Category: History

Trans History by Alex L Combs & Andrew Eakett

subtitled From Ancient Times To The Present Day. Because no, being trans is not a new thing, and it’s important that we not pretend that it is. Y’all, I’m tired. Twelve days into the new year and I’m at the point where I can never know what new horrors to expect from this administration and …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/01/12/trans-history-by-alex-l-combs-andrew-eakett/

True War Stories, Vol 1 edited by Alex de Campi and Khai Krumbhaar

Sometimes I feel like if people truly knew the reality of war (and pain and loss,) they’d be far less happy to embrace it. You’ve got all these weird macho cosplayers acting like war isn’t a big deal when they’ve never seen any action themselves. Then, ofc, you have the sociopaths happy to risk, if …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/12/17/true-war-stories-vol-1-edited-by-alex-de-campi-and-khai-krumbhaar/

The Glass Pyramid by Jeanne Walker Harvey & Khoa Le

subtitled A Story of the Louvre Museum and Architect I.M. Pei. I had no idea that the glass pyramid of the Louvre was only built in 1989! For some reason, I thought it was far more modern, tho perhaps I just wasn’t paying much attention at the time. After all, I’d visited the Louvre a …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/12/03/the-glass-pyramid-by-jeanne-walker-harvey-khoa-le/

Are You A Friend Of Dorothy? by Kyle Lukoff & Levi Hastings

subtitled The True Story of an Imaginary Woman and the Real People She Helped. Hand to God, I did not know that the Dorothy of this saying wasn’t a real person! I always assumed it was an allusion to Dorothy Gale, the heroine of The Wizard Of Oz so iconically portrayed by Judy Garland in …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/11/19/are-you-a-friend-of-dorothy-by-kyle-lukoff-levi-hastings/

Turtle Island: Foods and Traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of North America

The cover of Turtle Island by Sean Sherman and others has a colorful graphic pattern with pictures of foods native to north america seemingly stamped on top

The beautiful Turtle Island: Foods and Traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of North America by Sean Sherman with Kate Nelson and Kristin Donnelly comes out November 11 from Clarkson Potter. This is a cookbook in that it has functional recipes, but even beyond that it is a gorgeous and informative record of the lifeways and …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/11/10/turtle-island-foods-and-traditions-of-the-indiginous-peoples-of-north-america/

The Holy Roller: Volume One by Andy Samberg, Rick Remender, Joe Trohman, Roland Boschi & Moreno Dinisio

Yes, it is absolutely ludicrous to have a vigilante whose main weapon is a bowling ball, but he’s out there fighting neo-Nazis and we 100% need more of that nowadays! And it isn’t just some cut-and-dried good guy vs generic white nationalists story either. There’s a lot of nuance in this book, as well as …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/10/06/the-holy-roller-volume-one-by-andy-samberg-rick-remender-joe-trohman-roland-boschi-moreno-dinisio/

Crabgrass Frontier by Kenneth T. Jackson

Crabgrass Frontier by Kenneth T. Jackson

History books, if they stick around long enough, eventually become artifacts of their own eras, history in a double sense: explaining earlier periods with the terms and perspectives of their own time, which look different decades later. In the last chapter of Crabgrass Frontier, Kenneth T. Jackson helps the process along by offering his expectations …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/04/27/crabgrass-frontier-by-kenneth-t-jackson/

Autocracy, Inc. by Anne Applebaum

Autocracy Inc. by Anne Applebaum

Agreeing with Anne Applebaum tends to worry me. Her book Gulag is well regarded (Pulitzer Prize, for example), but I found that the closer it got to the present day and events that I knew a fair amount about, the more tendentious and rightward-slanted I thought her account. That made me uncertain about the earlier …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/03/02/autocracy-inc-by-anne-applebaum/

A Short History Of Black Craft In Ten Objects by Robell Awake

with illustrations by Johnalynn Holland and an afterword by Tiffany Momon. As Black History Month draws to a close, I decided to leapfrog past the other books in my schedule to make sure that I could provide coverage for this important title while the month is still ongoing. And this is a very important title, …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/02/26/a-short-history-of-black-craft-in-ten-objects-by-robell-awake/

Lebanon Is Burning And Other Dispatches by Yazan Al-Saadi et. al.

featuring the art of Tracy Chahwan, Ganzeer, Ghadi Ghosn, Omar Khouri, Sirene Moukheiber, Hicham Rahma and Enas Satir. Hoo boy, readers, what a book. If you’re as unfamiliar with current events in the Middle East and North Africa as I am, then this book is likely to be a jarring experience for you, as Yazan …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/02/12/lebanon-is-burning-and-other-dispatches-by-yazan-al-saadi-et-al/