WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION New York Times Readers’ Pick: Top 100 Books of the 21 st Century • An Oprah’s Book Club Selection • An Instant New York Times Bestseller • An Instant Wall Street Journal Bestseller • A #1 Washington Post Bestseller • A New York Times "Ten Best Books of the Year" "Demon is a voice for the ages—akin to Huck Finn or Holden Caulfield—only even more resilient.” —Beth Macy, author of Dopesick "May be the best novel of [the year]. . . . Equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking, this is the story of an irrepressible boy nobody wants, but readers will love.” — Ron Charles, Washington Post From the acclaimed author of The Poisonwood Bible and The Bean Trees and the recipient of the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters , a brilliant novel that enthralls, compels, and captures the heart as it evokes a young hero’s unforgettable journey to maturity Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities. Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens’ anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.

Recommended on 2 episodes:

Trump’s Big Budget Bomb

Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” is the cruelest and most irresponsible piece of domestic legislation to be seriously proposed in my lifetime. When you think about this bill, you should think about risk. It would increase our risk of a fiscal crisis by adding a hefty sum to our nation’s debt, at a time when we’re alienating the countries that typically buy our debt. It would slash food stamps and strip health insurance from millions of people, increasing the risk that the safety net won’t be able to catch any of us, at a time when President Trump’s tariffs have increased the risk of a recession. It’s what I’m calling the Big Budget Bomb. And if it passes, we’ll all be in the blast radius. My guest today is Catherine Rampell. She’s an opinion columnist at The Washington Post and an anchor on MSNBC. She’s been covering this closely, so I asked her to come on the show to help talk through all the different risks this bill brings. Editor’s note: This episode was recorded before the House passed Trump’s domestic policy package.

Books recommended:

• 📕  Demon Copperhead: A Pulitzer Prize Winner by Barbara Kingsolver
• 📘  Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider's View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead by Kenneth Rogoff
• 📗  Shy by Mary Rodgers

Catherine Rampell May 23, 2025 3 books recommended

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Let’s Get to the Marrow of What Trump Just Did

On the first day of President Trump’s second term, he signed a record 26 executive orders. Some of them were really big. Others feel more likely messaging memos. And still others are bound to be held up in the courts. So what does it all amount to? What exactly in America has changed? In a former life, I co-hosted a podcast called “The Weeds” with other policy wonks at Vox, including Dara Lind and Matthew Yglesias. We’ve since gone our separate ways; Lind is currently a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, and Yglesias is the author of the Substack newsletter Slow Boring. But since this was such a big policy week, I wanted to get some of the band back together. In this conversation, we discuss how much Trump’s immigration orders will actually change our immigration system; whether any of Trump’s orders address Americans’ concerns over prices; how serious Trump actually is about tariffs; and more.

Books recommended:

• 📙  The Fifth Risk: Undoing Democracy by Michael Lewis
• 📕  Middlemarch (Penguin Classics) by George Eliot, Rosemary Ashton
• 📘  Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress―and How to Bring It Back by Marc J. Dunkelman
• 📗  Demon Copperhead: A Pulitzer Prize Winner by Barbara Kingsolver
• 📙  Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis by Jonathan Blitzer
• 📕  Left Adrift: What Happened to Liberal Politics by Timothy Shenk

Matthew Yglesias , Dara Lind Jan. 25, 2025 6 books recommended

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