About Carrying Capacity
A Newsletter for Those Who Believe Books Can Be Balms
Carrying Capacity is a place for story-loving people who sense there is something irreparably wrong with our world but still insist on planting seeds to sprout a better tomorrow. It is a cozy corner for romance readers and doom scrollers, for tree huggers and soothsayers, and for all who fret about the pain of the past and the toll on the earth while still thoroughly enjoying scoops of ice cream. It is a nook where we can together confront the doubleness of our times – love and loss, light and shadow, Hallmark holiday movies and Zombie apocalypse flicks.
Here you will find musings, stories, informational tidbits, and cultural wisdom about a beautiful world gone awry and how we can live with and in it. You will also find each other, an assemblage of brave souls who choose connection, clarity, and care in the face of political and ecological uncertainty.
Subscribe for free access to the Carrying Capacity newsletter and website, where I will post each month about thoughts, conversations, books & articles, and events. Every new edition will float directly into your inbox. In the future, there may be farm fresh, previously unpublished writing and videos for paying subscribers who wish to support extra content teetering on the edge of my introvert’s comfort level.
About Me
I am in love with beauty, mystery, old houses, and sunlit places. I aim to tell stories about people and nature that lift spirits and offer hope while facing up to the truths of history, the fragility of humanity, and the apocalyptic anxiety of our times.
I have authored six books on American race relations that together garnered over twenty historical and literary prizes. I am a 2011 MacArthur Fellow, a two-time winner of the Frederick Douglass Prize awarded for studies of slavery, resistance and abolition, a two-time winner of the National Council on Public History book prize, and a winner of the Hiett Prize in the Humanities. My newest book, All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake, was a New York Times bestseller that won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2021, the PEN John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction, the Cundill History Prize, along with several other prizes. I write about cultural and environmental issues in national publications like The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Boston Globe. I teach history, public history, and humanities at an old university in New England. I am a mother of three (four if you count our black lab) and a joyful, undisciplined gardener. I live seasonally in Montana, where I feel renewed. I read all kinds of books, from history, political analysis, and cultural critique to mystery, thrillers, and romance. You can read more about my academic and popular writing, as well as reviews of my past work, here.
(The landing page drawing of me with flowers is by Ciara Sana. It first appeared on the All My Relations Podcast in 2022. The photographs of me in Harvard Yard are by Stephanie Mitchell, 2022.)
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