bounty hunter Stephanie Plum. In this book, Stephanie is hot on the trail of bail jumper Kenny Mancuso. Low on expertise but learning fast, high on resilience, and despite the help she gets from friends and relatives, Stephanie is targeted by a loathsome adversary. Lula, Stephanie’s soon-to-be-sidekick, was first introduced as a minor character in the debut of the series, One for the Money.

Lula is a zaftig black ex-hooker who somehow squeezes her size 16 body into a size 10 spandex bodysuit. Lula’s wisecracking, street-smart philosophy is to always shoot first and ask questions later. In this second book of the series, Lula becomes a continuing character with her role as a file… show more.

Set at the Jersey Shore, this book by fellow New Jersey native Robin Constantine, is my book’s soul sister (right down to the cover) and Robin is my kindred author spirit. We both write about our home state, rock bands, and first loves in a way that only Jersey girls can. By chance, I read this book while vacationing in Cape May, the town that formed the template for the backdrop of this wonderful love story, which made both experiences even more memorable. Needless to say, I was thrilled when Robin invited me to do a book signing with her in her hometown of Bayonne, New Jersey at an amazing indie bookstore called The Little Boho Bookshop.

Baseball is for girls too!

A simple but lyrical picture book biography of Effa Manley, an African American baseball-loving girl who became the owner of a pro baseball team—and the only woman inducted into Baseball Hall of Fame, to date! Don Tate’s detailed, vibrant illustrations will cause readers to pause before every page turn.

Folklore is not history, nor is history folklore, but they often intersect. Henry Charlton Beck, a journalist who became an Episcopal priest and who wrote a series of New Jersey folklife classics, began his career with this volume, stories of abandoned iron forges, villages, and forgotten legends in the state’s iconic Pinelands. Rutgers University Press reprinted Beck’s books, beginning with this book in 1961.