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Celebrate Native American Heritage Month in November
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Beyond the Glittering World: An Anthology of Indigenous Feminisms and Futurisms
by llumiNative
Rooted in visions of Indigenous futurisms, Beyond the Glittering World proclaims and celebrates a rising generation of storytellers. The collection brings together twenty-two emerging and established women, two-spirit people, and people of marginalized genders who immerse readers in poems, stories, and worlds that challenge and delight. From a museum heist 177 years in the making, to lyrical explorations of love and loss, to a tale where language itself becomes the force that saves the land, this boundary-breaking, genre-bending anthology illuminates the power of Indigenous voices.
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Cloud Runner: Poems
by Joy Harjo
Former U.S. Poet Laureate Harjo (Girl Warrior) has spent decades building worlds of words that draw on Indigenous histories and mythologies and carefully and deliberately weaving them into feminist discourses, social justice, and environmentalism, always blending the literal and the literary. She has explored memory, loss, and spirituality from different angles, but her latest collection of poems may be her most stunning work to date. In it, she invokes the loss of her own daughter in verses that are by turns stark and taciturn or expansive, yet share a sense of the eponymous cloudlike nature and impermanence of people and things. While the book is painfully, beautifully personal, Harjo allows moments of public grief, political hurt, and external forces to breathe into and out of her own deeply felt story.
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My Life : Growing Up Native in America
by Illuminative
Twenty renowned Native writers, performers, athletes, and activists give voice to their individual experiences while shedding light on the depth and complexity of modern Native American identity, resiliency, and joy. The topics are as fascinating and diverse as the creators. These entries are not only an exploration of community, they are a call for a more just and equitable world, and a road map toward a brighter future.
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Empire and Frontier: Colonel Peter Schuyler and the Valiant Iroquois in King William's War: 1689-1701
by Samuel Marquis
The epic story of the alliance forged between Colonel Peter Schuyler and the Five Nations of the Iroquois as English forces joined with the Iroquois against the French and their Indigenous allies. Empire and Frontier presents a powerful episode of early American history, revealing the very human story of friendship and alliance between Colonel Peter Schuyler and the Iroquois during King William's War (1689-1701).
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Anishinaabe Songs for a New Millennium
by Marcie R. Rendon
Minnesotan Marcie R. Rendon summons her ancestors' songs, and her poem-songs evoke the world still unfolding around us, reflecting our place in time for future generations. Bringing memory to life, the senses to attention, she breaks the boundaries that time would impose, carrying the Anishinaabe way of life forward in the world.
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An Ojibwe Home in the City: White Earth Women and Community Organizing in Minneapolis
by Sasha Maria Suarez
The story of generations of Ojibwe women who built a thriving Indigenous home in the urban heart of Minneapolis. Minneapolis became home to White Earth Ojibwe people not through a centralized movement but through generations of determined, behind-the-scenes work by Ojibwe women. These women were organizing not in the streets, but in sewing clubs, churches, classrooms, and kitchens to bring people together and form interconnected communities. Rooted in care, tradition, and persistence, their labor laid the foundation for a thriving urban Indigenous population that continues to shape the city today. An Ojibwe Home in the City tells the histories of Louise and Emily Peake, Winnie Jourdain, Ignatia Broker, and other Ojibwe women who endeavored to make space for Native families in South Minneapolis. From the 1930s through the 1970s, these women built institutions, secured services, and fought for culturally grounded education--all while working inside systems never intended for them. Their efforts led to the creation of vital community hubs such as the Division of Indian Work and the Minneapolis American Indian Center and helped ensure that future generations would stay connected to their culture, even in an urban setting. Far broader than a local history, this book challenges what we think we know about Native activism in the twentieth century, shifting the focus from protest to perseverance and steady commitment. Intimate, compelling, and deeply grounded in community, An Ojibwe Home in the City is both a tribute and a revelation--an essential and personal account of how Indigenous women made a place for their people in a changing world.
