Abigail Leonard

Washington, D.C., United States

Producer at Al Jazeera Media Network

Writer / Producer / Mama in Tokyo & DC by way of San Francisco & NY. Previously with @PBS, @CNN, @AJAM

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Articles

What Motherhood in Kenya Reveals About the Nature of Family

1 week ago | lithub.com | Abigail Leonard

“There you go,” Chelsea murmurs, laying her freshly bathed baby onto blue terry cloth. She negotiates Ada’s arms into a pale pink onesie and buttons it at her legs, still bent tight as a frog’s. Then she lifts Ada to cradle her soft head in the curve of her neck, delighting in the infant’s drowsy embrace. Article continues after advertisement“The first day I was still in shock, like surprised that I’m finally someone’s mother,” says Chelsea.
No Room to Pump, No Room for Error: One Mother’s Fight to Feed Her Baby at Work

1 week ago | msmagazine.com | Abigail Leonard

When I was six months pregnant with my first child, I moved to Tokyo from San Francisco. At the time, I told myself it was the sensible choice: My husband was spending one week a month in Tokyo to open the Japan office of a renewable energy company, and it was more practical for him to be there full-time.
Dragon on Centre Street: New York vs. Donald J. Trump

1 month ago | publishersweekly.com | Alexis Madrigal |Abigail Leonard |John Cassidy |Lidia Yuknavitch

Jonah Bromwich. Authors Equity, $30 (304p) ISBN 979-8-89331-038-2New York Times reporter Bromwich debuts with a meticulous, fly-on-the-wall account of Donald Trump’s criminal trial for falsifying business records in order to conceal hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Bromwich takes readers through nail-biting stakeouts waiting for grand jury indictments, the grueling monotony of jury selection, and the salacious testimony of former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker.
The Salmon Cannon and the Levitating Frog: And Other Serious Discoveries of Silly Science

1 month ago | publishersweekly.com | Alexis Madrigal |Abigail Leonard |John Cassidy |Lidia Yuknavitch

Carly Anne York. Basic, $30 (288p) ISBN 978-1-5416-0521-3Pursuing knowledge for its own sake often paves the way for unexpected practical applications, according to this boisterous study.
Daughters of the Bamboo Grove: From China to America, a True Story of Abduction, Adoption and Separated Twins

2 months ago | publishersweekly.com | Alexis Madrigal |Abigail Leonard |John Cassidy |Lidia Yuknavitch

A family torn apart struggles to heal itself in this immersive, painterly exposé. Journalist Demick (Eat the Buddha) recaps the story of Zeng Fangfang and Zeng Shuangjie, twin sisters born in China. In 2002, two-year-old Fangfang was kidnapped, sent to an orphanage, and adopted by an American couple who were told she’d been abandoned.
Death of a Racehorse: An American Story

2 months ago | publishersweekly.com | Alexis Madrigal |Abigail Leonard |John Cassidy |Lidia Yuknavitch

Katie Bo Lillis. Simon & Schuster, $29.99 (384p) ISBN 978-1-6680-1701-2CNN reporter Lillis’s penetrating debut investigates the plight of racehorses through the controversies surrounding trainer Bob Baffert. She recounts how the 2021 death of Medina Spirit several months after winning the Kentucky Derby renewed questions about Baffert’s treatment of his stable.
Speaking in Tongues

2 months ago | publishersweekly.com | Alexis Madrigal |Abigail Leonard |John Cassidy |Lidia Yuknavitch

J.M. Coetzee and Mariana Dimópulos. Liveright, $26.99 (144p) ISBN 978-1-324-09645-0The cerebral, far-reaching latest from Nobel winner Coetzee (The Pole) takes the form of an “amicable but intense” correspondence with Dimópulos (Imminence), a regular translator of his work into Spanish. The two interlocutors draw on their respective backgrounds (both are novelists and translators; Coetzee is also a linguist) to explore language and translation as a political and cultural force.
Book Curses

2 months ago | publishersweekly.com | Alexis Madrigal |Abigail Leonard |John Cassidy |Lidia Yuknavitch

Eleanor Baker. Bodleian Library, $25 trade paper (128p) ISBN 978-1-85124-630-4Excommunication, hanging, and being cooked in a frying pan are just some of the punishments to dissuade potential book thieves collected in Oxford medievalist Baker’s phenomenal debut anthology. For centuries, a “bookish malediction” inscribed into the front cover of a book could serve as a threat—to pilferers and borrowers alike—to return the book to its owner or suffer the consequences.
What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory

2 months ago | publishersweekly.com | Alexis Madrigal |Abigail Leonard |John Cassidy |Lidia Yuknavitch

Brian Eno and Bette Adriaanse. Faber & Faber, $19.95 (128p) ISBN 978-0-571-39551-4Eno (A Year with Swollen Appendices) gets to the heart of art’s purpose in this playful and concise illustrated guide. Drawing on his career as a songwriter, composer, and producer, he explores art’s key functions—engendering emotions; sparking empathy; and expanding worldviews.
Capitalism and Its Critics: A History, from the Industrial Revolution to AI

2 months ago | publishersweekly.com | Alexis Madrigal |Abigail Leonard |John Cassidy |Lidia Yuknavitch

John Cassidy. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $35 (624p) ISBN 978-0-374-60108-9In this sweeping account, Pulitzer finalist Cassidy (How Markets Fail) profiles figures who have opposed capitalism over the past two centuries. Since “the rise of factory production,” Cassidy notes, “critics from the right as well as the left” have made moral arguments against capitalism’s “dehumanizing effect” and its “upending of...