Front Table Newsletter 9/2

On this week’s Front Table, unveil the hidden infrastructure of rocks that keep the planet functioning and reflect on what can be heard when listening across vast distances; go back to the root of England's monarchy and political conflict in France; witness the quiet madness of academia in the modern world and in hell; and explore the intersections of racism, identity, and Catholicism. Find these titles and more at semcoop.com.

Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks
(Flatiron Books)
Marcia Bjornerud

Earth has been reinventing itself for more than four billion years, keeping a record of its experiments in the form of rocks. Yet most of us live our lives on the planet with no idea of its extraordinary history, unable to interpret the language of the rocks that surround us. Geologist Marcia Bjornerud believes that Earth is vibrantly alive and full of wisdom for those who learn to listen.


SOFAR
(Persea Books)
Elizabeth Bradfield

SOFAR is an acronym for the "sound frequency and ranging channel," a deep layer of oceanic water that enables sound to travel vast distances, and, drawing upon her deep knowledge and experience of the sea, Bradfield plumbs what can be heard by listening across the vast distances of our lives--within our memories and larger histories, between strangers and beloveds, and to the more-than-human world.


The First King of England: Æthelstan and the Birth of a Kingdom
(Princeton University Press)
David Woodman

From one of today's leading historians of the early medieval period, an enthralling chronicle of Æthelstan, England's founder king whose achievements of 927 rival the Norman Conquest of 1066 in shaping Britain as we know it. Beautifully illustrated and breathtaking in scope, The First King of England is the most comprehensive, up-to-date biography of Æthelstan available, bringing a magisterial richness of detail to the life of a consequential British monarch whose strategic and political sophistication was unprecedented for his time.


Banal Nightmare
(Random House)
Halle Butler

In a Midwestern college town at the height of the Me Too era, a group of simultaneously self-flagellating and self-aggrandizing pseudo-academics sit around, think, and send one another insulting emails. As the impulses and memories they have barely managed to repress begin to surface, their relationships become increasingly deranged. Banal Nightmare captures the volatile, surreal, and entirely disorienting atmosphere of the modern era.


Black and Catholic: Racism, Identity, and Religion
(University of Notre Dame Press)
Tia Noelle Pratt

Black and Catholic is an essential book that centralizes the Black Catholic community, revealing the heartache of racism and discrimination, the comfort drawn from the strength of generations of believers, and the celebration from combining the music and traditions of African American religious experiences with the belief and rituals of Roman Catholicism.


Katabasis
(Harper Voyager)
R. F. Kuang

Dante's Inferno meets Susanna Clarke's Piranesi in this all-new dark academia fantasy from R. F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel and Yellowface, in which two graduate students must put aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor's soul--perhaps at the cost of their own.


A History of Political Conflict: Elections & Social Inequalities in France, 1789-2022
(Belknap Press)
Julia Cagé & Thomas Piketty, Steven Rendall (trans.)

Who votes for whom and why? Cagé and Piketty comb through more than two hundred years of data from some 36,000 French municipalities to show how inequality has shaped the formation of political coalitions, with stark consequences for economic and political development. They offer a powerful framework for understanding the complex project of building and sustaining democratic majorities.