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Weaving Community: Indigenous Women and Leadership in the Twin Cities
by Audrey Thayer
A compelling history of the often overlooked work of contemporary Native American women who took action to strengthen the bonds within and among their urban communities. From the 1960s through the 1990s in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Native women activists helped build institutions that sustain urban Indigenous communities to this day. Weaving Community pays tribute to figures such as Vernell Wabasha, Winifred Jourdain, Bonnie Wallace, and Laura Waterman Wittstock, leaders in addressing the needs of Native people living in the metropolitan area. Thanks to their combined efforts, the Twin Cities gave rise to noteworthy organizations including the Indian Health Board of Minneapolis, the first off-reservation health care center for Indigenous people; MIGIZI, a nonprofit that supports the educational, economic, and cultural needs of Indigenous youth; and Project STAIRS, which addressed the mistreatment of Native students in public schools and laid the foundation for the University of Minnesota's American Indian Studies program. Drawing on oral histories and individual interviews, Audrey Thayer and Colette Hyman share powerful testimonies of urban Native community building. The two dozen Dakota, Anishinaabe, and Ho-Chunk women who tell their stories in Weaving Community display the cultural values of strong female leadership as well as the vital importance of preserving traditions, ceremonies, and languages. At a crucial moment in history, these women persevered so that Indigenous people in the Twin Cities could lead lives of dignity and cultural integrity.
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The Savage Mind: An American Legacy
by David Treuer
A searing exploration of American violence, interweaving memoir, history, and reportage to reveal the wound at the heart of our nation--and to offer hope that the country, and we, might be healed. In the wake of George Floyd's murder and the January 6 insurrection, as America seemed to be falling apart, David Treuer decided to hold himself and his family together the only way he knew how: he sat down to write a letter. What resulted is The Savage Mind, the most personal and powerful work of his storied literary career. Ranging from Treuer's upbringing on the Leech Lake reservation in Minnesota to the experiences of his parents, a Jewish Holocaust refugee and the first American Indigenous woman judge, The Savage Mind reveals the terrifying essence of our nation: frontier violence, which has defined our country, our culture, and our very selves. The frontier, Treuer shows, was a site of epic, phantasmagoric bloodshed, initiated by white settlers but perpetuated by all of us. And after the geographic frontier closed in the late 19th century, it did not vanish--quite the opposite. Today, Treuer explains, America's frontier--and all its violent pathologies--has migrated overseas and into our hearts and minds. The atrocities in Gaza and the school shootings in the American heartland are bound together by this invisible filament--one that Treuer makes visible in The Savage Mind, and which he offers hope for weaving, once and for all, into a better cloth.
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A Feather and a Fork: 125 Intertribal Dishes from an Indigenous Food Warrior
by Crystal Wahpepah
From an acclaimed Indigenous chef comes an extraordinary cookbook that weaves powerful storytelling with 125 intertribal recipes to heal our bodies and restore our foodways. Chef Crystal Wahpepah has used her growing platform to tell the little-known history of Oakland's tight-knit Native American communities, which were relocated from reservations across the country to the San Francisco Bay area in the 1950s. Crystal's powerful message to reconnect to our foodways and transform generational trauma into strength as well as her healing dishes have been seen on Food Network's Chopped and Beating Bobby Flay. We no longer get the nutrients we need from our food and spend lots of money on supplementing our diets. We develop chronic diseases that can be avoided and even cured through eating habits. Eat with the seasons, cure your disconnection with the land, and cook colorful, delicious food rooted in the oldest traditions including: Three Sisters Veggie Bowls Sweet Blue Cornbread with Huckleberry Compote Indigenous Popcorn Balls with Edible Flowers Strawberry-Sumac Salad with Maple-Sage Vinaigrette Bison Roast with Chokeberry Rub Smoked Salmon Dip with Red Chilies and Chips Acorn Muffins, and much more. A Feather and a Fork includes 125 recipes developed in collaboration with ethnobotanist and food sovereignty advocate Linda Black Elk to explore the environmental, spiritual, physical, and social benefits of each dish as well as raise awareness of and support for indigenous food producers who are preserving heirloom foods and traditions.
