Front Table

On this week’s Front Table, follow one family’s fight to protect their transgender child in rural America, and explore a poetic meditation on our tangled lives with objects. See how daily life and resistance unfold under occupation, and enter a Nigerian town reshaped by secrets and change. Consider the West’s history of conquest, encounter a fierce wind that binds nature and humanity, and imagine a new path toward a fairer, greener world. 

And the Dragons Do Come: Raising a Transgender Kid in Rural America
(The New Press)
Sim Butler

Our country stands at a critical cultural crossroads, with a wave of anti-trans legislation emerging at...

On this week’s Front Table, witness a decade of upheaval through a journalist’s sharp chronicle of protest, and step into the heart of Puerto Rico where a mother and daughter fight to rebuild what violence has torn apart. Visit 1970s Copenhagen through a child raised by seven feminist mothers, and join a defiant woman as she stages her own swayamvar to test the limits of love, age, and autonomy. Explore the digital frontier in a writer’s personal history of the Internet, drift through the dreamscapes of a poet reckoning with insomnia, and glimpse a near future where biotechnology, AI, and genetics converge to reshape the human story. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com.

...

On this week’s Front Table, dive in to a lyrical anti-epic about the beauty, violence, trauma, and absurdity of the internet age; consider a provocative and meticulously structured exploration of identity, language, and the body; and ponder the biggest challenges of the twenty-first century with two extraordinary thinkers. Then, enjoy an essential collection spanning nearly twenty years of emphatic, fearlessly original poetry from one of America's most celebrated living writers; relish an intimate and sharply written book following a nail salon owner as she toils away for the privileged clients who don't even know her true name; and examine a social manifesto exploring the remarkable resilience of wild nature, and how we can heal ourselves by healing the Earth. Find these titles and more at ...

On this week’s Front Table, journey through the past to revisit the making of an iconic mountain, and a controversial defense of the First Amendment. Witness a ghostly reckoning with Congolese history, and a man at a crossroads, too paralyzed to change direction. Analyze the role Silicon Valley has had in tech and business, and visit a fantastical, and horrific imagined Argentina. Finally, revisit a controversial thought experiment that changed the way we think about poverty. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com

Defending My Enemy: Skokie and the Legacy of Free Speech in America...