Community Bookstore’s pick: “American Lucifers,” by Jeremy Zallen Subtitled “The Dark History of Artificial Light, 1750–1865,” this book goes from the tallow candles that lit the colonies, to the whale oil lamps, and then coal-powered electricity that allowed for the around-the-clock labor (particularly by children and the enslaved) through which a new nation grew. Jeremy Zallen’s history of artificial light in America threads histories of labor, ecology and technology into an incisive narrative spanning two centuries of war, industry, …

Word’s picks: “Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick,” by Zora Neale Hurston The title of this collection of “lost stories” from renowned Black writer and ethnographer Zora Neale Hurston encapsulates her very unique way of framing complex, subversive ideas about race, gender, and class within the assumed narrative confines of heterosexual and familial relationships. Balancing local folklore and highly specific dialect with delicate prose, Hurston uses her “crooked stick” to deliver hard truths about America’s troubled past that prove shockingly relevant as we enter 2020. — Althea Meer, Word 126 Franklin St. at Milton Street in Greenpoint, (718) 383–0096, www.wordbookstores.com. Community Bookstore’s…