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Walking My Ancestors' Path: A Collection of Paintings and Stories
by Sam Zimmerman
This compilation commemorates animal spirits ranging from bees to rainbow trout, from hummingbirds to wolves, and is illuminated with the vibrant flora and vivid hues of Minnesota's beloved northland.When Sam Zimmerman / Zhaawanoogiizhik returned to the North Shore of Minnesota in the late 2010s, reconnecting with family and the rugged landscape unleashed his creativity: He completed eighty paintings in just a year. Arranged seasonally, these paintings in Zimmerman's distinctive style evoke characteristic North Shore scenes, capture skyscapes and landscape, and highlight creatures whose spirits have connected with his own. The accompanying stories, many also retold in Ojibwemowin by Manidoo Ma'iingan, reflect on points of inspiration, emotional resonances, and everyday events in the artist's life. These lessons in acrylic and narrative celebrate Zimmerman's connection to the northland and remind readers to cherish the healing power of nature.
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The Phantom: The Untold Story of the American Marine the Nazis Could Not Kill
by Bob Drury
Soldier, spy, scout, saboteur, and French Resistance leader in the heart of Nazi-occupied Europe--the untold story of Marine legend Pete Ortiz.Major Pierre Pete Ortiz was a Manhattan-born and Paris-educated polymath fluent in five languages. An adventuresome French Foreign Legion veteran specifically recruited by Wild Bill Donovan's Office of Strategic Services (the precursor to both the CIA and U.S. Special Forces) upon his enlistment in the Marines, Ortiz was the officer Wild Bill instinctively knew he needed and could rely on to complete a string of clandestine missions. While recuperating from gunshot wounds received during a behind-the-lines excursion into enemy-held North Africa, Ortiz delivered his After-Action Report directly to Donovan in Washington. After reading it, Wild Bill scrawled across the top of the report: Please re-employ this man as soon as possible. Ortiz's handlers heeded Donovan's request. Within a year Ortiz was surreptitiously parachuted into the Haute Savoie region of Occupied France, where he made contact with the resistance fighters who called themselves Maquisards. By the time he retired as a United States Marine Corps colonel, he received two Navy Crosses for extraordinary heroism in World War II. He was one of the very few U.S. Marines to serve in combat in Europe during World War II, and one of the most decorated Marine officers of the war.
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The Best Kind of American: A True Story of Murder, War, and America's Undoing in the Middle East
by Kim Ghattas
A work of true crime following one American family's search for answers after a 1984 murder in war-torn Beirut, where the Iranian revolution collided with the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, setting off the geopolitical conflagration that burns to this day On January 18, 1984, Malcolm Kerr, president of the American University of Beirut, was assassinated by a pair of gunmen outside his office. His murder, in the wake of the bombing of the US Marines' barracks, Palestinian guerrilla warfare, and the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, was just one more shocking headline in a city ravaged by the chaos of nine years of war. There was no investigation. Four decades later, the question of who killed Malcolm, and why, is still not fully resolved. In The Best Kind of American, Kim Ghattas embarks on a quest to shed new light on Kerr's forgotten assassination, weaving together the family's story with that of Lebanon's warlords and peacemakers, Hezbollah hostage takers and Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and American presidents from Reagan to Trump. She also tells the definitive story of how Beirut came to be the point of origin for the policies and people who went on to shape the Middle East for decades, from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was then assassinated in a joint US-Israeli strike in the opening salvo of their 2026 war against the Islamic Republic. With the nuance, clarity, and storytelling that made Black Wave an era-defining work on the Middle East, Ghattas delivers a riveting, deeply human saga--a must-read for understanding why this conflict continues to shape today's world.
