Are you new here? Here’s the explainer.
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
The Quiet Zone: Unraveling the Mystery of a Town Suspended in Silence
Author: Stephen KurczyNEW RELEASESociology of Rural Areas
In this riveting account of an area of Appalachia known as the Quiet Zone where cell phones and WiFi are banned, journalist Stephen Kurczy explores the pervasive role of technology in our lives and the innate human need for quiet. 📵🌲
“Captures the complex beauty of a disconnected way of life.” —The Nation ✨
With a new afterword to the paperback edition
Deep in the Appalachian Mountains lies the last truly quiet town in America. Green Bank, West Virginia, is a place at once futuristic and old-fashioned: It’s home to the Green Bank Observatory, where astronomers search the depths of the universe using the latest technology, while schoolchildren go without WiFi or iPads. 🔭 With a ban on all devices emanating radio frequencies that might interfere with the observatory’s telescopes, Quiet Zone residents live a life free from constant digital connectivity. But a community that on the surface seems idyllic is a place of contradictions, where the provincial meets the seemingly supernatural and quiet can serve as a cover for something darker. 🏔️
Stephen Kurczy embedded in Green Bank, making the residents of this small Appalachian village his neighbors. He shopped at the town’s general store, attended church services, went target shooting with a seven-year-old, square-danced with the locals, sampled the local moonshine. 🎯🥃
What caught my attention: Stephen Kurczy delivers immersive journalism that reads like a novel, exploring a genuine American anomaly: a town where technology is legally banned to protect radio telescopes. 📡 This isn’t just quirky Americana—it’s a profound meditation on what we’ve lost and gained in our hyperconnected age. Kurczy embedded himself anthropologist-style, giving us intimate access to a community that’s both refuge (for people fleeing electromagnetic sensitivity) and prison (for young people desperate for connection to the wider world). The contradictions are fascinating: cutting-edge astronomy coexisting with technological deprivation, intentional disconnection hiding darker isolations. With The Nation‘s endorsement and comparisons to works like Educated and Hillbilly Elegy, this offers both sociological insight and compelling narrative. Perfect for readers who loved The Internet Police, Four Futures, or anyone fascinated by technology’s impact on community, anyone nostalgic for pre-smartphone life, or anyone curious about the “electromagnetic refugees” who’ve moved there. This is essential reading for understanding what silence really means in 2025. 🌟📚
Author: Nancy HoranNEW RELEASEWomen’s Historical Fiction
An unprecedented view of Lincoln’s Springfield from the acclaimed and bestselling author of Loving Frank. 🎩✨
Nancy Horan, author of the million-copy New York Times bestseller Loving Frank, returns with a sweeping historical novel, which tells the story of Abraham Lincoln’s ascendance from rumpled lawyer to U.S. president to the Great Emancipator through the eyes of a young asylum-seeker who arrives in Lincoln’s home of Springfield from Madeira, Portugal. 🇵🇹➡️🇺🇸
Showing intelligence beyond society’s expectations, fourteen-year-old Ana Ferreira lands a job in the Lincoln household assisting Mary Lincoln with their boys and with the hostess duties borne by the wife of a rising political star. 👨👩👦 Ana bears witness to the evolution of Lincoln’s views on equality and the Union and observes in full complexity the psyche and pain of his bold, polarizing wife, Mary.
Along with her African American friend Cal, Ana encounters the presence of the underground railroad in town and experiences personally how slavery is tearing apart her adopted country. Culminating in an eyewitness account of the little-known Springfield race riot of 1908, The House of Lincoln takes readers on a journey through the historic changes that reshaped America and that continue to reverberate today. 📜⚖️
Why you’ll love this: Nancy Horan proved with Loving Frank (over 1 million copies sold!) that she can bring famous historical figures to vivid life through the eyes of lesser-known women. 📚 This novel does it again, showing us Lincoln’s transformation through Ana, a Portuguese immigrant girl whose outsider perspective makes her the perfect observer of American contradictions around freedom, equality, and belonging. Horan gives us Mary Todd Lincoln in all her “full complexity”—not the caricature of the “crazy” First Lady but a brilliant, troubled woman navigating impossible expectations. The immigrant lens adds crucial dimension to the Lincoln story, while Ana’s friendship with Cal connects her to the underground railroad and the lived reality of slavery beyond political debates. The inclusion of the 1908 Springfield race riot (lesser-known but horrific) extends the narrative beyond Lincoln’s assassination to show how the promises of emancipation remained unfulfilled. Perfect for readers who loved The Personal Librarian, The Lincoln Highway, or anyone seeking historical fiction that centers marginalized voices while illuminating famous lives. Horan writes American history as it was actually lived. 🌟📖
Author: Michelle ObamaNEW RELEASEWomen’s Memoirs
Beautifully illustrated with more than 200 photographs, including never-before-seen images, The Look is a stunning journey through Michelle Obama’s style evolution, in her own words for the first time. 👗✨📸
In this celebration of style, from the moment she entered the public eye during her husband’s U.S. Senate campaign through her time as the first Black First Lady and today as one of this country’s most influential figures, Michelle Obama shares how she uses the beauty and intrigue of fashion to draw attention to her message. 💪👑
Featuring the voices of Meredith Koop, Obama’s trusted stylist, as well as her makeup artist Carl Ray, hairstylists Yene Damtew, Johnny Wright, and Njeri Radway, and many of the designers who have dressed Obama for notable events, The Look brings readers behind the scenes not only to reveal how her most memorable looks came together but also to tell a powerful story about how we present ourselves. 💄💇♀️
Obama’s intimate and candid stories illuminate how her approach to dressing has evolved throughout her life—from the colorful sheath dresses, cardigans, and brooches she wore during her time as First Lady to the bold suits, denim, and braids of her post-White House life and all the active looks and beautiful gowns in between. 🌈
SEE MY EXTENDED BOOK REVIEW ABOUT THIS BOOK
In The Look, Michelle Obama explores the joy and the purpose of fashion and beauty and how—when wielded with grace and care—they can uplift and affirm the values one holds most dear. Confidence, she concludes, cannot be put on. But when you’re wearing something that’s intentional or beloved, clothing can make you feel like the best version of yourself. ✨💎
Bottom line: Michelle Obama is one of the most admired women in the world, and The Look offers unprecedented access to her thinking about fashion, identity, and presentation—subjects often dismissed as superficial but which Obama elevates to political and personal strategy. 👑 With over 200 photos (many never-before-seen), this is coffee table gorgeous meets memoir substance. Obama’s fashion choices were always deliberate: supporting emerging designers, especially Black designers; wearing affordable brands to signal accessibility; using bold colors and sleeveless dresses (controversial at the time!) to project strength and modernity. The behind-the-scenes voices—her stylist Meredith Koop, her glam squad—add intimacy and show the collaboration behind iconic moments. This isn’t about vanity; it’s about how women in public life must think strategically about every visual choice, and how Obama used fashion as both armor and message. Her evolution from corporate lawyer to First Lady to post-White House freedom (those BRAIDS! 😍) tells a story about finding your authentic self while meeting the world’s expectations. Perfect for anyone who loved Becoming, fashion enthusiasts, young women figuring out their own style, or anyone interested in the intersection of image and power. Michelle Obama makes you think differently about getting dressed. 💕📚
