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Overlooked

A Celebration of Remarkable, Underappreciated People Who Broke the Rules and Changed the World

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Hardcover (Paper-over-Board, no jacket)
$35.00 US
8.26"W x 9.29"H x 1.12"D   | 42 oz | 12 per carton
On sale Nov 14, 2023 | 320 Pages | 9781984860422
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An unforgettable collection of diverse, remarkable lives inspired by “Overlooked,” the groundbreaking New York Times series that publishes the obituaries of extraordinary people whose deaths went unreported in the newspaper—filled with nearly 200 full-color photos and new, never-before-published content

Since 1851, The New York Times has published thousands of obituaries—for heads of state, celebrities, scientists, and athletes. There’s even one for the person who invented the sock puppet. But, until recently, only a fraction of the Times’s obits chronicled the lives of women or people of color. The vast majority tell of the lives of men—mostly white men.

Started in 2018 as a series in the Obituary section, “Overlooked” has sought to rectify this, revisiting the Times’s 170-year history to celebrate people who were left out. It seeks to correct past mistakes, establish a new precedent for equitable coverage of lives lost, and refocus society’s lens on who is considered worthy of remembrance.

Now, in the first book connected to the trailblazing series, Overlooked shares 66 extraordinary stories of women, BIPOC and LGBTQIA figures, and people with disabilities who have broken rules and overcome obstacles. Some achieved a measure of fame in their lifetime but were surprisingly omitted from the paper, including Ida B. Wells, Sylvia Plath, Alan Turing, and Major Taylor. Others were lesser-known, but noteworthy nonetheless, such as Katherine McHale Slaughterback, a farmer who found fame as “Rattlesnake Kate”; Ángela Ruiz Robles, the inventor of an early e-reader; Terri Rogers, a transgender ventriloquist and magician; and Stella Young, a disabled comedian who rejected “inspiration porn.” These overlooked figures might have lived in different times, and had different experiences, but they were all ambitious and creative, and used their imaginations to invent, innovate, and change the world.

Featuring stunning photographs, exclusive content about the process of writing obituaries, and contributions by writers such as Veronica Chambers, Jon Pareles, Amanda Hess, and more, this visually arresting book compels us to revisit who and what we value as a society—and reminds us that some of our most important stories are hidden among the lives of those who have been overlooked.
© Eileen Costa
Amisha Padnani is an award-winning staff editor at The New York Times and a keynote speaker on topics such as diversity, where she often highlights people who are underrepresented in society. She has been interviewed on NPR, Democracy Now, CBC, CBS, and the BBC. Porter Magazine named her Incredible Woman of the Year. View titles by Amisha Padnani
The New York Times is a daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed internationally. Founded in 1851, the newspaper has won 122 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper. View titles by New York Times
Introduction

by Amisha Pandani


I didn't grow up wanting to be an obituaries editor. Who does? It would be an odd—some might even say creepy—ambition for a child. But as a journalist, I always enjoyed learning about life through the eyes of others, and I found myself turning to the obits page to learn about the remarkable people who shaped our world.

When I started working at The New York Times in 2011, I was curious to meet the team that put the section together. My chance came in 2016, when I joined the Obituaries team as an editor, and I soon learned just how challenging the job can be. Thousands of people die between one edition of the newspaper and the next. On the Obituaries desk, we hear about a scant few. Of those, we get to choose about three to spotlight. And so, each morning, my colleagues and I scan our list of names and ask, “Who is worthy?”

It’s a tough question to answer. In some cases, the decision is obvious; newsprint is always reserved for those who have achieved the highest levels of fame—heads of state, chart-topping musicians, and Oscar-winning actors, for instance. But more often, the names on our list are not widely known, so we look for interesting people who have left their mark: the inventor of the wetsuit, a beach bum who simply wanted to surf in the winter; the owner of the world’s only self-cleaning house; a professional prankster whose whimsical hoaxes fooled the world.

Still, as I sat in a room with my colleagues making these choices, I noticed a stark pattern: most of our obituaries were about men, mainly those of privilege. When I asked my team why this was, they said: “Obits are a rearview look at society. The people dying today are from a time when women and people of color weren’t invited to the table to make a difference.” While there was some truth to that answer, I still felt unsatisfied. As the daughter of Indian immigrants to the United States, I knew what it felt like to sometimes feel like an outsider—invisible even—and I longed to see myself, and a greater variety of people, reflected in our pages.

