{"id":54669,"date":"2024-01-25T10:00:07","date_gmt":"2024-01-25T16:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/?p=54669"},"modified":"2026-01-16T20:10:56","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T02:10:56","slug":"public-picks-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/public-picks-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Public Picks 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"

What were the books of 2023 that dazzled, challenged, and inspired us? For this, the 11th-annual edition of Public Picks, section editors for Systems & Futures<\/a>, Sociology<\/a>, Global Black History<\/a>, and Literary Fiction<\/a>;\u00a0series editors for Public Thinker<\/a> and B-Sides<\/a>; and our managing editor, assistant editor, and one of our editors in chief tell us about their favorites. Take a look back on 2023 with one of these Public Books\u00a0<\/em>Public Picks!<\/p>\n

\n

gretchen bakke<\/a><\/h4>\n
SYSTEMS & FUTURES<\/h5>\n

A Date With Language<\/i><\/a> by David Crystal (Bodleian). Perhaps the nerdiest and simultaneously most delightful book I have purchased in long while A Date with Language<\/i> is a classic book of days. 366 1<\/a><\/sup> entries each a single page long and each devoted to a particularity, peculiarity (and occasional peccadillo) of linguistic and literary history. Births and Deaths abound, of authors known and unknown, but here recorded, eulogized, and quoted at length. And since there are many days without much of linguistic historical note, Crystal has ample opportunity and space to explore aspects of language that interest him. 12 May, National Limerick Day; 28 February, Global Scouse Day; 20 September, National Gibberish Day. One can read it as a grandmother (though not mine) might approach a book of prayer and read one page a day, always on the correct day. Or one can open it and read a week\u2019s worth of entries all in the wrong order. Crystal nicely gives fodder to the latter style by providing cross references and an index, plus copious footnotes for those who want to know more about Chinua Achebe or Aphra Behn or International Tea Day. I use it as a reference book when I need a quick reminder of some aspect of something I\u2019d once learned but long since forgotten, but more often I read it for the pleasure of it, as each entry is a magnificent tiny work of art. Not a single word was penned in haste, you can feel it as you read and it seems to slow the world down a beat. Perhaps taking pause was always the point of a book of days, regardless it is here achieved.<\/p>\n

The Mona Lisa Vanishes: A Legendary Painter, a Shocking Heist, and the Birth of a Global Celebrity<\/i><\/a> by Nicholas Day, illustrated by Brett Helquist (Random House Studio). Rarely does one witness the birth a genre, this one so hidden in the norms of the title you\u2019d be forgiven for missing the revolution hidden in plain sight. This is a nonfiction book written for young adults. Cruise through the young adult section of any bookstore and you\u2019ll find 10,000 books about vampires and witches but not a true word in sight, as though we have to grow up to be readers of stories crafted from the stuff of this world. Granted, popular nonfiction does take lessons from great fiction\u2014from character to caper\u2014but The Mona Lisa Vanishes<\/i>, like any good nonfiction book, is grounded in solid research and a striking desire to teach the reader not just about the story of the heist but the social context within which Leonardo da Vinci lived and painted. The book is two stories in one, with illustrations by Brett Helquist (of A<\/i>\u00a0Series of Unfortunate Events<\/i> fame) that make the book feel not too grown up, but also never childish. It was only after reading this book that my own 12 year old stopped asking me why I don\u2019t write \u201creal\u201d books with stories and understood at last that the world is full of stories and that books can tell these stories and also be real books. A mind was changed. Rarely does any author accomplish so much.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\n\n
Related readings<\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n
\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n Essays<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n What 35 Years of Data Can Tell Us about Who Will Win the National Book Award<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n Alexander Manshel <\/a>, et al.\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n

B. R. Cohen<\/a><\/h4>\n
Public Thinker Series<\/h5>\n
\n

The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight<\/i><\/a> by Andrew Leland (Penguin). There\u2019s something both universal and personal about this memoir by a writer who has retinitis pigmentosa (RP). I can\u2019t claim to have the experiences that someone slowly losing their eyesight over their adult life has had. In the universal sense, though,\u00a0The Country of the Blind<\/i> is cartographical, mapping roads we all travel. It\u2019s about how we navigate life, how we encounter new spaces, build deeper understandings of familiar and practiced places, how we decide which road to take, who we will run across along the way, how we react to them, how we know what to make of a scene. It\u2019s a memoir about forms of connection and understanding amid the difficulties of connection and understanding. It is also a personal book about one man\u2019s experience losing his eyesight in a world built for the sighted. The combo of universal and personal works because Leland is eloquent without being floral, broadminded without being superficial or wan. It\u2019s a revelation. This memoir may appear to be about the narrowing of vision, but when you pick it up you realize it is about growing into a more expansive world.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

