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Fighting Words profiles five journalists who published the truth as they saw it, no matter how their reporting angered politicians, social and religious leaders, or other journalists.

The five journalists are William Brann (1855–1898), Don Biggers (1868–1957), John Granbery (1874–1953), Archer Fullingim (1902–1984), and Stoney Burns [Brent Stein] (1942–2011). Though they lived in different eras, all these men dealt with issues that society continues to face—racism, official corruption, religious freedom, educational reform, political extremism of the left and right, the clash of urban and rural values, and the fear of change. Their lives and work constitute a unique, alternative perspective on Texas history and the history of journalism itself.

In addition to the troubling questions they raised on social issues, these independent journalists challenge us, as they challenged the mainline media of their own times, to define the function of journalism and to examine the mandate of the First Amendment. We may doubt the wisdom of some of their convictions, but not the courage they needed to express them in the face of ridicule, hostility, intimidation, and even death. More than the specific causes they fought for, the independents’ passion for truth and their absolute belief in free speech constitute their greatest legacy to us and to journalism.

A powerful debut and a lyric coming-of-age narrative that interrogates the myths we carry

In Find Me When You’re Ready, Perry Janes traces a sweeping journey from Detroit to Los Angeles. As he leaves home and forges toward California, the speaker in these poems considers how we learn and mislearn ideas about manhood, confronts the aftershocks of childhood sexual abuse, and questions the human need for belonging. By embracing the touchstones of youth—movies, lore, graphic novels—these poems assert the speaker’s defiant right to childhood even amid damage.

As the collection arcs toward adulthood, the speaker embodies a vision of healing that refuses easy binaries and embraces the joys of intimacy. Across each of its five acts, Perry Janes’s debut collection is driven by an interest troubling our creation myths, asking who built them, why we carry them, and how we might set them aside.

“[A] spirited and deeply researched project…. [Benkemoun’s] affection for her subject is infectious. This book gives a satisfying treatment to a woman who has been confined for decades to a Cubist’s limited interpretation.” — Joumana Khatib, The New York Times

Merging biography, memoir, and cultural history, this compelling book, a bestseller in France, traces the life of Dora Maar through a serendipitous encounter with the artist’s address book.

In search of a replacement for his lost Hermès agenda, Brigitte Benkemoun’s husband buys a vintage diary on eBay. When it arrives, she opens it and finds inside private notes dating back to 1951—twenty pages of phone numbers and addresses for Balthus, Brassaï, André Breton, Jean Cocteau, Paul Éluard, Leonor Fini, Jacqueline Lamba, and other artistic luminaries of the European avant-garde.

After realizing that the address book belonged to Dora Maar—Picasso’s famous “Weeping Woman” and a brilliant artist in her own right—Benkemoun embarks on a two-year voyage of discovery to learn more about this provocative, passionate, and enigmatic woman, and the role that each of these figures played in her life.

Longlisted for the prestigious literary award Prix Renaudot, Finding Dora Maar is a fascinating and breathtaking portrait of the artist.

The story of starting and running an organic farm—told by the woman who owned one of the first Community-Supported Agriculture operations in the Upper Midwest
 

On a twenty-acre farm in Iowa in 1995, Angela Tedesco planted the seeds (quite literally) of a quiet revolution. While American agriculture had strayed so far afield, her farm would raise food that served the earth and the community as well as the palate. In Finding Turtle Farm, Tedesco recounts this adventure in all its down-and-dirty work and wonder, from plan and plot to harvest, with nods along the way to the vagaries of weather, pests, and human nature.

Introducing Community-Supported Agriculture to Iowa, Tedesco’s Turtle Farm educated its customers along with providing seasonal boxes of produce—an undertaking that continues here, as Tedesco describes what it takes to establish and run an organic operation, bringing to bear all her experience growing up on a family farm, studying chemistry and horticulture, and shepherding a religious education program. From ordering seeds and tending greenhouses to surviving floods and a personal health crisis, Tedesco tells a story of transforming a piece of land and the life within it. She includes practical information about harvesting and preserving food, the discoveries of research conducted on the farm and bonds established between farmers, and even recipes to make delicious use of the produce in your CSA box.

Looking forward to a healthier, happier future when crops are more than mere commodities and food feeds the soul of a community, Finding Turtle Farm is an enlightening, hard-won, and ultimately hopeful account of what it means to meet the most basic of human needs.

A call to pleasurable and sustainable action that centers our shared stewardship of shared spaces.

Environmentally-conscious decision-making can seem like an exercise in self-denial: don’t fly, don’t drive, don’t eat meat. But bringing our tote bags to the grocery store will never be enough to solve the climate crisis, nor will dropping out of society. Many of us crave a collective movement that acknowledges the value of comfort, a framework for making choices that are inherently imperfect, but ones we can live with.

In Finding the Beautiful Commons, historian Cathy Gere offers a relatable and inspiring guide to environmental action in a consumerist culture. Recounting her experiences as a young activist at the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp in Berkshire, as an anarchist and guerrilla gardener in a New York City squat, and as an academic working to decarbonize the University of California system, Gere argues for initiatives grounded in common property—streets, libraries, parks, and other shared spaces—where our communal interests can drive sustainability. These are also sites where we can put bourgeois values like beauty and personal enjoyment to good use protecting local landscapes and resources.