Where were the women, the people of color, and the LGBTQ and disabled communities who made history? What about the marginalized figures whose fierce advocacy changed the way society regarded them, whose curiosity and innovative spirit shaped the way we live, whose unique experiences left an indelible mark on the world? Soon, I found myself on a journey to find them, a journey that took me deep into The New York Times’s archives, from when the newspaper began publishing, on September 18, 1851.

I learned that the newspaper had failed to note the death of the pioneering athlete Major Taylor, who overcame racist brutal beatings and sabotage to become the first Black world champion in cycling. Nor had it mentioned Bette Nesmith Graham, a single mom whose invention of Liquid Paper saved the careers of secretaries and kept students’ notebooks tidy. I went as far back as 1858 to find that India’s queen warrior, the rani of Jhansi, who fought to protect her kingdom from the British, was also left out of our pages.

But that wasn’t all: the newspaper of record also did not write obituaries about Sylvia Plath, whose brilliant poetry and memorable prose gave voice to female anger and despair; Marsha P. Johnson, a central figure in a gay liberation movement energized by the 1969 police raid on the Stonewall Inn; or the trailblazing journalist Ida B. Wells, who started a campaign against lynching—even though all were notable in their lifetimes.

None of these people were “invited to the table” to make a difference, but they persevered and did it anyway. I went back to my team and asked, “What if we were to write their obituaries now?” My colleagues were excited by the idea.

And so, in 2018, I worked with dozens of talented editors and journalists to launch “Overlooked,” a history series that seeks to go beyond the figures taught to us in classrooms—or celebrated by society’s historically narrow lens—by telling the stories of extraordinary lives that have been hidden from view. This book expands upon the series to include a wide range of people who, across time and place and experience, staggered us with their bravery, expanded our understanding of the world by inventing and innovating, and broke constraints placed upon them in an unspoken mission to create a better future for others.

The strength these people exhibited in their lifetimes has propelled me to continue my research and has inspired my team to expand our criteria when we make decisions each day on the Obits desk. While we will never be able to publish obituaries about every single life, I hope this book expands our knowledge of whom we, as a society, value as worthy.

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About

An unforgettable collection of diverse, remarkable lives inspired by “Overlooked,” the groundbreaking New York Times series that publishes the obituaries of extraordinary people whose deaths went unreported in the newspaper—filled with nearly 200 full-color photos and new, never-before-published content

Since 1851, The New York Times has published thousands of obituaries—for heads of state, celebrities, scientists, and athletes. There’s even one for the person who invented the sock puppet. But, until recently, only a fraction of the Times’s obits chronicled the lives of women or people of color. The vast majority tell of the lives of men—mostly white men.

Started in 2018 as a series in the Obituary section, “Overlooked” has sought to rectify this, revisiting the Times’s 170-year history to celebrate people who were left out. It seeks to correct past mistakes, establish a new precedent for equitable coverage of lives lost, and refocus society’s lens on who is considered worthy of remembrance.

Now, in the first book connected to the trailblazing series, Overlooked shares 66 extraordinary stories of women, BIPOC and LGBTQIA figures, and people with disabilities who have broken rules and overcome obstacles. Some achieved a measure of fame in their lifetime but were surprisingly omitted from the paper, including Ida B. Wells, Sylvia Plath, Alan Turing, and Major Taylor. Others were lesser-known, but noteworthy nonetheless, such as Katherine McHale Slaughterback, a farmer who found fame as “Rattlesnake Kate”; Ángela Ruiz Robles, the inventor of an early e-reader; Terri Rogers, a transgender ventriloquist and magician; and Stella Young, a disabled comedian who rejected “inspiration porn.” These overlooked figures might have lived in different times, and had different experiences, but they were all ambitious and creative, and used their imaginations to invent, innovate, and change the world.

Featuring stunning photographs, exclusive content about the process of writing obituaries, and contributions by writers such as Veronica Chambers, Jon Pareles, Amanda Hess, and more, this visually arresting book compels us to revisit who and what we value as a society—and reminds us that some of our most important stories are hidden among the lives of those who have been overlooked.

