A Q&A with Cheryl L. Neely | When I wrote my first book, “You’re Dead—So What?: Media, Police, and the Invisibility of Black Women as Victims of Homicide,” I shared the story of the murder of my schoolmate and friend, Michelle Kimberly Jackson in 1984 in the book’s prologue, focusing on the lack of media coverage and police response it garnered. Her case was solved a few years after the book was released and almost forty years after she was killed. Read more →

Whew! Now that we are shutting the door on that messy guest called 2024, we are officially in our unwind and imbibe era until further notice. Join us, won’t you? Because your books should be as good as your booze. We asked our staff members which beverage, cocktail, or mocktail they would pair with their favorite Beacon book, and they did not disappoint. Read more →

A Q&A with Russell Cobb | The natural resource curse is what happens when a given society strikes it rich by extracting some resource and chases after that wealth as other parts of the economy decline. The race to make as much money as possible leads to corruption, inequality, violence, and environmental destruction. Economists and political scientists point to places like Nigeria, Russia, and Venezuela as object lessons in the natural resource curse, but many of those social ills also plague places like Oklahoma and Texas. Read more →

A Q&A with Lisa Mueller | Readers will discover that the evidence-based approach that has powered remarkable breakthroughs in medicine, elections, economic development, and other high-stakes endeavors can apply to protests and social movements, too. Activism often feels very emotional, but it can be strategic at the same time. If we want our activism to really improve the world, we should consider which strategies are most likely to produce the desired results, not just those that feel right in the moment. Read more →

A Q&A with Jonathan Rigsby | By the time I sat down to write “Drive,” I’d had to put a lot of thought into where I wanted to focus my energy. Working, parenting, and driving were taking up the majority of my time, and I had to choose how to spend the very small amount of free time I had. I’m very fortunate to have an incredibly supportive partner. When I decided to get serious about writing a book, she was with me every step of the way. Read more →

A Q&A with Jaclyn Moyer | I wasn’t intending to write about the history of the organic farming movement when I started this project, but as I began to uncover my family’s past, I discovered that the origins of the organic movement, the development of modern wheat, and my own personal history intersected. And all three were bound up with colonialism. Read more →

A Q&A with Yashica Dutt | The research process for the book was fairly typical. I spent a ton of time in libraries and archives, extracting material around the historical details that have gone into shaping this book. I was most surprised to learn how different those details were from the narrative of history that we have been given for decades. Read more →

A Q&A with Alicia Kennedy | My awareness of all the ways in which eating meat intersects with systems and outcomes that I don’t agree with unfolded gradually. It was a very instinctual, spiritual conviction that made giving up meat feel both enticing (at first) and necessary (at last), and then the more cerebral reasons for why I was drawn to it came into focus. Read more →

A Q&A with Nora Neus | This decision was a key component of the book from the very beginning, and the thing I thought could (and almost did) sink the whole project. Prevailing wisdom from experts in this space say that interviewing and quoting white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and members of other hate groups either (1) gives them a “platform” from which to spew their hateful ideology or (2) minimizes the threat they represent if treating them as just another actor in the story. Read more →

Our New England summer is off to an overcast, monsoony start, but that’s not going to stop us from vibing with our seasonal reads and binges. Here’s what our staff has been enjoying. Read more →

A Q&A with Sarah Rose Cavanagh | I was drawn into this topic for a few different reasons. First, I was watching the news and reading articles warning about a growing mental health crisis in our youth—and this was even before the beginning of the pandemic. As a college educator who studies psychology, and as the parent of a teenager, this news was of high concern to me, both personally and professionally. Second, I was observing these battles taking place in higher education, where one side argues that youth need more compassion, care, and flexibility, and the other side says that we’ve already given too much, and that young people need more challenge, exposure, and risk-taking. Read more →

A Q&A with Jasmine Brown | In college, I dreamed of becoming a physician and a national leader who would make a positive impact in many people’s lives. But I was acutely aware of how few Black women there were in senior positions within the medical field, such as the dean of a medical school or chair of a medical department. Black women physicians are even underrepresented at the level of professorship in many medical schools. So, I worried that my career would be severely restricted by a glass ceiling imposed upon me due to my race and gender. Read more →

By Bev Rivero | To everyone’s delight, beloved ABC comedy, “Abbott Elementary,” has returned for its second season! The award-winning show has earned fans across every demographic and pulls off being sweet while still being grounded in the reality faced by staff and parents navigating the public school system. Read more →

The timing of this Q&A is a nice bookend, as I joined Beacon last June! I saw this specific job retweeted by either POC in Publishing or Latinx in Publishing. I’ve been in publishing/the world of books in some way ever since I graduated college back in the aughts. After moving around a bit, I really found a sweet spot in working on progressive books, and publicity and marketing really suit my preference of crafting the messaging and helping to put out projects into the world that the author has spent so much time working on. Read more →

A Q&A with Eboo Patel | Always remember: the goal is not a more ferocious revolution; the goal is a more beautiful social order. Those of us in advocacy have signed up to be the architects of a better society, not just tell other people what they are doing wrong. We need to defeat the things we do not love by building the things we do. What does a better school look like? What does a working grocery store in a food desert look like? Read more →

By Bev Rivero | In the early evening on the first Thursday in March, an excited crowd of invitees gathered at the Museum of the Moving Image to celebrate the first three titles honored by the new Science + Literature program from the National Book Foundation. In addition to the excitement of chatting in person with book folks, the event was a great start to Women’s History Month, as all three books are authored by women. Read more →

A Q&A with Solomon Jones | One of the things I realized in working against racism in policing is that Frederick Douglass was right when he said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” You simply can’t have an effective movement without very specific demands. If you don’t know exactly what you want and you can’t articulate it clearly, the power structure decides for itself what it is willing to give, and that often turns out to be nothing. Read more →

What are you in the mood for? Some global history? Historical dark fantasy? Literary fiction? Graphic memoir? These books are what some of our staff have been reading this summer and they come highly recommended. If you need any ideas for what to read by the pool, on the beach, or by the breeze of the A/C, check out what we have to say about them. Read more →