\n\n
Related readings<\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n
\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n Essays<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n Genre Juggernaut: Measuring \u201cRomance\u201d<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n J. D. Porter <\/a>, et al.\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n

Megan cummins<\/a><\/h4>\n
managing editor<\/h5>\n

I read a lot of short story collections in 2023, and three of them landed among my very favorite books of the year.\u00a0Witness <\/i><\/a>by Jamel Brinkley\u00a0(FSG) confirms Brinkley\u2019s place as a contemporary master of the short story. The ten stories in this book follow the lives of New Yorkers as they move through a city changed by gentrification, and through their own lives changed by the shifting nature of what families, friends, and partners mean to each other in landscapes of loss and difficult pasts, as in the dazzling and heartbreaking title story in which a man bears witness to his sick sister as she attempts to heal herself through incense and crystals and library books, collecting \u201cas much information as she could, as furiously as she could, about the lives and trials, real and imagined, of Black people everywhere\u201d as the medical system fails her and other Black women time and again. Reading this book, I was reminded over and over of the vast possibility of a single sentence to transform a story and leave the reader reeling.<\/p>\n

The stories in\u00a0Ada Zhang\u2019s\u00a0The Sorrows of Others<\/i><\/a>\u00a0(A Public Space Books)\u00a0are set in the Chinese diaspora, from there zooming in on the lives and intimacies of individuals to reveal unspoken histories and unknown futures, as in the devastating \u201cKnowing,\u201d in which a girl in Texas learns of buried family secrets from her math tutor, a family friend she is told to call \u201cGrandfather,\u201d and though they are \u201cnot connected by blood,\u201d they are forever linked by the legacy of the Cultural Revolution. Zhang writes meaning into silence unlike any other writer I know: \u201cSoon the morning would \u2026 close the door on the careful quiet that roomed this conversation. I knew we might never open it again.\u201d A must-read of 2023 from the kind of writer you\u2019ll follow for a lifetime.<\/p>\n

Gen Del Raye\u2019s Boundless Deep<\/i><\/a>\u00a0(University of Nebraska Press) is a hallmark of boundless imagination. Stories of a family across several generations, in Japan and the US, are interspersed with crisp, short pieces\u2014slim historical journeys and high-wire acts of compact metaphor\u2014that throw the rest of the book into new relief. In the collection\u2019s opener, \u201cHideto, in Motion and at Rest,\u201d the narrator remembers the friend, no longer living, they grew up with in Japan, who shared in common the fact one of his parents is Japanese, and the other isn\u2019t. A beautiful story of belonging only halfway, Del Raye writes, \u201cI can imagine the exhaustion of this. \u2026 The private work we had always done of listing the various reasons that would make a difference. Our place of birth, our citizenship, our perfect pronunciation. Our careful schooling, our good teachers, our beautiful or terrible or forgettable faces. How we tried to believe we would never not belong to this country.\u201d In \u201cSynonyms for Climate Change,\u201d a group of graduate students living in the States, and in a world hostile to their research, come to understand their roles as scientists: \u201cI do not believe I am changing the world but I believe I am in with a chance of finding out how the world will change.\u201d And in the book\u2019s title story, science collides with tragedy for a grad student on the other side of the ocean in the moments before and after the Fukushima disaster. Full of such strikingly clear lines that have a great depth of meaning as the ones I\u2019ve quoted here,\u00a0Boundless Deep<\/i>\u00a0is a fabulous debut by a writer to watch.<\/p>\n

And because I can\u2019t help but cheat and include a novel, too, I couldn\u2019t put down\u00a0Sarah Blakley-Cartwright\u2019s Alice Sadie Celine<\/i><\/a>\u00a0(Simon & Schuster), the story of a triangle of women who, despite and because of each other, establish themselves on their own terms; and who shape their lives despite and because of the roles our world would have them play: \u201cSadie was an idealist and a dreamer. She lived a life of plans, but because life tended to interrupt those, in fact she lived a life of fictive imaginings. And Alice, who seemed so dreamy, was in fact a pragmatist in her way. It required little effort to be easygoing and let things roll off your back.\u201d This book\u2019s sharp and brilliant observations of the difference between who we think we are and who we actually become crystallize, for me, that feeling of seeing in language what you\u2019ve felt before but never quite known so clearly from words.<\/p>\n

\n

\n\n
Related readings<\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n
\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n Essays<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n Twitter Ethics Swarm \u201cEuphoria\u201d<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n \"\" <\/a>\n \n Margaret K. Meehan <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/p>\n