Author

© Eileen Costa
Amisha Padnani is an award-winning staff editor at The New York Times and a keynote speaker on topics such as diversity, where she often highlights people who are underrepresented in society. She has been interviewed on NPR, Democracy Now, CBC, CBS, and the BBC. Porter Magazine named her Incredible Woman of the Year. View titles by Amisha Padnani
The New York Times is a daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed internationally. Founded in 1851, the newspaper has won 122 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other newspaper. View titles by New York Times

Excerpt

Introduction

by Amisha Pandani


I didn't grow up wanting to be an obituaries editor. Who does? It would be an odd—some might even say creepy—ambition for a child. But as a journalist, I always enjoyed learning about life through the eyes of others, and I found myself turning to the obits page to learn about the remarkable people who shaped our world.

When I started working at The New York Times in 2011, I was curious to meet the team that put the section together. My chance came in 2016, when I joined the Obituaries team as an editor, and I soon learned just how challenging the job can be. Thousands of people die between one edition of the newspaper and the next. On the Obituaries desk, we hear about a scant few. Of those, we get to choose about three to spotlight. And so, each morning, my colleagues and I scan our list of names and ask, “Who is worthy?”

It’s a tough question to answer. In some cases, the decision is obvious; newsprint is always reserved for those who have achieved the highest levels of fame—heads of state, chart-topping musicians, and Oscar-winning actors, for instance. But more often, the names on our list are not widely known, so we look for interesting people who have left their mark: the inventor of the wetsuit, a beach bum who simply wanted to surf in the winter; the owner of the world’s only self-cleaning house; a professional prankster whose whimsical hoaxes fooled the world.

Still, as I sat in a room with my colleagues making these choices, I noticed a stark pattern: most of our obituaries were about men, mainly those of privilege. When I asked my team why this was, they said: “Obits are a rearview look at society. The people dying today are from a time when women and people of color weren’t invited to the table to make a difference.” While there was some truth to that answer, I still felt unsatisfied. As the daughter of Indian immigrants to the United States, I knew what it felt like to sometimes feel like an outsider—invisible even—and I longed to see myself, and a greater variety of people, reflected in our pages.

Where were the women, the people of color, and the LGBTQ and disabled communities who made history? What about the marginalized figures whose fierce advocacy changed the way society regarded them, whose curiosity and innovative spirit shaped the way we live, whose unique experiences left an indelible mark on the world? Soon, I found myself on a journey to find them, a journey that took me deep into The New York Times’s archives, from when the newspaper began publishing, on September 18, 1851.

I learned that the newspaper had failed to note the death of the pioneering athlete Major Taylor, who overcame racist brutal beatings and sabotage to become the first Black world champion in cycling. Nor had it mentioned Bette Nesmith Graham, a single mom whose invention of Liquid Paper saved the careers of secretaries and kept students’ notebooks tidy. I went as far back as 1858 to find that India’s queen warrior, the rani of Jhansi, who fought to protect her kingdom from the British, was also left out of our pages.

But that wasn’t all: the newspaper of record also did not write obituaries about Sylvia Plath, whose brilliant poetry and memorable prose gave voice to female anger and despair; Marsha P. Johnson, a central figure in a gay liberation movement energized by the 1969 police raid on the Stonewall Inn; or the trailblazing journalist Ida B. Wells, who started a campaign against lynching—even though all were notable in their lifetimes.

None of these people were “invited to the table” to make a difference, but they persevered and did it anyway. I went back to my team and asked, “What if we were to write their obituaries now?” My colleagues were excited by the idea.

And so, in 2018, I worked with dozens of talented editors and journalists to launch “Overlooked,” a history series that seeks to go beyond the figures taught to us in classrooms—or celebrated by society’s historically narrow lens—by telling the stories of extraordinary lives that have been hidden from view. This book expands upon the series to include a wide range of people who, across time and place and experience, staggered us with their bravery, expanded our understanding of the world by inventing and innovating, and broke constraints placed upon them in an unspoken mission to create a better future for others.

The strength these people exhibited in their lifetimes has propelled me to continue my research and has inspired my team to expand our criteria when we make decisions each day on the Obits desk. While we will never be able to publish obituaries about every single life, I hope this book expands our knowledge of whom we, as a society, value as worthy.