Book picks similar to
The Abominable Mr. Seabrook by Joe Ollmann


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graphic-novel

Trotsky: A Graphic Biography


Rick Geary - 2009
    To Stalin, he was such a threat that he warranted murder by pickax. This polarizing figure set up a world conflict that lasted through the twentieth century, and in Trotsky: A Graphic Biography, the renowned comic artist Rick Geary uses his distinct style to depict the stark reality of the man and his times. Trotsky's life becomes a guide to the creation of the Soviet Union, the horrors of World War I, and the establishment of international communism as he, Lenin, and their fellow Bolsheviks rise from persecution and a life underground to the height of political power. Ranging from his boyhood in the Ukraine to his fallout with Stalin and his moonlight romance with Frida Kahlo, Trotsky is a stunning look at one of the twentieth century's most important thinkers and the far-reaching political trends that he launched.

And Now I Spill the Family Secrets: An Illustrated Memoir


Margaret Kimball - 2021
    As she searches for answers nearly thirty years later, Kimball embarks on a journey into the secrets her family has kept for decades. Using old diary entries, hospital records, home videos, and other archives, Margaret pieces together a narrative map of her childhood—her mother's bipolar disorder, her grandmother's institutionalization, and her brother's increasing struggles—in an attempt to understand what no one likes to talk about: the fractures in her family.

Present


Leslie Stein - 2017
    While she is closing up a bar late at night, she is also an adolescent at a rave in the mountains, an adult grappling with her grandfather's fading memory or at one of her first waitressing jobs. Stein is a master storyteller, an urban explorer, and a loyal guide through dark days and simple, blissful encounters. Stein's curiosity about and generosity toward the world around her come through powerfully: each colorful story flows with vivid watercolors and delicate ink lines. Here, an autobiography is built through memories and moments tied together by loose lines, evoking a beautiful dreamlike yet endlessly relatable glimpse into the world of a thirty-something woman carving out a life for herself, one step at a time.Known for her acclaimed Eye of the Majestic Creature series, collected here are Stein's serialized Vice.com comics which have become a staple for the site, showcasing her storytelling abilities with a freer style. With an introduction and new material, Present will be a deluxe die-cut hardcover that is a meditation on memory. Stein asks us to take a moment to be here now, while acknowledging the other places and people we always carry with us.

We Served the People: My Mother's Stories


Emei Burell - 2020
    Debut cartoonist Emei Burell breathes new life into the stories her mother shared with her of growing up during mid-1960s Communist China. In an inspiring tale, her mother recounts how she ended up as one of the few truck-driving women during the Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside movement, which sought to increase agricultural outreach and spur social and ideological change amongst youth. Burell’s stunning illustrations honor her mother’s courage, strength, and determination during a decade of tremendous political upheaval, where millions of lives were lost, and introduces us to a young Burell in a new era of self-discovery.

The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt: A Tyranny of Truth


Ken Krimstein - 2018
    This was a woman who endured Nazi persecution firsthand, survived harrowing "escapes" from country to country in Europe, and befriended such luminaries as Walter Benjamin and Mary McCarthy, in a world inhabited by everyone from Marc Chagall and Marlene Dietrich to Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. A woman who finally had to give up her unique genius for philosophy, and her love of a very compromised man--the philosopher and Nazi-sympathizer Martin Heidegger--for what she called "love of the world."Compassionate and enlightening, playful and page-turning, New Yorker cartoonist Ken Krimstein's The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt is a strikingly illustrated portrait of a complex, controversial, deeply flawed, and irrefutably courageous woman whose intelligence and "virulent truth telling" led her to breathtaking insights into the human condition, and whose experience continues to shine a light on how to live as an individual and a public citizen in troubled times.

I Remember Beirut


Zeina Abirached - 2008
    Abirached was born in Lebanon in 1981. She grew up in Beirut as fighting between Christians and Muslims divided the city streets. Follow her past cars riddled with bullet holes, into taxi cabs that travel where buses refuse to go, and on outings to collect shrapnel from the sidewalk. With striking black-and-white artwork, Abirached recalls the details of ordinary life inside a war zone.

Around the World


Matt Phelan - 2011
    The challenge of circumnavigating the globe as no one ever had before--a feat assuring fame if not fortune--attracted the fearless in droves. Three hardy spirits stayed the course: In 1884, former miner Thomas Stevens made the journey on a bicycle, the kind with a big front wheel. In 1889, pioneer reporter Nellie Bly embarked on a global race against time that assumed the heights of spectacle, ushering in the age of the American celebrity. And in 1895, retired sea captain Joshua Slocum quietly set sail on a thirty-six-foot sloop, braving pirates and treacherous seas to become the first person to sail around the world alone. With cinematic pacing and deft, expressive art, acclaimed graphic novelist Matt Phelan weaves a trio of epic journeys into a single bold tale of three visionaries who set their sights on nothing short of the world.

Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us About Being Human


Grant Morrison - 2011
    1 in 1938, introduced the world to something both unprecedented and timeless: Superman, a caped god for the modern age. In a matter of years, the skies of the imaginary world were filled with strange mutants, aliens, and vigilantes: Batman, Wonder Woman, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, and the X-Men—the list of names as familiar as our own. In less than a century, they’ve gone from not existing at all to being everywhere we look: on our movie and television screens, in our videogames and dreams. But what are they trying to tell us?For Grant Morrison, arguably the greatest of contemporary chroniclers of the “superworld,” these heroes are powerful archetypes whose ongoing, decades-spanning story arcs reflect and predict the course of human existence: Through them we tell the story of ourselves, our troubled history, and our starry aspirations. In this exhilarating work of a lifetime, Morrison draws on art, science, mythology, and his own astonishing journeys through this shadow universe to provide the first true history of the superhero—why they matter, why they will always be with us, and what they tell us about who we are . . . and what we may yet become.

Vietnamerica: A Family's Journey


G.B. Tran - 2011
    Born and raised in South Carolina as a son of immigrants, he knew that his parents had fled Vietnam during the fall of Saigon. But even as they struggled to adapt to life in America, they preferred to forget the past—and to focus on their children’s future. It was only in his late twenties that GB began to learn their extraordinary story. When his last surviving grandparents die within months of each other, GB visits Vietnam for the first time and begins to learn the tragic history of his family, and of the homeland they left behind. In this family saga played out in the shadow of history, GB uncovers the root of his father’s remoteness and why his mother had remained in an often fractious marriage; why his grandfather had abandoned his own family to fight for the Viet Cong; why his grandmother had had an affair with a French soldier. GB learns that his parents had taken harrowing flight from Saigon during the final hours of the war not because they thought America was better but because they were afraid of what would happen if they stayed. They entered America—a foreign land they couldn’t even imagine—where family connections dissolved and shared history was lost within a span of a single generation.In telling his family’s story, GB finds his own place in this saga of hardship and heroism. Vietnamerica is a visually stunning portrait of survival, escape, and reinvention—and of the gift of the American immigrants’ dream, passed on to their children. Vietnamerica is an unforgettable story of family revelation and reconnection—and a new graphic-memoir classic.

Hot Comb


Ebony Flowers - 2019
    The titular story “Hot Comb” is about a young girl’s first perm - a doomed ploy to look cool and to stop seeming “too white” in the all-black neighborhood her family has just moved to. Realizations about race, class, and the imperfections of identity swirl through these stories, which are by turns sweet, insightful, and heartbreaking.“Following in the rich tradition of Lynda Barry, Ebony Flowers addresses the sometimes harsh, sometimes devastating pangs of childhood ending. She pays beautiful homage to the struggle to find your place in a world that has such rigid rules about who we are,” Drawn & Quarterly Publisher and acquiring editor Peggy Burns commented. “Hot Comb explores the poetry in everyday life, all the while centering the lives and stories of black women. Ebony’s ease with the comics language is remarkable. Her black and white drawings, as well as her colour collage work, are both equally stunning.”

That Can Be Arranged: A Muslim Love Story


Huda Fahmy - 2020
    They're just another walk in the park for this leading lady, who is on a mission to find her leading lad. From the brilliant comics Yes, I'm Hot in This, Huda Fahmy tells the hilarious story of how she met and married her husband. Navigating mismatched suitors, gossiping aunties, and societal expectations for Muslim women, That Can Be Arranged deftly and hilariously reveals to readers what it can be like to find a husband as an observant Muslim woman in the twenty-first century.So relevant in today's evolving cultural climate, Fahmy's story offers a perceptive and personal glimpse into the sometimes sticky but ultimately rewarding balance of independent choice and tradition.

Redbone: The True Story of a Native American Rock Band


Christian Staebler - 2019
    They influenced The Doors and jammed with Jimmy Hendrix before he was "Jimi," and the idea of a band made up of all Native Americans soon followed. Determined to control their creative vision and maintain their cultural identity, they eventually signed a deal with Epic Records in 1969. But as the American Indian Movement gained momentum the band took a stand, choosing pride in their ancestry over continued commercial reward.Created with the cooperation of the Vegas family, authors Christian Staebler and Sonia Paolini with artist Thibault Balahy take painstaking steps to ensure the historical accuracy of this important and often overlooked story of America's past. Part biography and part research journalism, Redbone provides a voice to a people long neglected in American history.

Come Home, Indio


Jim Terry - 2020
    From a childhood in suburbia, disconnected from his identity as an Indigenous person, through an urban adulthood marked by a struggle with alcoholism and the death of his parents, to his life-altering experience at Standing Rock, we are privileged to travel this path with the author as he begins to find a new sense of self as a Native and as an American­­.

Introvert Doodles: An Illustrated Collection of Life's Awkward Moments


Maureen Marzi Wilson - 2016
    Meet Marzi. She's an introvert who often finds herself in awkward situations. Marzi used to feel strange about her introverted tendencies. Not anymore! Now she knows that there are tons of introverts out there just like her--introverts who enjoy peace and quiet, need time alone to recharge their battery, and who prefer staying in with their pet and a good book to awkward social interactions. Just like Marzi, these introverts can often be found in libraries, at home watching Netflix, brainstorming excuses to miss your next party, or doodling cute cartoons. Being an introvert in an extrovert world isn't always easy, but it certainly is an adventure. In Introvert Doodles, follow Marzi through all of her most uncomfortable, charming, honest, and hilarious moments that everyone--introvert, extrovert, or somewhere in between--can relate to.

Super Chill: A Year of Living Anxiously


Adam Ellis - 2018
    With a bright, positive outlook and a sense of humor, Super Chill tells a story that is both highly relatable and intensely personal.