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The Museum of Lost Things: True Tales of Fabled Treasures, Legendary Cities, and Mythical Creatures That Vanished from History
by Sam Kean
Discover the astonishing story of the world's greatest lost treasures in this enthralling narrative by a writer with the anecdotal flourishes of Oliver Sacks and the populist accessibility of Malcolm Gladwell. (Entertainment Weekly) Spanning a million years of history, the mysteries in these pages include fabled relics, legendary cities, mythical species, and undeciphered languages that have bedeviled seekers for centuries. Perhaps the single most common theme across all of history is loss. The loss of lands, loss of sacred objects, loss of languages, of rights, of life--the past groans with disappearances of all kinds. This enthralling narrative collects the most spellbinding tales of these experiences and weaves them into a thoughtful meditation on what it all means across the sweep of human history and the scope of human lives, including: The long-lost city of TroyThe hidden tomb of Genghis KhanThe destruction of the fabled library of AlexandriaThe near-destruction of the Mona Lisa and other artThe decipherment of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphsThe extinction--and potential resurrection--of dodos, mammoths, and other iconic speciesProvocative, surprising, and above all entertaining, this globe-trotting narrative acknowledges the sheer scale of humanity's losses, celebrates the treasures we have managed to retain, and reveals why they continue to captivate us centuries later.
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The Game
by Peter King
After four decades inside the NFL, Peter King has stories no one else can tell. --Troy Aikman [A] joyful, insightful, colorful, remarkable look at the modern rise and reign of the NFL through the lens of football's greatest chronicler and storyteller. --Jeff Pearlman, New York Times bestselling author With his signature blend of history, insider reporting, sharp opinion, and vivid anecdote, Peter King offers an extraordinary front-row-seat chronicle of the modern NFL, taking us into the defining moments, teams, controversies, and more.
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The Rush: California Gold, the Civil War, and the Making of the Modern World
by Nathaniel Philbrick
In January 1848, a carpenter spotted flecks of gold in a shallow stream at Sutter's Mill in California, triggering the greatest voluntary migration in U.S. history, as hundreds of thousands raced west in pursuit of sudden wealth, reinvention, and power. From the feverish gold-mining camps of the Sierra Nevada mountains to the wharves and vigilance committees of San Francisco, Nathaniel Philbrick transforms the Gold Rush from a tale of sudden riches into the origin story of America's modern contradictions--capital consolidated at dizzying speed, democracy in thrall to private power, xenophobia weaponized in the name of liberty--and a stubborn belief in the American experiment that refuses to die. This is the story of a nation tearing at the seams and a republic tested by its own ideals. Not until a year after the outbreak of the Civil War, when President Lincoln signed legislation that would unite the nation east to west by building a transcontinental railroad, was California's loyalty secured. Philbrick follows the gold as it moves from riverbed to countinghouse to the halls of power, revealing how vigilantism hardened into law and how debates over slavery in the West tipped the balance in Washington. The result is a clear, human story of how a scramble for wealth reshaped ideas of freedom, labor, and belonging--and how California's rise helped push a fractured nation toward war. The Rush is alive with characters whose choices still reverberate: a searing, panoramic epic that captures both the fury and the promise of America.
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The W: A History of the WNBA: How the WNBA Survived, Evolved, and Changed Professional Sports
by Tamryn Spruill
A raucous roller-coaster history of the WNBA, from celebrated start-up to lean years, and on to the recent boom, from a passionate sports journalistThe history of the WNBA is an epic one, and in The W, journalist Tamryn Spruill tells the full thrilling story. This is a three-decade tale of tenacious athletes, devoted fans, and a vibrant, diverse league that struggled for years to find a firm footing in the wider sports culture.When the WNBA launched to much fanfare in 1996, the nascent league was treated like a kid sister with a lot of potential. Eight teams collectively owned by the NBA played a short schedule during the men's offseason. Fans flocked to arenas to see stars Sheryl Swoopes, Lisa Leslie, and Rebecca Lobo, and the Houston Comets won their first of four consecutive championships.But television broadcasts were hard to find, the conversation around the league was often blatantly sexist, and less than a decade after their four peat, the dynastic Comets had been disbanded and ceased to exist.Social media helped players upend that dynamic, be their authentic selves, and engender change inside the league and beyond it. College stars became pros, legends broke records, and the women of the WNBA became undeniable. Thirty years after its founding, the time has more than come for this comprehensive account of the league, and the women whose drive, on-court and off, built the W.
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