The Way We Never Were, American families and nostalgia trap by Stephanie Coontz. Cover features a 1950’s style illustration of a suburban family’s outdoor barbecue. Where the father is grilling, the mother is setting a table and son and daughter are playing in the yard a suburban home.

Currently reading

This is fantastic breakdown of just how fake much of the mythology around what America and American families looked like. It also deconstructs the myth of rugged individualism, from settler “pioneers” to 1950s suburbanites relied heavily on government subsidies.

@youngteenlit.bsky.social All seems well in the charter school halls until the Promise School principal is murdered in his office. As soon as the murder is discovered, certain assumptions are made, many of those based on feelings and not facts. Will they find the murderer?