Nicholas Dames<\/a><\/h4>\n
Editor in Chief<\/h5>\n

Tone<\/em><\/a> by Sofia Samatar and Kate Zambreno (Columbia University Press). From a purely literary-theoretical perspective, \u201ctone\u201d is the most elusive of categories: not easily reducible to formal analysis, difficult to convincingly historicize, too elusive for newer quantitative methods. Tone isn\u2019t quite rhetoric; not quite \u201cvoice\u201d or point of view; not exactly the same thing as style. It might even be the last holdout of an older belletristic mode of evaluation\u2014 the word that asks us still to have an \u201cear\u201d for literature. Samatar and Zambreno\u2019s text tries to encapsulate this concept that resists encapsulation. From a more strictly literary perspective, though, what is most interesting here is the tone of Tone<\/em>. The book is a paradigm for how theory gets written now: in merged voices, as if courting disorientation, through unpredictable leaps of subject matter, and with a constant reference to ambient collective experience, all fusing into an anti-mastery with a nostalgia for impossible mastery. The tone of our moment, let\u2019s say. And tones, Samatar and Zambreno demonstrate, have moments.<\/p>\n

Other Minds and Other Stories<\/a> <\/em>by Bennett Sims (Two Dollar Radio). Elements of horror, noirish hard-boiled pulp, Sebaldian essayistic travelogue, Borgesian fantasy, and E. T. A. Hoffmann\u2019s uncanny are all present in this remarkable story collection, but Sims\u2019s writing is very much its own world, synthesizing its influences and references into strikingly original parables of the modern interface. The stories often jump off from some mundane wonder of the technological present\u2014 GPS systems, e-readers, phone trackers, Zoom squares, GIFs, etc\u2014 and then give each interface an idiosyncratic half-turn, revealing their bizarre alterations to our experiences of time, death, and the existence of others. (Sims asks us, for instance, to imagine Street View\u2019s Pegman as an explorer traveling in a land drained of time, his puffy physique derived from a spacesuit that provides, not oxygen, but time: a bulk that is \u201cpressurized with time, helmeted with it.\u201d) Not that all of the interfaces Sims meditates upon are so new. The most wrenching story here might be \u201cIntroduction to the Reading of Hegel,\u201d about the interface of the book, and the horrors of a life devoted to reading them.<\/p>\n

My Weil<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Lars Iyer (Melville House). Think Minima Moralia<\/em> as a stand-up routine. You\u2019ll want to quote whole pages. And then there\u2019s the perfect, groan-inducing title. I\u2019ll admit it: I\u2019m a paid-up member of the underground sodality of Lars Iyer fans. Such groupuscules are, as it happens, the subject of Iyer\u2019s work, particularly the one we call the humanities, fast becoming a semi-covert retreat within the neoliberal academy. In My Weil<\/em>, the scene is the PhD program in Disaster Studies at the fictional All Saints University, set in a Manchester that has become a fiction to itself\u2014the vintage Happy Mondays shirts selling for fifty quid, the conferences held at the renovated warehouse now called the Tony Wilson Centre. A loose collective of graduate students, including one who\u2019s taken the name Simone Weil (\u201cI wanted to live deliberately,\u201d she explains), spend their days in a fugue of theory banter, loathing for the Business Studies students who are the targets of their inner monologues, self-loathing, booze and hallucinogens. They\u2019re waiting for the world to end, because what\u2019s the humanities now but a kind of eschatology? More than anything, Iyer asks us to relish<\/em> it: the abjection, the dead-endedness, and the comic sublimity of philosophizing from within damaged life. Because maybe, just maybe, when there\u2019s finally no hope for the humanities (or humanity), that abjection may show you a way out.<\/p>\n\n

\n\n
Related readings<\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n
\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n Essays<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n What\u2019s on Top of TikTok?<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n \"\" <\/a>\n \n Tess McNulty <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n

Tao Leigh Goffe<\/a><\/h4>\n
Global Black History<\/h5>\n

Minor Notes: Volume 1<\/a><\/em>,<\/strong>\u00a0edited by Joshua Bennett and Jesse McCarthy (Penguin Classics).<\/strong> Co-editors of the new series of volumes that highlights marginalized and out-of-print African American poets, Joshua Bennett and Jesse McCarthy present the reader with an intergenerational sampling of unsung poets that meditate on the Black experience. With a poignant foreword by former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, the book (which is not more than 200 pages) introduces a new frame for canonical thinking and teaching African American poetry. Less of a primer, it is more of a cross section of voices not often taught in survey courses or cited in the popular national discourse of Black letters and arts. Smith poses a vital question in conversation with Jericho Brown: \u201cWhy is the Black mind a continuous mind? Because the work of freedom is slow.\u201d Framed conceptually by Smith, Bennett, and McCarthy, who each have dual roles as authors of Black arts and as literature educators, Minor Poetics <\/em>presents a needed revision in the process of how the canon of Black study is determined by which authors are brought back into print and thus are taught.<\/p>\n

