For June: A Partial History of Lost Causes by Jennifer DuBois

For June, we have selected A Partial History of Lost Causes by Jennifer DuBois,

In St. Petersburg, Russia, world chess champion Aleksandr Bezetov begins a quixotic quest: He launches a dissident presidential campaign against Vladimir Putin. He knows he will not win—and that he is risking his life in the process—but a deeper conviction propels him forward. 

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, thirty-year-old English lecturer Irina Ellison struggles for a sense of purpose. Irina is certain she has inherited Huntington’s disease—the same cruel illness that ended her father’s life. When Irina finds an old, photocopied letter her father wrote to the young Aleksandr Bezetov, she makes a fateful decision. Her father asked the chess prodigy a profound question—How does one proceed in a lost cause?—but never received an adequate reply. Leaving everything behind, Irina travels to Russia to find Bezetov and get an answer for her father, and for herself.

Our March Author: Mara Hvistendahl

This month we are reading Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men. The author has a personal website where you can learn more about this informative book and also check out some the other writing she has done, much of it for Science. She also lists many of the interviews she's given about the book. Here's one from Shanghaiist and another from Salon for starters. Our Loyal Readers will certainly appreciate this question and response from the Minneapolis Star Tribune,

Q Your subject is so upsetting -- and yet "Unnatural Selection" is surprisingly addictive with its rich characters and scenes. Did any writers inspire your style? 

A I admire the way Philip Gourevitch writes about Rwanda -- you know, the book with the really long title, "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families."

For a nickel summary of the book you could go with this NPR piece, but if you have more time, the video above or the audio (also available via iTunes) on this page, New Books in Gender Studies,  will give you a more thorough overview of the book. Much of the controversy surrounding sex selection centers on abortion. In this Salon article, Hvistendahl focuses on how antiabortion advocates (like NYT columnist Ross Douthat) read her wrong.

A step removed but not completely unrelated, Hvistendahl writes for the Atlantic about the consequences of having a child, including her own, in the Year of the Dragon. Or try this Science podcast about predicting unrest and conflict in countries with a demographic "youth bulge", another interesting convergence of science and human rights. Finally, of concern to our work on behalf of Chinese dissidents, see this article, The Great Forgetting, which mentions another Rights Readers author, Ma Jian.