Who is Elle Reeve, and why would you want to read her book?
Let’s see. For starters, Cole has known Elle Reeve for a long time, she’s written a terrific book, and we’re lucky that she is up for having a couple of book club zooms with us in February.
We also know she’s smart, because when I asked her to send me a blurb that I could use for this post, she enlisted a friend of hers to write it for her. Self-promotion is hard; outsource whenever possible!
“Named one of the best books of 2024 by The Washington Post, Elle Reeve’s Black Pill is a wild ride into the dark heart of political discourse on the internet and how it has come to be a decisive factor in our current politics. Over a decade of reporting, Reeve unearths hundreds of as-yet-unseen documents and exposes some of the most notorious leaders of American far right groups in dozens of hours of exclusive interviews. This unique raft of reporting goes deeper than ever to explain just how these nefarious forces conspired to propel Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016 and drove real-world political action in Charlottesville in 2017 and at the January 6 insurrection in Washington, D.C.
With this clarity comes a more nuanced understanding of not just how it all happened, but also how those who oppose creeping fascism can fight back.
Reeve’s unique voice, sharp observations, and penchant for dark humor are propulsive. Black Pill is an essential and entertaining read for anyone interested in how we got to this moment in American political history, what might happen next, and how to affect change.
Link to the Washington Post review.
NYT Book Review. (If You Want to Understand Why Democracy Is Under Attack, Read This Book.)
We’re looking two different zooms. One for the part of the book that talks about Charlottesville in 2017; the other for the part about the insurrection on Jan 6.
If you’re interested, chime in! If you think you’ll want to participate, what would you think of having the 2 zooms on Saturdays, two weeks apart. Do you think maybe a month from now to start, since you’ll need time to get your hands on the book and read it?
Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics
The book is available on Amazon and elsewhere.
SiubhanDuinne
Well, this sounds fascinating! Yes, I would love to Zoomchat with Elle Reeve; Saturdays, a couple of weeks apart starting in mid- to late February, sounds perfect. Off to order and download the book.
Lapassionara
@SiubhanDuinne: Ditto. Sounds very interesting. Thanks for sharing this with us.
WaterGirl
Speaking of Saturday afternoons and zooms, our zoom with Worker Power is one week from today.
RSVP with an email to WaterGirl. watergirl at balloon-juice.com
Miss Bianca
Sounds like a fascinating (as well as scary and depressing) read. I’ll look for it!
rodwell
Just requested the title from my local library. It is on the shelf and available for pickup. I will probably get by Tuesday. Thanks for the recommendation Watergirl.
Athenaze
I’d be interested. I’ve been wanting to read this book (but, you know, my reading list is even longer than my craft projects list).
Miss Bianca
@rodwell: I was able to find it through my library as well!
hitchhiker
If you’re into audible, they’ve got it on sale for $13.12 right now. I’m doing that.
rodwell
@Miss Bianca: Great. I lived in Northern NJ and the library system is pretty functional. (Note: They can use more funding). The catalog is on a database, and you searched at home and put in a request via their website. They notified you via text and go to the front desk.
Gretchen
It’s on sale at Amazon for half price now – $15 rather than the usual $30. But do I want to give Amazon my business over my local?
Are there other places to purchase ebooks besides Amazon?
Yes, I’m interested.
Will there be a discussion in comments for those who can’t make the time?
bjacques
I just want to start dropping “black pilled” into conversations from here on in. Why didn’t anyone think of it before?
arrieve
This sounds really interesting! I’m ready to start a new book and this may be it. Unfortunately I probably can’t zoom because I teach on Saturdays and don’t get home until late afternoon/early evening.
WaterGirl
@Gretchen: Hmmm. For a discussion in the comments I think we’d need someone live blogging. So, maybe, I’m not sure.
WTFGhost
Cool. Makes me wish I could still read more than a few paragraphs at a time.
WTFGhost
@Gretchen: It’s always good to visit your local bookstore for books, over Amazon, in my humble opinion, but sometimes life intervenes. A book sale, especially early post-publication , is probably more important to an author than where.
Publishers might offer an e-book, other than the Kindle format.
MartyIL
Sounds interesting, I am off to look for the book
David Collier-Brown
Cool!
Bought on Kobo
sab
Luddite here, so I can’t zoom, but I just bought the book and will read it. Bought from Barnes and Noble because I have a Nook.
gene108
@bjacques:
The only time I’ve seen black pill used was on incel message boards. Commenters suggest the person in an OP, on Reddit for example, should black pill themselves, ie commit suicide.
Timill
@WTFGhost: You can load any epub book onto a Kindle using Amazon’s “send-to-Kindle” feature.
David_C
Read the book a couple months ago. It’s an amazing, and nuanced, look into that world. The woman has guts. Yes, I’d be interested.
WaterGirl
I forgot to mention that Elle narrated the audio book.
I am super picky about narrators, so I listened to a sample before buying. She’s good!
It’s $19.99 on iBooks, which I guess is now called just Books.
I don’t do Kindle, but if it’s on Books, it’s surely available on Kindle.
kalakal
Definitely interested
Joy in FL
I am interested.
Joy in FL
I just reserved my copy of the book at my sort of local Barnes & Noble.
Now I have to go to an actual bookstore tomorrow : )
Renie
@WaterGirl: This sounds fascinating. I recall once before, when we had a book Zoom, I purchased the book for another Jackal who couldn’t afford it. If we do this again, I would be willing to do so again.
WaterGirl
@Renie: Good idea, we can do that again. I’ll try to remember to put something up about that tomorrow.
JustRuss
Sounds like an important book, but damn, not sure I could bring myself to read it. This crap is so depressing.
Gloria DryGarden
I just reserved it as an ebook at Denver public library, 16 people waiting, 11 copies, it says 3 weeks wait. 9 Hard copies available.
(If it weren’t so cold out, I could read it right from the shelf at my branch)
These topics are so important yet depressing, and it competes w IRL. I’m aiming for it, we’ll see.
But, when I searched the ebook library for Elle reeve, an interesting title came up:
The MAGA Diaries, by Tina Ngyugen. I read a sample, and skimmed the prologue, and it’s snappy well-written insider information about coming of age straight into the conservative movement pre MAGA, and becoming a democrat. It sounds insightful and easy to read. I think I could fall right into it, almost a page turner of a memoire. Her immigrant Vietnamese parents have phDs, she went to private school, she worked for Tucker Carlson when no one had heard of him. Her writing has bounce; I think it will be fun to read. (We’ll see)…
WaterGirl
@JustRuss: That’s part of why I asked Elle if she could focus on this part in the zoom:
In our phone conversation, Elle talked about Charlottesville almost being like a dry run for Jan 6, what they learned from Charlottesville that changed how they moved ahead on Jan 6.
Debbie(Aussie)
I would love to be involved, if I can work out zoom.
Lacuna-Synecdoche
From the Blurb @ Top:
Watergirl @ Top:
Perhaps one of the zooms could be focused on the “how those who oppose creeping fascism can fight back” part?
Although I think the current fascism has stepped up its pace from creeping …
WTFGhost
Okay, I’ll buy a book and see if I can read it in under six weeks. I’m not betting on success. Not being able to read, without my brain hurting, is one of the worst symptoms I’ve experienced – only one I’ll say is worse is “spontaneous projectile vomiting” and thankfully, I’m over a year removed from my last episode.
That said: it wins a special award for being worse than you imagine, and you probably (correctly!) “imagine” it’s really bad.