The volume includes poets George Moses Horton, Fenton Johnson, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Henrietta Cordelia Ray, David Wadsworth Cannon Jr., Anne Spencer, and Angelina Weld Grimk\u00e9. Encompassing poets whose scope span the 1830s to the Great Depression, the book includes over 150 poems by the seven authors. The topics span the perennial concerns of the Black community from the violent history of lynching to the promise of Haiti\u2019s Black revolution in Toussaint L\u2019Ouverture.<\/p>\n

Bennett and McCarthy advocate for poetry in general, making a case for why it has been neglected in American life in favor of more popular forms of literary expression. They present a new constellation of American bards, to show the continuum and power of verse in Black life across eons. New syllabi will certainly arise from this new initiative to, as they put it, \u201crecover\u201d uncollected poems. The space created between pedagogy and practice by living Black authors is widened by such a dynamic project of discerning minor notes and registers of American life.<\/p>\n

Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility<\/em><\/a>, edited by Ashley James (Guggenheim Museum).<\/strong> Reinventing the museum exhibition catalog, curator Ashley James presents a dynamic and powerful text in the book that accompanies the show she organized Going Dark,<\/em> currently on display at the Guggenheim (October 20, 2023 to April 7, 2024). With attention to aesthetics, poetics, and theory as a curatorial prism, James offers conceptual consideration of whether visibility is a trap in the art world. Going Dark <\/em>then becomes a set of strategies for electing what Afro-Caribbean theorist Edouard Glissant has famously described as \u201cthe right to opacity.\u201d On the other hand, it attends to formal techniques by artists and the concept of the modernist monochrome.<\/p>\n

Urgent global questions post-2020 regarding the reckoning of race, art, and refusing representation as a goal are brought to the fore in the exhibition as an answer the controversy of Black Out Tuesday on social media. Crate-digging, the B-sides, and deep cuts are juxtaposed when we see lesser-known works by established artists in conversation with newer works by emerging and younger artists. In many cases, artists of the Black diaspora and African origin deploy tactics of darkness that work alongside formal choices by artists some of whom are of Asian descent. For deeper inquiry and reading, the book offers further study toward the conceptual questions about race, corporeality, the primordial, the unknown, and the danger of transparency through essays.<\/p>\n

The catalog pushes the boundaries of what museum writing is tasked to do and better yet has the potential to call to action that acknowledges the perils of the dark. The volume includes contributions from Ashley James, Kevin Young, Key Jo Lee, Jordan Carter, Rio Cortez, Ayanna Dozier, Marwa Helal, Kristian Henson, Harmony Holiday, Abbe Schriber, Legacy Russell, Nontsikelelo Mutiti, and Hassan Rahim. Approximately twenty percent of the catalog is devoted to text that form essay commentaries which complements the artwork. Designed by Fahad al Hunaif, as an art object itself the book makes an argument about color and transparency. Each page is delicate and almost translucent which gives it an archival texture of a palimpsest.<\/p>\n

The rest of the book features a selection of images of the works that are on display at the museum. It encompasses artists Sondra Perry, Farah Al Qasimi, Faith Ringgold, Doris Salcedo, Lorna Simpson, Ming Smith, Sable Elyse Smith, Stephanie Syjuco, Hank Willis Thomas, WangShui, Carrie Mae Weems, and Charles White, American Artist, Kevin Beasley, Rebecca Belmore, Dawoud Bey, John Edmonds, Ellen Gallagher, David Hammons, Lyle Ashton Harris, Tomashi Jackson, Titus Kaphar, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Joiri Minaya, Sandra Mujinga, and Chris Ofili. The dark prism presents a formal challenge to what have been prior understood as the formal limits of curating American art. The book is the key to unlocking the rationale and labor behind going dark as a strategy of retreat and reclaiming privacy amid the acceleration of predictive algorithms and financialization.<\/p>\n