Funny, wise, and honest about the contradictions of life during climate crisis, Gere shows us that the commons we already know—the everyday infrastructure of mass transit, natural reserves, and public beaches—is the very foundation for a livable future.
 

Ray Didinger opens his lively memoir Finished Business with the Philadelphia Eagles’ upset win in Super Bowl LII. When the Eagles finally hoist the Lombardi Trophy, Didinger does his best to straddle the emotions of a working reporter and a long-suffering Philly fan. His ability to do that is why he has built up such a loyal following.

Didinger began following the Eagles as a kid, hanging out in his grandfather’s bar in Southwest Philadelphia. He spent his summers at the team's training camp in Hershey. It was there he met his idol, flanker Tommy McDonald. He would later write a play, Tommy and Me, about their friendship and his efforts to see McDonald enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Didinger has been covering the Eagles as a newspaper columnist or TV analyst since 1970. Over the years, he wrote sports for the Philadelphia Bulletin and the Philadelphia Daily News. He later produced Emmy Award–winning documentaries for NFL Films before transitioning to sports talk radio and TV analysis.

In five decades, across multiple media platforms, he has interviewed everyone from Hank Aaron, Wayne Gretzky, Muhammad Ali, Julius Erving, Jack Nicklaus, to Mike Schmidt, as well as writing film scripts for Hollywood stars such as Bruce Willis and Alec Baldwin. He went to the White House with the U.S. Olympic team and even explored the bizarre world of professional wrestling.

His stories, told in his familiar, breezy style, capture his enthusiasm for sports and his affection for the fans who still mourn the pennant that eluded the Phillies in 1964. Didinger has become synonymous with Philadelphia sports, and his memoir is as passionate as an autumn Sunday at Lincoln Financial Field.

2025 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

First Fruits offers a fascinating look at the lives of Pacific Coast horticulturists Henderson, Jonathan, and Seth Lewelling. Traveling across the Overland Trail—Henderson to Oregon in 1847, with a wagonload of fruit trees, and Seth and John to California three years later—the brothers would establish themselves as pioneers in the West’s growing fruit industry. By recounting how Henderson planted the first orchard of grafted fruit trees in Oregon, how Seth originated the Black Republican and Bing cherries, and how John led the development of the Napa Valley wine industry, First Fruits preserves the Lewellings’ place in history.

However, the Lewellings were not simply planters, grafters, and breeders. They were also adventurers, colonists, gold seekers, reformists, and explorers—experiencing firsthand the westward expansion of the nation. Their stories provide a unique glimpse into the social, economic, and political history of the day. From their Quaker upbringing in North Carolina and Indiana to Henderson’s attempt to start a utopian colony in Honduras, John’s efforts to grow the Grange in California, and Seth’s contribution to democratic reforms in Oregon, the Lewellings’ legacy extends far beyond their agricultural endeavors.

In the first biography to reclaim the brothers’ histories, Linda Ziedrich splendidly captures their dedicated support of one another and their communities, their contributions to the development of the modern fruit industry, and their lasting influence on the cultivation of fruits synonymous with the Pacific Coast region.

"Mayor Richard M. Daley dropped the bomb at a routine news conference at City Hall on Tuesday. With no prelude or fanfare, Mr. Daley announced that he would not seek re-election when his term expires next year. 'Simply put, it's time,' he said." New York Times, September 7, 2010

With those four words, an era ended. After twenty-two years, the longest-serving and most powerful mayor in the history of Chicago—and, arguably, America—stepped down, leaving behind a city that was utterly transformed, and a complicated legacy we are only beginning to evaluate.

The year was 1988, and Denis Johnson was at a low point. He caught malaria on a reporting trip into the jungles of the Philippines and was nearly pronounced dead. The disease left him unable to write. His second wife left him. He didn’t have enough money to pay his taxes. His publisher was waiting for a book that he hadn’t started. But in the life of Denis Johnson, when things were at their bleakest, something good was usually waiting around the next corner. This time, what emerged from the chaos was his masterpiece Jesus’ Son, a book that would tap into the zeitgeist of the 1990s and become a bible for Generation X and an American classic.

Flagrant, Self-Destructive Gestures tells the complete story of Johnson’s fascinating life, his thrill-seeking trips into war zones as a magazine correspondent, his battles with addiction, his live-it-before-you-write-it style of fiction. It follows the arc of his tremendous body of work as a novelist, journalist, poet, and playwright, and in the process recovers the true stories from the hazy myths that one of our most beloved, yet enigmatic, writers left behind.

With its rugged forests and swift rivers, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula offers the perfect setting for fly fishing. Following in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway’s character Nick Adams, Bruce C. Petersen creates a unique coming-of-age memoir that departs from the typical story of growing from teen to adulthood. Instead, Petersen explores his seventh decade, chasing trout in the challenging waters of Northern Michigan while grappling with what it means to grow old. In this absorbing memoir, he relives his most memorable days as a fly fisher and offers thoughtful reflections on the healing power of nature, aging gracefully, and the unstoppable passage of time. 

