Books

Book Suggestions for this Week's Headline-Makers

by Claire Luchette

What a week of news! I keep waiting to hear that Paula Deen and Wendy Davis are engaged, or something equally as crazy. These five people made their way into this busy week's headlines—and they must be exhausted. No better time to curl up with a good book, right? Here, let us guide their Amazon purchases:

Wendy Davis, you filibustered like a Jedi: Steady, determined, and selfless. Here is the Star Wars Essential Guide to the Force for when you face your next Sithly Senate bill. And here is This Common Secret by Susan Wicklund, about her life as an abortion doctor; she is one of many women who is glad abortion is still legal in Texas.

Edie Windsor, the matriarch of the defeat of DOMA: You should make celebratory dosas. And then you should take yourself to the south of France and wiggle your toes in the sand. Bring a Fodor's.

Michelle O, our favorite FLOTUS, new Instagrammer, here are some tips to get you up to speed on how to make your iPhone photos artsy, and gander through Alfred Steiglitz's collection of photographs so that you can become the Alf to Barack's Georgia O'Keeffe.

President Obama, read up on Nelson Mandela's favorite African folk tales for kids, and then hopefully you can read them to kids with as much zeal as when you read Where the Wild Things Are.

Paula Deen (Paula, Paula, Paula), you is what you is, but you gotta get learned! You have a lot of reading to do. Read The New Jim Crow to get up to speed on the state of racism in America and how it manifests itself in the justice system. And then read To Kill a Mockingbird, because I don't believe you have ever read it, and then read all three volumes of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire because you need to just stay inside and quiet for a long, long time.