Simply West African: Easy, Joyful Recipes for Every Kitchen<\/a><\/em>\u00a0by Pierre Thiam with Lisa Katayama (Potter).<\/strong> Looking to another book that challenged traditional genres in 2023 and where we read Black theory, Senegalese chef Pierre Thiam\u2019s cookbook offers poetics and global history in the diaspora kitchen. Anchored in the cuisine of the West African coast, it presents regional diversity of flavors, colors, and fragrances embodied in the Wolof concept of Teranga. Thiam explains that the name for his restaurant was chosen from the local vernacular. \u201cTeranga is when someone sees you coming their way and greets you with the warmest welcome, hands you a much-needed beverage or a piping hot plate of whatever they were having for lunch, then thanks you for stopping by as you go back on your way, belly and heart full.\u201d This word understandably does not translate into English or other colonial languages. Each recipe is just that the warmest Black diaspora welcome. Simplified recipes make the traditional meals accessible building skills for the adventurous home cook unfamiliar with Black gastronomy. From Smoked Fish and Rainbow Chard Kontomire Stew to Poulet Brais\u00e9 (Ivorian Roasted Chicken) to Ghanaian Shito Sauce made with dried shrimp, each page offers a portal to interconnected and neighboring West African foodways. As Thiam states \u201cAfrica is everywhere. It\u2019s in our past, present, and our future.\u201d With each recipe, flavors layer as skills build to form new muscle memories and central techniques paying homage to centuries of Black food science. As such he encapsulates the temporality and sensory symphony of West African food through his interpretation for the diaspora kitchen.<\/p>\n

Black Punk Now: Fiction, Nonfiction, and Comics<\/em><\/a>\u00a0edited by James Spooner and Chris L. Terry (Soft Skull) Co-editors James Spooner (creator of Afro-Punk the festival) and Christ L. Terry (novelist) have compiled an anthology that arranges essays, interviews, comics, short stories, roundtables, in what feels like an archival volume of BIPOC music festivals. It is a reclamation of what eventually became corporatized about the Black punk scene through big record labels and marketing.<\/p>\n

Structured like an LP, Terry and Spooner present the \u201cIntro,\u201d \u201cGenerations: Inheritance, Relationships, Grief,\u201d \u201cIn the Pit: Solidarity, Togetherness, Creativity,\u201d \u201cFind Yourself: Community, Identity, Mental Health,\u201d \u201cLiberation: Imagination, Innovation, Tech,\u201d and the \u201cOutro.\u201d Black Punk Now<\/em> is an ode to the Black weirdos across America that continue to find family in collectivity and a critique of how punk often excludes people of color. The anthology is written for Black hackers and Black Power hardcore punk fans as well as newcomers.<\/p>\n

The book records memories of the beginning of the Black punk scene in the US. The graphic novel feels appropriate for the spirit of DIY, zine-making and graphic design. The aesthetic evokes the collecting of fan ephemera from festivals, concerts, and mementos including backstage passes. In one section author Hanif Abdurraqib recalls the first punk show he attended in 2001 in Cincinnati of The Chemo Kids. However, beyond the lens of nostalgia, Black Punk Now<\/em> takes stock of what was a counterculture expression emerging for many Black diasporic subjects. Alongside the exciting celebration of hip-hop\u2019s 50 years, this consideration of Black punk culture documents the history of a social movement of refusal of the status quo and racist expectations and commodification. Accordingly Black Punk Now<\/em> is not preoccupied with periodization or canonization, but rather a larger frame of reference for what and who encompasses punk culture.<\/p>\n\n

\n\n
Related readings<\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n
\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n Reviews<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n We Want Our Catastrophe TV<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n Hoyt Long <\/a>, et al.\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n

Mich\u00e8le Lamont<\/a><\/h4>\n
sociology<\/h5>\n

My Girls: The Power of Friendship in a Poor Neighborhood<\/em><\/a> by Jasmin Sandelson (University of California Press). In this deeply human and touching ethnographic book, Sandelson describes the life of a network of black and brown girls growing up together in a public housing project in the Boston suburbs, and how these girls provide each other recognition, love and support as they face numerous challenges. The reader learns how they kill time together with no money to spend, how they create excitement and status by mobilizing social media, and much more. My Girls<\/em> teaches important lesson about the collective dynamics that feed social resilience in a context of scarcity of resources.<\/p>\n\n

\n\n
Related readings<\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n
\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n Reviews<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n Groff and the Radical Act of Paying Attention<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n \"\" <\/a>\n \n Laura B. McGrath <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n

tara K. menon<\/a><\/h4>\n
Literary fiction<\/h5>\n

The New Earth<\/em><\/a> by Jess Row (Ecco). \u201cAll happy families are alike, but every unhappy family unhappy in its own way.\u201d Perhaps. But unhappy is wholly inadequate for the Wilcoxes, the five-person Upper West Side Jewish family at the heart of Jess Row\u2019s brilliant and staggeringly ambitious second novel. The family\u2019s problems are too many to name (fraud, an undocumented immigrant husband, anorexia, infidelity, and incest only scratch the surface) but their foundational trauma is the death of the profoundly principled youngest daughter. When Bering is murdered by an Israeli sniper while protesting the occupation of Palestine, the family finally fractures.<\/p>\n

