A new review of the book of photographs, Monumental Beauty: Wonders Worth Protecting in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, says: “This catalog of nature’s charms, great as mountains and as small as a fuchsia-flowered gooseberry, is a spirited argument for the protection of public lands to be held for the benefit of all – not just humans, and not just those living now – but well into the future.”

After describing some of the assaults on public lands by the Trump administration, the review adds: “In the face of such looming threats on both legal and political fronts, any money generated from the sales of Monumental Beauty is going to locally-based nonprofit organizations that work on promoting and defending the monument.”

The photographs above first show a wild juvenile red-shouldered hawk with its eyes open and then with its white eyelids closed. More photographs may be seen at MattWittPhotography.com.

BOOKS

Things I Didn’t Do by Karin Anderson (Torrey House). A follow-up to the stellar novel What Falls Away, this one is similarly perceptive about human emotions and relationships, with western landscape as backdrop. The story is centered on a boy growing up in rural Utah who is gradually learning about his past and about how to be a man.

Emerald City Blues by H. Lee Barnes (University of Nevada). This novel about women who worked in a factory during World War II while millions of men were overseas manages to be rooted in that important history but at the same time relevant to today.

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami (Pantheon). In this dystopian novel that doesn’t seem very farfetched, a big corporation monitors people’s dreams and sells the information to a government agency responsible for identifying anyone who might pose a potential risk to public safety. The company also makes money by inserting commercial products into people’s dreams. The algorithm it uses leads to the lengthy incarceration of a young mother who has done nothing wrong.

The Night of the Scourge by Lars Mytting (Overlook). Third in the Sister Bells trilogy that started with The Bell in the Lake, this Norwegian novel features lyrical writing and memorable characters. The story shows how wartime occupation tears a country apart but also brings out solidarity in resistance.

The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters (Catapult). While an indigenous family from Nova Scotia is in Maine for the summer to work the blueberry harvest, their four-year-old daughter disappears. Meanwhile, a young girl grows up with a white mother and father but keeps stumbling across clues that make her question whether they really are her parents.

Adventures of Mary Jane by Hope Jahren (Delarcorte). Mary Jane is a character mentioned in Mark Twain’s book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In this well researched novel for teenagers she is given her own story as she travels down the Mississippi River in the years before the Civil War.

Art on Fire by Yun Ko-eun (Scribe). In this absurdist satire that skewers modern capitalist culture and the art world, an artist in Korea who supports herself as a delivery driver is offered a prestigious residency in Palm Springs.

Where We Call Home by Josephine Woolington (Ooligan). A journalist who is a skilled storyteller shares what she learned about ecology and the perspectives of indigenous people as she researched particular animals, birds, or plants and how they are threatened by climate change, clearcutting, and development. Chapters talk about sandhill cranes, camas, whales, huckleberries, bumble bees, and more.

How to Be Hopeful by Elin Kelsey (Greystone). While it has a particular focus on climate change, this collection of practical advice and exercises takes on big questions about “doomism” and how those in power try to make everyone else feel that resistance is futile.

The Quinoa Bust by Emma McDonell (University of California). Quinoa was long a staple of the diet of Andean communities. Then political and corporate entities transformed it into a global “superfood” commodity. An anthropologist studied the impact on a community in Peru, where many local farmers who should have benefited were negatively impacted instead.

American Maccabee by Andrew Porwancher (Princeton). In the early 1900s, growing inequality of wealth between rich industrial magnates and workers and farmers led many Americans to look for scapegoats to blame for increased economic insecurity. One of their favorite targets was Jewish immigrants fleeing from Russia and eastern Europe where they faced intense violence, bans on owning property or sending their children to schools, and other oppression. President Theodore Roosevelt sometimes was an ally to Jews at home and abroad but at other times he chose not to be for political reasons or because it would mean jeopardizing the interests of powerful corporations.

The Quickening by Elizabeth Rush (Milkweed). A writer accompanied a team of scientists who became the first humans to conduct onsite studies of the impact of climate change at Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica, the widest glacier in the world.

FILMS

The Penguin Lessons. In a powerful film that might seem improbable if it weren’t based on a true story, an English teacher at an expensive private school in Argentina rescues a penguin from a seaside oil slick and smuggles it back to his school. Set in a time of militarization and government lawlessness, the story is timely given recent actions by the Trump administration.

The Good Boss. A factory owner who inherited the business sees himself as a benevolent father figure to the workers, but the reality of underlying power relations becomes clear when the owner’s principles are tested in this well-acted film from Spain.

The Grizzlies. Based on a true story, this film is set in an isolated Inuit community in the Arctic with a high rate of addiction and teen suicide. A new teacher from outside the community commits frequent cultural faux pas but learns from native people and finds an unexpected way to connect

The Children’s Train. Southern Italy was subjected to so much destruction during World War II that leftist organizers arranged for tens of thousands of children to be sent afterward to live for a few years with families in the North. This touching Italian feature film imagines what that experience might have been like for one of the children, his single mother, and the woman in the North who hosted him.

Sunday Best. A documentary traces the history of The Ed Sullivan Show, which from 1948 to 1971 was one of the most popular and most influential programs on TV. One key to Sullivan’s success was that he insisted on featuring Black performers at a time when they generally were not welcome on television because network executives were fearful that they would alienate white audiences. Some of the performers who got national exposure that way included Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, The Supremes, The Jackson 5, James Brown, Marvin Gaye, Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, and many others.

MUSIC

Snipe Hunter by Tyler Childers. Popular enough that he could crank out albums stuck in a predictable groove, the Appalachian songster instead chooses to take a refreshing and eclectic journey full of surprises..

The Freelancer’s Blues by Dougie Poole. Includes the title song and others like “Buddhist for a Couple Days,” “Vaping on the Job,” and “Natural Touch.”