The book, Julius Scott and the Importance of Being, introduces readers to the historian Julius Scott, his own history, personal qualities, and work. Julius is remembered for the book, The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution, published in 2018, which was widely regarded as a transformative contribution to Atlantic world history. Admiringly reviewed in many important journals, the book received several awards. These accolades came as a sort of compensation at the time of worsening health, a consequence of type 1 diabetes. The consequences of having type 1 diabetes are documented with a detailed discussion of the relentless effects of this disease. Furthermore, as the first Black student to integrate Southern schools, which included his first-grade class in Houston, Texas, and later, secondary schools, first in Atlanta and then in Alabama, along with Julius’s family background, these experiences enabled him to astutely observe racism in its various forms. Throughout his life, Julius managed, despite his terrible illness, to carry on, with ingenuity, grace, and humor.

This biography of Julius Scott is based on primary and secondary sources and focuses on aspects of Julius’s life in order to underscore the personal connection between scholarly achievement, his experiences of living the United States as an African American, and the relentless consequences of having type 1 diabetes. The book, Julius Scott and the Importance of Being, also underscores the importance of documenting the continuing significance of race and religion in political life in the US and the Caribbean.

Just Care is Akemi Nishida’s thoughtful examination of care injustice and social justice enabled through care. The current neoliberal political economy has turned care into a business opportunity for the healthcare industrial complex and a mechanism of social oppression and control. Nishida analyzes the challenges people negotiate whether they are situated as caregivers, receivers, or both. Also illuminated is how people with disabilities come together to assemble community care collectives and bed activism (resistance and visions emerging from the space of bed) to reimagine care as a key element for social change.

The structure of care, Nishida writes, is deeply embedded in and embodies the cruel social order—based on disability, race, gender, migration status, and wealth—that determines who survives or deteriorates. Simultaneously, many marginalized communities treat care as the foundation of activism. Using interviews, focus groups, and participant observation with care workers and people with disabilities, Just Care looks into lives unfolding in the assemblage of Medicaid long-term care programs, community-based care collectives, and bed activism. Just Care identifies what care does, and asks: How can we activate care justice or just care where people feel cared affirmatively and care being used for the wellbeing of community and for just world making?