When Row isn\u2019t experimenting with a dizzying array of forms\u2014letters, internet chatrooms, poetry, unsent emails, fake obituaries, imitation scripture\u2014he employs an omnicompetent narrator who moves seamlessly between the practices of Zen Buddhism, the history of the Zapatistas, and the selection at Zabar\u2019s. Row is a beautiful writer, but he is also, perhaps more importantly, a fearless one. No subject is off limits. The New Earth<\/em> is proof, if proof were needed, that novels can explore the difficult and controversial like nothing else can. You want to think more deeply, more rigorously, more freely about Palestine and Israel? Start here.<\/p>\n

Hangman<\/em><\/a> by Maya Binyam (FSG). Maya Binyam\u2019s debut novel is mesmerizing. I don\u2019t use that word lightly\u2014Hangman<\/em>\u00a0bewitched me; I fell under its spell. No summary can do justice, but I\u2019ll try: an unnamed man travels from the unnamed country he has immigrated to back to the unnamed country he has emigrated from for a funeral and along the way he starts losing things. If that doesn\u2019t sound compelling, all I can say is: trust me. Binyam is a skilled technician\u2014she never uses a name, not for places, not for people\u2014and each sentence is precise, calculated, graceful. Most impressively, especially for a young first-time novelist, Binyam is in total control. She will have you in the palm of her hand. Let her lead you to the ingenious end.<\/p>\n

Western Lane<\/em><\/a> by Chetna Maroo (FSG). If you, like me, pay attention to the Booker Prize shortlist (one, two, three Pauls!?), you might have heard of Western Lane<\/em>. If you, like me, have lost faith in the ability of literary prizes to signal literary quality, you might have shrugged off Chetna Maroo\u2019s slim debut novel. But this would be a mistake. Western Lane<\/em>, about three Jain sisters growing up in 1980s England who start playing squash after their mother dies, is a quiet, elegant book. To their father\u2019s surprise, Gopi, the youngest of the three, turns out to be quite the talent. In the midst of grief, training begins. Maroo is uncommonly good at writing about sport\u2014she captures the hypnotic rhythms of squash\u2014and what it feels like to inhabit a gifted athletic body. There are no pyrotechnics here\u2014nothing radical or experimental\u2014but Western Lane<\/em> is a beautiful, mournful, and deeply moving book. Sometimes, that\u2019s all I want.<\/p>\n

\n

\n\n
Related readings<\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n
\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n Essays<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n How to Lose a Library<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n \"\" <\/a>\n \n Carolyn Dever <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/p>\n

john plotz<\/a><\/h4>\n
B-Sides<\/h5>\n

Rivals: How Scientists Learned to Cooperate <\/em><\/a>by Lorraine Daston (Columbia Global Reports). Lorraine Daston\u2019s stunning new book\u2014her first since Rules<\/em><\/a>, which PB loved<\/a>\u2014shows just how dramatically the ground rules for scientific cooperation (and the age-old question, Cooperate or defect?<\/em>) have changed through the last three centuries. The \u201cporcupinian independence\u201d of the 18th<\/sup> century \u201cRepublic of Letters\u201d gave way to such ardent but elitist Victorian amateur ensembles as the World Meteorological Conference (the people who brought you the International Cloud Atlas) only to be succeeded by the some-strings-attached governmental funding models today.<\/p>\n

How amazing to learn that C. S. Peirce and Max Planck both envisioned shareable knowledge as the rivalry-erasing lingua franca not just of human scientists but also, in Planck\u2019s words, \u201cphysicists in all places, in all epochs, in all cultures \u2026 [and] also the inhabitants of other planets.\u201d Most striking, though is Daston\u2019s account of how the \u201cinternationalism\u201d of the 19th<\/sup> century was shipwrecked by the period of the World Wars, and then reconstituted differently, as (a phrase of the postwar era) \u201cthe scientific community.\u201d That community\u2014the 1946 International Organization for Standardization is her clinching example\u2014promulgates a vision of \u201csubtracted sovereignty\u201d that allows nation-indifferent rules to flourish. As she did in Rules, <\/em>Daston concludes with a warning that intense devotion to number-driven algorithms raises the ominous possibility that a slew of data may yet skew priorities in unforeseeable ways.<\/p>\n

The Reeducation of Race<\/em><\/a> by Sonali Thakkar (Stanford University Press). Sonali Thakkar’s brilliant first book begins as a mystery of sorts. When and why did the word \u201cequality\u201d get swapped out of the 1950 UNESCO Statement on Race, <\/a>to be replaced by \u201ceducability, plasticity\u201d? Answering that question sheds important light on how the colonialist legacy tainted the liberal anti-racism of the postwar period. Thakkar then adds \u00a0a\u00a0\u201chistory of cross referencing\u201d (the phrase comes from Michael Rothberg) that maps the entanglements of anti-establishment and anti-colonial intellectuals (Du Bois, C\u00e9saire, Fanon) with the banally bureaucratic scope and force of organizations such as UNESCO.<\/p>\n

