We’ve compiled a list of recommended reads for the mother figure in your life — whether her interests lie in cultural artifacts or the 24-hour news cycle, Hollywood backlot backstories or intriguing historical tales. This list could be for any reader in your life — and that’s fine, too! — but when we typically think of a mother, these words come to mind: creator (and creative), teacher, protector. We think this reading list embodies those traits. Enjoy!
For the Art Lover
Summer of Love: Art, Fashion, and Rock and Roll edited by Jill D’Alessandro and Colleen Terry, with essays by Victoria Binder, Dennis McNally, and Joel Selvin
Slow Art: The Experience of Looking, Sacred Images to James Turrell by Arden Reed
Of Dogs and Other People: The Art of Roy De Forest by Susan Landauer
Ed Ruscha and the Great American West edited by Karin Breuer, with contributions from D.J. Waldie and Ed Ruscha
For the Cinephile
Hard-Boiled Hollywood: Crime and Punishment in Postwar Los Angeles by Jon Lewis
Lois Weber in Early Hollywood by Shelley Stamp
Hitchcock on Hitchcock: Selected Writings and Interviews, Volume 1 and Volume 2 by Alfred Hitchcock, edited by Sidney Gottlieb
Hellboy’s World: Comics and Monsters on the Margins by Scott Bukatman
For the Music Aficionado
Listening for the Secret: The Grateful Dead and the Politics of Improvisation
by Ulf Olsson, edited by Nicholas Meriwether
Loft Jazz: Improvising New York in the 1970s by Michael C. Heller
Better Git It in Your Soul: An Interpretive Biography of Charles Mingus by Krin Gabbard
Ronnie Gilbert: A Radical Life in Song by Ronnie Gilbert
For the Literary Bookworm
Thoreau and the Language of Trees by Richard Higgins, with a foreword by Robert D. Richardson
Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas by Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro
Autobiography of Mark Twain: The Complete and Authoritative Edition Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3 by Mark Twain
A Poet’s Revolution: The Life of Denise Levertov by Donna Hollenberg
For the Wine Connoisseur
French Wine: A History by Rod Phillips
I Taste Red: The Science of Tasting Wine by Jamie Goode
Chianti Classico: The Search for Tuscany’s Noblest Wine by Bill Nesto and Frances Di Savino
Riesling Rediscovered: Bold, Bright, and Dry by John Winthrop Haeger
For the History Buff
A Half Century of Occupation: Israel, Palestine, and the World’s Most Intractable Conflict by Gershon Shafir
Hiding in Plain Sight: The Pursuit of War Criminals from Nuremberg to the War on Terror by Eric Stover, Victor Peskin, and Alexa Koenig
The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology by Aldon Morris
Black Elephants in the Room: The Unexpected Politics of African American Republicans by Corey D. Fields
How Would You Rule: Legal Puzzles, Brainteasers, and Dilemmas from the Law’s Strangest Cases by Daniel W. Park
For the News Junkie
Borderwall as Architecture: A Manifesto for the U.S.-Mexico Boundary by Ronald Rael
The FBI and Religion: Faith and National Security before and after 9/11 by Sylvester A. Johnson and Steven Weitzman
Exceptional America: What Divides Americans from the World and from Each Other by Mugambi Jouet
Reproductive Justice: An Introduction by Loretta Ross and Rickie Solinger
In the Fields of the North / En los campos del norte by David Bacon