The ‘unbearable 80s’, as the last decade of the Ceauşescu era has been called in Romania, are in the focus of this quasi-autobiographical work. The book vividly portrays the difficulties encountered by a young intellectual trying to shape himself under the oppressive regime and provides a stark depiction of a man’s intellectual suffocation under hard-line socialist rule. 

The unusual, gravity-defying first act of improvisational theater’s founding father—now in paperback

Dudley Riggs didn’t have to run away from home to join the circus: home was the circus. Son of the acclaimed aerial flyers Riggs and Riggs, he made his circus debut as a polar prince parading in a wagon pulled by a polar bear. At the age of five, he graduated to a risqué vaudeville act during the circus off- season; at eight, he outgrew his cutes (and his child stardom) and joined his high-flying parents on the trapeze. Eventually he had to learn to “fly funny” because he grew too tall to fly straight. In one way or another, Riggs has been flying ever since.

The rest, as they say, is history. And what a story it is. In Flying Funny, Riggs shares many highs and lows while describing circus life and the evolution of America’s popular entertainment during the twentieth century. From his early life in circus and vaudeville to his creation of the Brave New Workshop, we see how his show business experience and instincts helped him create in Minneapolis what became the “next wave” in American entertainment—improvisation.

As a young man, Riggs lost everything in a tornado, got an education on the fly, and sailed with the All American circus to post–war Japan. On a slow boat home and restless about his future, he developed the idea of Word Jazz—creating a script on stage as it is being performed—and shortly after he opened the Instant Theater in New York. Later, he moved to Minneapolis where he founded the Brave New Workshop, launching the careers of comic greats such as Penn and Teller, The Flying Karamazov Brothers, Louie Anderson, Peter Tolan, Pat Proft, Nancy Steen, Liz Winstead, Al Franken and many others. Today, the Brave New Workshop thrives as the longest running improvisational theater in America.

From flying funny on the trapeze to theater without a net, Dudley Riggs’s story is filled with hearty laughs and eyebrow-raising insights. With a wry sense of humor and infectious warmth, he shares the exhilaration of flying whether through the air or on the stage.

Written in close collaboration with Mr. Seckler and those who know him, Foggy Mountain Troubadour is the first full-length biography of an American original. Penny Parsons follows a journey from North Carolina schoolhouses to the Grand Ole Opry stage and the Bluegrass Hall of Fame, from boarding houses to radio studios and traveling five to a car on two-lane roads to make the next show. Throughout, she captures the warm humor, hard choices, and vivid details of a brilliant artist's life as he criss-crosses a nation and a century making music.

Michigan is renowned for its natural beauty and automotive history, yet its rich literary heritage often goes unrecognized. This engaging and extensively researched book aims to change that by providing vivid portraits of both well-known and overlooked authors. It also offers an enjoyable tour through the state’s libraries and bookstores. The book takes readers on a fascinating journey across the back roads and highways of Michigan writing, showcasing the remarkable diversity of authors who have called the state home as well as those who have found it inspirational. It is perfect for anyone interested in reading, Michigan’s literary heritage, and its culture.

Winner of the 2025 New England Society Book Award for Specialty Titles
Winner of the 2024 Readable Feast Award for Social Consciousness 
Named one of Food Tank's 20 Food Systems Reads that Will Inspire You this Summer

In a food industry shaped by the abundance, cheapness, and convenience that giant corporations can offer, small-­scale ventures struggle to survive, as anthropologist Cathy Stanton discovered when she joined the effort to save a small food co-­op in a former mill town in western Massachusetts. On the margins of the dominant system, Stanton found herself reckoning with its deep racial and class inequities, and learning that making real change requires a fierce commitment to community and a willingness to change herself as well.

Part memoir and part history lesson, Food Margins traces the tangled economic and political histories of the plantation, the factory, and the supermarket through the life of one New England town. Stanton tells a complex and compelling story of a rural community imagining and creating a viable alternative to the mainstream in a time of increasingly urgent need to build a more socially and ecologically just food system.

Winner of the 2025 New England Society Book Award for Specialty Titles
Winner of the 2024 Readable Feast Award for Social Consciousness 
Named one of Food Tank's 20 Food Systems Reads that Will Inspire You this Summer

In a food industry shaped by the abundance, cheapness, and convenience that giant corporations can offer, small-­scale ventures struggle to survive, as anthropologist Cathy Stanton discovered when she joined the effort to save a small food co-­op in a former mill town in western Massachusetts. On the margins of the dominant system, Stanton found herself reckoning with its deep racial and class inequities, and learning that making real change requires a fierce commitment to community and a willingness to change herself as well.

Part memoir and part history lesson, Food Margins traces the tangled economic and political histories of the plantation, the factory, and the supermarket through the life of one New England town. Stanton tells a complex and compelling story of a rural community imagining and creating a viable alternative to the mainstream in a time of increasingly urgent need to build a more socially and ecologically just food system.