En route, she shows how \u201ceducability, plasticity\u201d came to serve as the central justification for a putative anti-racism that nonetheless preserved a sotto voce concept of race. A consequence\u2014perhaps predictable but certainly not overtly intended by social scientists like Claude L\u00e9vi Strauss, Ashley Montagu, and Morris Ginsberg whose UNESCO work she catalogs\u2014is that Jews were defined as the most plastic of races, and \u201cBlackness\u201d came to be seen as a stubbornly un-plastic category.<\/p>\n

Since I have my own SF-related reasons for obsessing about that fluid postwar moment before the solidifying ideological and intellectual assumptions of the Cold War, I am so grateful to Thakkar for her plunge into those not-yet-curdled open waters.<\/p>\n\n

\n\n
Related readings<\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n
\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n Reviews<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n Capitalism Alone Is Not the Problem<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n \"Sharon <\/a>\n \n Sharon Marcus <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n

Charlotte rosen<\/a><\/h4>\n
assistant editor<\/h5>\n
<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/div>\n
Enter Ghost <\/i><\/a>by Isabella Hammad (Grove Atlantic). Centered around a production of Hamlet<\/i> in the West Bank, Hammad\u2019s remarkable novel explores the politics of art-making under apartheid, the complex, nonlinear afterlives of colonial displacement, and the everyday injuries of Palestinian life under occupation. The novel follows Sonia Nasir, a London-dwelling Palestinian actress on a visit to Haifa, where she has not been since childhood, and where her sister now lives. She quickly, and initially reluctantly, gets wrangled into playing Queen Gertrude in her sister’s friend Mariam\u2019s Arabic-language production of Hamlet.\u00a0<\/i>Her life soon becomes intertwined with an intergenerational Palestinian cast up made up of both \u201948-ers and West Bank residents, who are tasked with putting on a production perennially disturbed by Israeli military checkpoints and obstruction. To be sure, Hammad poignantly uses the production\u2019s evolution, and the actors\u2019 effort to connect Hamlet\u00a0<\/i>to their own political circumstances, to articulate the daily indignities and larger historical atrocities of Israeli settler-colonial rule for Palestinians. But Sonia\u2019s encounters also meditate on the more subtle, tangled, and emotionally fraught intracommunity dynamics that have resulted from Israel\u2019s forceful rupturing of Palestinian life and community\u2014a more intimate and gutting form of violence that is not often legible in typical Western reporting on Palestine and the diaspora. Another powerful throughline of the story is Sonia\u2019s disorienting guilt of being a Palestinian abroad, largely sheltered from Israel\u2019s immediate line of fire. The West Bank production forces her to grapple with her at times naive and skeptical political consciousness, leading her to forcefully confront and re-appraise her own family\u2019s history of loss and resistance. By the end, the novel articulates the beauty and electricity of stepping into and acting on one\u2019s conviction\u2014a process that is nurtured and sustained, Hammad suggests, through communal and creative practice.<\/div>\n
  1. It contains 29 February, because some years\u2014like next year\u2014one needs this day along with all the rest. 29 February Janet Keagan died in 2008. \u21a9<\/a><\/li><\/ol><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    What were the books of 2023 that dazzled, challenged, and inspired us?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":54912,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2497],"tags":[2355,2353,2356,1322,1327,1270,1240,1572,1182,196,2354,1095,1306,1242,1280,1452],"pbpartner":[],"section":[],"pbseries":[],"class_list":["post-54669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-a-public-space-books","tag-bodleian","tag-columbia-global-reports","tag-columbia-university-press","tag-ecco","tag-farrar-straus-giroux","tag-grove","tag-melville-house","tag-penguin-press","tag-public-picks","tag-random-house-studio","tag-simon-schuster","tag-stanford-university-press","tag-two-dollar-radio","tag-university-of-california-press","tag-university-of-nebraska-press"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPublic Picks 2023 - Public Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"What were the books of 2023 that dazzled, challenged, and inspired us?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/public-picks-2023\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Public Picks 2023 - Public Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What were the books of 2023 that dazzled, challenged, and inspired us?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/public-picks-2023\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Public Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Public-Books\/201143656634392\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-01-25T16:00:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-01-17T02:10:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Public-Picks-2023-v-2-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Megan Cummins\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/public-picks-2023\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/public-picks-2023\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Megan Cummins\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/b19bf7ff83a002c3b5052cbd14ee7d42\"},\"headline\":\"Public Picks 2023\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-01-25T16:00:07+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-01-17T02:10:56+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/public-picks-2023\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":5051,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/public-picks-2023\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2024\\\/01\\\/Public-Picks-2023-v-2-scaled.