Toni at Random, by Dana A. Williams (Amistad). This study of Toni Morrison’s tenure as a senior editor at Random House draws on interviews, archival research, and correspondence to cast her as a formidable driver of cultural change. Williams, a literary scholar at Howard University, delves into Morrison’s projects—including works by Toni Cade Bambara, Gayl Jones, Lucille Clifton, Angela Davis, and Muhammad Ali—to reveal her editorial and commercial acumen. Working in an overwhelmingly white publishing world, Morrison fused professional excellence with cultural advocacy, using her own books’ critical acclaim to push for acquisitions that reflected a wide range of Black perspectives across genres.
How Things Are Made, by Tim Minshall (HarperCollins). In this lively book, Minshall, the head of Cambridge University’s Institute for Manufacturing, assumes the role of an excitable engineer as he illuminates the intricacies of mass production. Alighting on a range of scenarios, from brownie-baking to bicycle assembly, he delineates the web of processes by which commercial goods are produced, including natural-resource management, logistics, and consumer-data gathering. Among his most striking examples is a square of toilet paper—designed for softness, tearability, and integrity, and produced using trees from both hemispheres which have been pulped, dried, re-moistened, glued, and pressed before being shipped away.
Illustration by Ben Hickey
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