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"A Public Space Books\",\"Bodleian\",\"Columbia Global Reports\",\"Columbia University Press\",\"Ecco\",\"Farrar Straus & Giroux\",\"Grove\",\"Melville House\",\"Penguin Press\",\"Public Picks\",\"Random House Studio\",\"Simon & Schuster\",\"Stanford University Press\",\"Two Dollar Radio\",\"University of California Press\",\"University of Nebraska Press\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Reviews\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/public-picks-2023\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/public-picks-2023\\\/\",\"name\":\"Public Picks 2023 - Public Books\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/public-picks-2023\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/public-picks-2023\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2024\\\/01\\\/Public-Picks-2023-v-2-scaled.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-01-25T16:00:07+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-01-17T02:10:56+00:00\",\"description\":\"What were the books of 2023 that dazzled, challenged, and inspired us?\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/public-picks-2023\\\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/public-picks-2023\\\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/public-picks-2023\\\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2024\\\/01\\\/Public-Picks-2023-v-2-scaled.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2024\\\/01\\\/Public-Picks-2023-v-2-scaled.jpg\",\"width\":2560,\"height\":1280},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/public-picks-2023\\\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Public Picks 2023\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/\",\"name\":\"Public Books\",\"description\":\"a magazine of ideas, arts, and scholarship\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/#organization\",\"name\":\"Public Books\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/logo\\\/image\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2016\\\/08\\\/pb_logo_2x.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2016\\\/08\\\/pb_logo_2x.jpg\",\"width\":212,\"height\":362,\"caption\":\"Public Books\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/logo\\\/image\\\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.facebook.com\\\/pages\\\/Public-Books\\\/201143656634392\",\"https:\\\/\\\/www.instagram.com\\\/public_books\\\/\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/b19bf7ff83a002c3b5052cbd14ee7d42\",\"name\":\"Megan Cummins\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Public Picks 2023 - Public Books","description":"What were the books of 2023 that dazzled, challenged, and inspired us?","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/public-picks-2023\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Public Picks 2023 - Public Books","og_description":"What were the books of 2023 that dazzled, challenged, and inspired us?","og_url":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/public-picks-2023\/","og_site_name":"Public Books","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Public-Books\/201143656634392","article_published_time":"2024-01-25T16:00:07+00:00","article_modified_time":"2026-01-17T02:10:56+00:00","og_image":[{"width":2560,"height":1280,"url":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Public-Picks-2023-v-2-scaled.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Megan Cummins","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/public-picks-2023\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/public-picks-2023\/"},"author":{"name":"Megan Cummins","@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/#\/schema\/person\/b19bf7ff83a002c3b5052cbd14ee7d42"},"headline":"Public Picks 2023","datePublished":"2024-01-25T16:00:07+00:00","dateModified":"2026-01-17T02:10:56+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/public-picks-2023\/"},"wordCount":5051,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/public-picks-2023\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Public-Picks-2023-v-2-scaled.jpg","keywords":["A Public Space Books","Bodleian","Columbia Global Reports","Columbia University Press","Ecco","Farrar Straus & Giroux","Grove","Melville House","Penguin Press","Public Picks","Random House Studio","Simon & Schuster","Stanford University Press","Two Dollar Radio","University of California Press","University of Nebraska Press"],"articleSection":["Reviews"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/public-picks-2023\/","url":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/public-picks-2023\/","name":"Public Picks 2023 - Public Books","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/public-picks-2023\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/public-picks-2023\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Public-Picks-2023-v-2-scaled.jpg","datePublished":"2024-01-25T16:00:07+00:00","dateModified":"2026-01-17T02:10:56+00:00","description":"What were the books of 2023 that dazzled, challenged, and inspired us?","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/public-picks-2023\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/public-picks-2023\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/public-picks-2023\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Public-Picks-2023-v-2-scaled.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Public-Picks-2023-v-2-scaled.jpg","width":2560,"height":1280},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/public-picks-2023\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Public Picks 2023"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/","name":"Public Books","description":"a magazine of ideas, arts, and scholarship","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/#organization","name":"Public Books","url":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/pb_logo_2x.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/pb_logo_2x.jpg","width":212,"height":362,"caption":"Public Books"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Public-Books\/201143656634392","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/public_books\/"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/#\/schema\/person\/b19bf7ff83a002c3b5052cbd14ee7d42","name":"Megan Cummins"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54669"}],"version-history":[{"count":56,"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61992,"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54669\/revisions\/61992"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54669"},{"taxonomy":"pbpartner","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pbpartner?post=54669"},{"taxonomy":"section","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/section?post=54669"},{"taxonomy":"pbseries","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pbseries?post=54669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}